Lapwing Publications 37 years of poetry and prose

Introduction

Welcome to Lapwing Publications one of

Ireland's biggest independent small publisher of poetry and other short works of fine literature.

Lapwing is non-profit making and not dependent on subsidies from government sources 

but we do depend on a few items being sold now and then to keep going.

In developing this website we are most grateful to the poet-philosopher

Adam Rudden

for his painstaking work and skill in expanding a simple list to an integrated interactive utility.

We thank those in the 'poetry' and fine literature 'constituency' for 'hitting' our page.

We at Lapwing hope you enjoy the range of poetry

and other literature, which is eclectic and inclusive,

making some of the finest poetry available and at the same time inclusive,

for poetry exists beyond the confines of institutional incarceration.

Sincerely yours,

Dennis, Rene and Amos Greig

LAPWING PUBLICATIONS:

ANOTHER STORY

ABOUT LAPWING

LAPWING PUBLICATIONS emerged from Belfast’s Poetry Collective at the renowned Giro’s alternative cafe and music collective in Donegall Street, Belfast. GIRO’s continued for some years to provide a venue for some of Belfast’s alternative music scene as well as a range of facilities for people not at war with each other.

Since the late 1980’s (1989) LAPWING has continued to provide a non-commercial POETRY PRESS for local writers and those beyond Belfast. Although Lapwing was supported in the past by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, it is not now in receipt of any public funding. It is impossible to publish all the poetry that Lapwing receives, but we do our best.

Whilst the main task of Lapwing is to publish New and Emerging Poets from Ireland, north and south. We have published some of Ireland’s best known authors; the late James Simmons - founder of the Honest Ulsterman, Padraig Fiacc - winner of the AE prize in the 1950’s Robert Greacen - the Elder Statesman of Ulster Poetry, Padraig O’Snodaigh founder of the Irish language press Cosceim, Deirdre Brennan - her first major collection in English translated from Gaelic, Michael Fanning - Director of Feile na Bealtaine, Dingle, Des O’Grady - Ezra Pound’s help mate in his later years who also helped get Akhmatova out of Russia, John Liddy - leading teacher and poetry ambassador in Madrid, Sam Burnside - the dynamic Derryman who got the Verbal Arts Centre up and running, Jean O’Brien - once voted the most beautiful legs in Ireland and now one of our leading poets, Niall McGrath - editor and founder of Black Mountain Review, Fred Johnston - the Galway based Belfastman running the West Poetry Centre, Maurice Harmon - Poetry Ireland, Gerry McDonnell - poet and playwright whose recent work focuses on the Irish-Jewish community, Jack Holland - novelist and journalist who bid farewell to Ireland on Shankill Radio 1994.

These are only a random selection of our incredible poets who kept a light lit during Ireland’s greyest years and many who had kept that light burning during Ulster’s darkest hours.

In the course of Lapwing’s brief years, it has resisted censorship and petty politics that would silence those ‘still small voices’ . Where then liberty and freedom when the liberal arts are shackled to some dictat? No wonder that even Stalin should remark that: ‘Poets are the engineers of the human soul’.