Tees Valley Publishers
Mudfog Press
Mudfog Press works to promote new writers and writing from the Tees Valley and surrounding area. The Press is run by a voluntary editorial board and is non-profit-making. It currently has financial support from Middlesbrough Council and Arts Council England. The Press mostly publishes poetry and short fiction and puts particular emphasis on the production of short pamphlets, which give writers a first opportunity of individual publication. Mudfog offers strong editorial support for its authors.
Mudfog Press was established in 1993 and has to date published over 40 pamphlets and eight full length books. Several Mudfog authors have gone on to be published more widely and to establish their reputations regionally and nationally. Authors are available for writing workshops, residencies and performances. Current publications can be bought direct from the web-site with free p&p. You can register for our mailing list on events and new publications by using the enquiry form on the website.
Mudfog Press, c/o Arts Development, The Stables, Stewart Park, The Grove, Marton, Middlesbrough, Tees Valley, TS7 8AR. Web: www.mudfog.co.uk
PUBLICATIONS
Walayat Deko
by Khadim Hussain
978-1-899503-81-0
£4.00
‘See Britain!' jokes the sophisticated stewardess to a young boy from rural Pakistan catching the English winter and its first fever on the plane's steps. Khadim Hussain's poems chart the highs and lows of countless such arrivals: dreams of prosperity that wake to mixed realities; memories of home irretrievable from time's blank floods. He captures changing perspectives with bittersweet tenderness and wit, with inventive and revealing shifts of diction, rhythm and tone.
Bury Me
Bury me not in a cemetery,
Cover not my grave
With gravel and cement.
Sacrifice no flowers
Upon my grave,
Leave nature's bounty to nature.
Bury me near a river glade
Where the water buffaloes graze
And roam over me.
When the river is full
And floods the glade
I'll be thankful
For bathing me.
Please bury me, bury me
In the river glade
Where as a child
I once played.
Daylight Saving
by Janice Sinson
978-1-899503-79-7
£3.50
With present gulls and past explorers, Janice Sinson's poems make their voyages out from Whitby into family memories and nightmares, travels in other lands, revelations from medical interventions, art gallery, on the water and on the net. And the daily livings of nesting gulls. Poems that hover with wit and compassion by the cliff-edges of land and life.
Raid
A sudden stilling chills the lapse
before the fight. Sun beats beads
of heat on the three in one horrific
ball, dead against the guttered wall.
No movement from the day-late
runt, coffined by still siblings.
Yesterday's cracked eggshells
grief the nest. Gulls mass
and perch alert on chimney cowls,
echoing a raucous chorus
from roof to roof. Wailing against
an unkindness of ravens.
Wild by Mike Pratt
978-1-899503-82-7
£10
Mudfog Press is delighted to publish these explorations in prose and sketches of the author's encounters with animals, birds and the landscape of the North East over several decades. This is energetic and poetic writing infused with a love of nature and deep spirituality.
A hare died today, in my arms, squealing in the last bleats of a botched birthing. That feeling again of life energy passing, as it gave up the ghost – suddenly still, inanimate. A heartbeat stopped, head lolling – a sheen across the eyes.
A woman passing with her dog spotted it jerking and kicking in the grass – in the Belties’ field near Tabner’s Pond. I approached it and, thinking it was snared or injured, I wrapped it in my jumper.
I noticed a pink protrusion and wetness at its back end. For whatever reason a leveret was stuck inside. No time for vets, hare midwives or any other intervention – it just died. There and then.
But soon after it seemed almost reborn. On the way back to Upton – as if ghost-like in the road – a young leveret, so daft and naïve and big-footed it ran between approaching humans and dogs before finally diving up a bank – to live another day.
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