in the hand 

is the result of a collaboration between Mal Earl and Sam Smith

Or put it this way, I provided the poems and Mal's exceptional artwork took them to a whole new level.

http://malearl.com 

Copies available for £3.50 each, including postage, which only applies to those living in the UK. If living elsewhere and wanting a copy I'm happy to negotiate the extra postage.

Rooms has had an interesting publishing history. First there was a sample published by the avant garde publisher, Oasis; then the complete set, plus Dialogues, by the now defunct Boho. The painter Sarah Ward and I then toured her paintings based on Rooms around the West Country. I moved to Cumbria, then Wales, where  Wordcatcher  Publishing of Cardiff put out this revised edition of Rooms 

...As they stand, the verse sections of the various rooms convey the coherent and rewarding variety of a very visual patchwork. However, the accompanying "notes for reading" have a dynamic and entirely different effect on the reader... a lot of the "notes for reading" are amusing, underlining writers' pomposity and loss of a sense of irony... As the "dialogues" develop, they embrace an enormous range of subjects, but the continuum is a philosophical one, where Smith, in a more liquid style, explores an extraordinary wealth of ideas, with no shortage of irony... Rooms & Dialogues is a remarkable achievement, where two bold conceits are explored in an assured, accessible and expansive manner. Each "room" asks its own question; each "dialogue" nurtures its own idea. Risks are taken and rewarded. The beauty of the book is its ability to make the reader think...'  Will Daunt: Envoi  

‘For me this book is by far the best thing that Sam Smith has done. In Rooms... he seems to have found the perfect medium for his particular mix of caring humanism and bitter observation. The Rooms poems have a concrete presence while yet being enigmatic — they have a sense of absurd ritual. Perhaps the aim is more satirical than ironic but I have a hunch that this work has almost achieved an effect in excess of its author's intention — might be wrong. .. ‘ Tim Allen: Terrible Work

£8.99

“...This is a hard read, made easier by Smith’s limpid prose-style and skilful narrative technique. “The Complete Pieces” is a profound piece of work that, by focussing on war, imprisonment and its aftermath, makes the reader aware that such things rarely appear in poetry, or at least not in such unflinching detail as they do here. The sequence tells a story - or the shadowy outline of a story - but there is no resolution, no consolation; instead - and much more importantly - there is empathy and witness.” Alan Baker: Litter Magazine

 '...one of the best books to have appeared in [the] UK so far this century...’ Fire #19   

‘...a captivating exploration of love, grief, and especially hope in a prisoner of war camp... But Pieces is also about violence, and therein lies something fascinating and even beautiful ... The lines are musical, lulling ... creates an enchanted, awful place where people are dying, where we don’t want them to stop dying, so we can keep reading...’ Donna Biffar: Orbis #121  

' ...The descriptive density and personal revelation of the experience give these ‘pieces’ poetic weight .... Smith has a winning style...’ The Black Mountain Review #6 

'...Smith's language has an abstract and untethered feel, but his descriptions of the natural cycle of life continuing beyond and without reference to the prisoners are compellingly precise...' L. Kiew NHI Online Review    

   '...prose-poetry items which stand alone, or as a landscape of observations... This is a new approach; you need to read it yourself.' Geoff Stevens Purple Patch

Available  here - https://rb.gy/hi17w1

A New Acmeism : erbacce-press

a chapbook by Sam Smith

The introduction asserts… ‘At about the same time, early 1900s, that Imagism - espoused by the likes of Hilda Doolittle, Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams - arose in the West, over in the East Acmeism was growing out of an almost identical reaction against Symbolism. Nikolai Gumilev, Anna Andreevna Akhmatova and Osip Emilyevich Mandelshtam set out to rid poetry of mysticism and Symbolism’s excessive allusiveness. Anna Akhmatova defined Acmeism as “...a return to the poetic principles of clarity, concision and the precise expression of emotional experience.”  /  As they sought, over a century ago, to restore ‘concreteness’ and ‘immediacy’ to poetic language so too now has come the time to slough off our latterday accretion of unnecessary verbiage and to try again…. 

ISBN 978-1-907878-74-9   £3.99  from the author — price includes postage: please make cheques payable to ‘Sam Smith’   38 Pwllcarn Terrace, Blaengarw, Bridgend, CF32 8AS )

or via PayPal - 

An Atheist’s Alphabetical Approach to Death

erbacce press http://www.erbacce-press.com/ 

This chapbook is a result of 'An Atheist's Alphabetical Approach to Death' ending up in the final 4 (out of 1,200 entries) of the Erbacce 2009 Competition.

‘....irreverent, intelligent, provocative and unpretentious he provokes me to smile, to debate and to appreciate his stubborn honesty.... words for Smith are a functional yet beautiful vehicle, sort of Rolls Royce convertibles with ladders and bags of cement strapped across the gold-plated body work....’ Alan Corkish

ISBN 978-1-906588-51-9                          

£4.00

canoe

 canoe: an erbacce press chapbook £4.00

   http://www.erbacce-press.com/  

"As a collection it links a cohesive storyline: the rain - the lure of the circus - the flood - the elephant. Each poem is a drop into waters that run deep.  / An unassuming treasure. A bargain. Recommended." Carol Thistlethwaite: Carillon Magazine 

John the Explorer: Gecko Press  £6.00  with drawings by Shelley C Smith    To view pages from this collection click here  

'...told in relentless, muscular language... Sam Smith has not written an easy book, but it's unusual and one that contains some fine writing.' Michael Bangerter: NHI 

'...gathers together elements of a contemplation... the protagonist... goes on a series of meanderings... all 'making strange' the everyday. The writing is complimented by line drawings by Shelley C Smith which mirror the intriguing, often disturbing, text. Although the earthy is apparent here... it is presented with such graphic dexterity that because it is so intimate its crudity is readily forgivable... Smith presents ideas and images, symbols and lyrical tropes in ways which many other contemporary poets could benefit from considering.'  Niall McGrath: Poetry Quarterly Review 

' Don't be put off by past encounter with Berryman, Smith is much better with his single-name character. John has to explore, taste ivy berries once, face the elements, encounter animals, encounter encounters. John is a middle-aged baby that needs to find the world... Well illustrated by Shelley C Smith.'    Geoff Stevens: Purple Patch 

Dark Tales

Dark Tales (£3.50) is a self-published chapbook of poems, with paintings by Shelley C Smith, the poems written to be performed at the Nunney Jazz Cafe

'....This is Stephen King in verse form....'   Helena Nelson: Sphinx                        

'....this, of course, is precisely where poetry must take its readers — to the brink....'   Patricia Prime: NHI Online Review 

 Skin&Bones

Skin&Bones: Odyssey Press  £6.00  with illustrations by Lynn Sutterby

"...He is a distinctive and important poet, ever sensitive to, even obsessed by, the fluidity and transience of surfaces: impressed yet shocked by the dead weight and rigidity of solid centres. His poetry evokes a cosmos structured through those elements... Sam Smith is a keen and accurate observer of the particulars of nature... The engravings, themselves made on wood, which is one of the poet's prime integuments, are not mimetic of his imagery; but are embodiments in form and design of perceptions which seem to rise from the deep subconscious; whereas the poet's images are the impress on a heightened consciousness of a close observation and appreciation of nature's structural materials. Thus, there is a true complementarity between word and art..." K V Bailey: Zene #14                  

"Sam Smith is a poet who uses imagery, more than other poetic techniques, to good effect and uses it... to illuminate the harsh, livid beauty of places where humanity literally scratches the earth to live. Other poems are mental landscapes of equal harshness but they are not barren of emotion. The poems are well amplified by Lyn Sutterby's woodcuts reminiscent of Eskimo and other native carvings on slivers of whalebone and wood.... These poems are mirrors in which some readers will not like the reflected truth of what we really are by instinct... Sam Smith is a much more interesting social poet than many others in this respect..." Martin Holroyd: Poetry Monthly #20