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***NEW FOR 2010***
THE IMMANENT MOMENT
Poems for Now
Kevan Manwaring
Foreword by Jay Ramsay
'...light, rich, transparent, resonant...’ Jay Ramsay
The sound of snow falling on a Somerset ...hillside, the evanescence of a water spout on a remote Scottish island, the invisible view from a Welsh mountain, the light on the Grand Canal in Venice, chasing the sunset on a motor-bike... The Immanent Moment looks at the little epiphanies of life, moments of lucid awareness and personal revelation. Each poem captures these fleeting pulses of con-sciousness in sinuous, euphonic language. A meditation on time, mortality, transience, and place, this collection is also ultimately life-affirming, with poems celebrating both the beauty of the natural and the man-made, the familiar and the exotic, and the interstices and intimacy of love. With humour and humanity, these poems gently encourage the reader to be fully alive in the miracle of each waking moment.
Poetry ISBN: 978-1-906900-13-7 RRP £9.99
DANCING WITH DARK GODDESSES
Movements in Poetry
Irina Kuzminsky
The dance is life - life is the dance - in all its manifestations, in all its sorrow and joy, cruelty and beauty. And the faces of the Dark Goddesses are many - some are dark with veiling and unknowing, some are dark with sorrow, some are dark with mystery and a light so great that it paradoxically shades them from sight.The poems in this collection are an encounter with many of these faces, in words marked with feminine energy and a belief in the transformative power of the poetic word. Both spiritual and sexual, earthy and refined, a woman's voice speaks to women and to the feminine in women and men, often with the rawness of pain and betrayal ("Even Today", "This Voice", "The Small Betrayals"), but also with a resurgent strength ("Derelicta", "The Hungering Earth", "Dakini", "She rides"), or with the calm consciousness of simply being ("Mistress of the Elements", "Mother of Darkness"). The book charts a journey from the abysses of pain and separation from the divine "(Eyeing Death"), of sorrow ("Standing at Golgotha"), of centuries of suppression and the memories of it, but then reaches back out towards transcendence and love, both beauty ("Your Beauty") and lightness of touch ("Would Words Could Dance") showing us what this earth could be. The shock of pain is counterpoised by the joy of living and by the pure and ultimately triumphant dance of life.The poems speak of an openness to life, a surrender to the workings of love and a trust in the Dark Goddesses and their ways of leading us through the dance.
Poetry/Dance/Photography ISBN 978-1906900120 RRP £9.99
THE ANGEL IN THE FORESTNiamh Clune
1987. In the lush forest of Vancouver Island, Dr Niamh Clune has an encounter with an angelic vision that will change her life - a timely warning to a world on the brink of ecocide.
Based upon her research into psychology and spirituality, this is a lucid and topical overview of the soul-wound of the world and how it can be healed.
'Many would say that the great affliction of our times, endemic in all our strife and conflict, and troubling us individually and socially, is the loss of soul. When soul is neglected, it doesn't just disappear somewhere; it re-emerges in the world symptomatically in violence, lack of meaning, obsessions, addictions and preoccupations with image over substance.Psychologist, teacher and environmental campaigner, Dublin-born Dr Niamh Clune, is what I would call a specialist of the soul and, in her remarkable new book, [The Angel in the Forest] plays an important part in attempts to reorientate us.' Geoff Ward, Mysterious Planet
Knowing her end was near, Mary Palmer worked on her poems – compiling her very best and writing new ones with a feverish intensity. This is the result, published here with her full cooperation and consent. These are poems from the extreme edge and very centre of life – words of light that defy death’s shadow with a startling intensity, clarity and honesty. Containing poems from across Mary’s career, selected by Jay Ramsay, Tidal Shift is an impressive legacy from a poet of soul and insight.
Poetry ISBN 978-1-906900-09-0 Profits to Dorothy House Hospice £9.99
THE WELL UNDER THE SEA
Kevan Manwaring
Imagine an island at the crossroads of time where lost souls find each other… Isambard Kerne, Edwardian antiquarian and First World War observer, missing in action at the Battle of Mons, finds himself in the Afterlands of his Celtic ancestors and has begun the Way of the Windsmith – the path he must take to find his way back home, for he is a man alive in the world of the dead. Having learnt the secrets of Eurus, god of the East Wind, Kerne must sail into the west, to Hyperzephyrus, the Land Beyond the West Wind. With the help of a mysterious boatman called Barinthus, he finally makes it to the fabled Island of the Blessed, Ashalantë, a city in the sea crafted by dreams, where the vision of Plato, Da Vinci, Brunel and others have come to life. Here he has to endure the Circle of Truth and embrace the shadow of his past. He meets Amelia Earhart, legendary American aviatrix of the Thirties, who is assigned to him as his angel to instruct him in the art of flying. As they climb higher they find themselves falling in love, but Priestesses of the Spiral are forbidden to do so. If Earhart breaks her vows, it could shatter the fellowship of the Nine Sisters, and cause the downfall of Ashalantë. Torn between duty and desire, Kerne and Earhart find themselves embroiled in a tragic chain of events that threaten to bring about the destruction of not only this otherworldly paradise, but its shadow: Earth.
The Windsmith Elegy volume III
Fiction ISBN: 978-1-906900-10-6 £9.99
PLACES OF TRUTH
Journeys into Sacred Wilderness
Jay Ramsay
Poet and psychotherapist Jay Ramsay has been drawn to wild places all his writing life, in search of a particular deep listening experience. Here he shares his soundings. ‘Trwyn Meditations’, set in Snowdonia, begins this 23 year odyssey. ‘By the Shores of Loch Awe’ takes us to the fecund wilds of Scotland. ‘The Oak’ celebrates an ancient tree in
the heart of the Cotswolds.. ‘The Sacred Way’ an evocation of Pilgrim Britain. ‘Culbone’ uniquely records the experience and hidden history of the smallest parish church in England in a steep North Somerset valley beneath where Coleridge wrote ‘Kubla Khan’, in a world as much of its own. The final poem, ‘The Mountain’, takes us beyond, in all
senses, touching the places where we find I and Self.
Poetry 162pp ISBN 978-1-906900- 08-3 £9.95
EXOTIC EXCURSIONS
Anthony Nanson
The exotic, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder..
In these stories Anthony Nanson charts the territory between travel writing and magic realism to confront the exotic and the enigmatic. Here are epiphanies of solitude, twilight and initiation. A lover’s true self unveiled by a mountain mist … a memory of the lost land in the western sea … a traveller’s surrender to the allure of ancient gods … a quest for primeval beings on the edge of extinction. In transcending the line between the written and the spoken word, between the familiar and the unfamiliar, between the actual and the imagined, these tales send sparks across the gap of desire.
'He is a masterful storyteller, and his prose is delightful to read … His sheer
technical ability makes my bones rattle with joy … He is simply one of
the most able writers I know.' Mimi Thebo
Fiction/Travel ISBN 978-0-9546137-7-8 £7.99
THE FIFTH QUARTER
Richard Selby
The Fifth Quarter is Romney Marsh as defined by Rev. Richard Harris Barham in The Ingoldsby Legends: ‘The World, according to the best geographers is divided into Europe,Asia, Africa, America and Romney Marsh…’. It is a place apart, almost another world and this collection explores its ancient and modern landscapes, wonders at its past and reflects upon the present.
This eclectic collection of tales is funny and sad, universal and particular. Pour yourself a glass and pull up a chair...
Richard Selby has known Romney Marsh throughout his life: holidaying there as a child, living there in his youth and regularly visiting ever since. Formerly in education, he now works in the booktrade. He performs as a storyteller individually and with Fire Springs, storytellers of Bath. He lives in Bath, with his wife Judith and his two talented sons.
Fiction/poetry ISBN 978-0-9546137-9-2 £7.99
IONA
Mary Palmer
What do you do when you are torn apart by your ‘selves’? Mary Palmer tells her story though poems, prose and images.
The pilgrim poet, rebel Mordec and tweedy Aelia set sail for Iona – a thin place, an island on the edge. It's a journey between worlds, back to the roots of their culture. On the Height of Storm they relive a Viking massacre, at Port of the Coracle encounter vipers. They meet Morrighan, a bloodthirsty goddess, and Abbot Dominic with his concubine nuns. Omens, chants, curses… During her stay Mordec learns words can heal or destroy, and the poet writes her way out of darkness.
A powerful collection, celebrating a journey to wholeness, from an accomplished poet.
Poetry ISBN 978-0-9546137-8-5. £6.99
MYSTERIES
Chrissy Derbyshire
This enchanting and deceptive collection by Chrissy Derbyshire is guaranteed to whet your appetite for more from this budding wordsmith. A collection of short stories inter-laced with captivating poems, depicting chimeras, femme fatales, mountebanks,
absinthe-addicts, changelings, and those foolhardy enough to stray into
the deadly world of Faerie...
Fiction/poetry ISBN 978-1-906900-01-4 £7.99
THE SIGNATURE OF KISSES
Simon Miles
This posthumous collection from a daring poet captures something of Simon Miles’ wild genius. The Signature of Kisses explores the distant intimacies of lovers, the negative spaces of our lives, and life’s divine comedy, as the poet searches for his Muse
through the layers of his own Hades and Elysium. Simon Miles is an acrobat of form, whose performance goes beyond a mere display of technical virtuosity: a juggler who goes for the jugular. He plays the clownish ringmaster in ‘Close Encounters of the Furry Kind’; there are moments of stunning lucidity and Blakean memorability in lines such as: ‘Every past of pain lends my songs more living flame’; the claustrophobic passion of Ted Hughes in ‘Find Your Fingers’ and ‘Whatever We Say’; touches of Ginsberg in ‘The Clues are All There’; the ambience of Dylan Thomas’ boozy bawdiness in ‘Folk Club’; and in ‘The Earth is Four Theatres’ he accomplishes a daring tightrope walk and conjures an eco-paean for our time. His work dances ‘between the fire and the fall’. Yet he is not simply the sum of his influences – Simon Miles has a unique genius, a singular voice all of his own.
Published with the generous support of Ankerbold International Ltd
Poetry, ISBN 978-1-906900-00-7 £6.99
AN ECOBARDIC MANIFESTO
Fire Springs
What is the raison d’être of the arts in an age of global ecological crisis? In this audacious document, Fire Springs present a new vision for the arts, one that holds together commitment to artistic integrity and craftsmanship with responsiveness to the peculiar challenges of our time. Foremost among those challenges are the strained relationship between human beings and the ecosystem we inhabit and the vital need to
sustain empathy for that which is other than ourselves. Fundamental to the arts’ task in such an age is a willingness to embrace contradiction, not least the deepening polarisation between scientific and economic materialism and metaphysical sources of meaning and hope. This pamphlet is a clarion call to everyone working in the arts today
who wants their efforts to make a difference.
Fire Springs (Anthony Nanson, Kirsty Hartsiotis, David Metcalfe, Richard Selby, Kevan Manwaring) is a co-operative of performers and writers who’ve been working together
since 2000 to stage, among other things, such ecobardic epics as Arthur’s Dream, Robin of the Wildwood, Return to Arcadia, & Pilgrims of Love.
Art Theory/Literary Criticism ISBN 978-1-906900-07-6 £2.50
GREEN FIRE
magical verse for the wheel of the year
Tallyessin Silverwolf
Celebrate the turning of the wheel with this collection of bardic verse. It is based upon Tallyessin's (3rd Bard of Bath) repertoire as a performer and has developed over fifteen years. Each one of these 32 poems he performs from memory in the bardic tradition. He suggests you do the same. 'In learning the words by heart we can speak from the heart and not from a piece of paper – the performance becomes immediately more powerful and personal, audience awareness increases as eye contact can be maintained, and the audience’s respect for the poet also is heightened. I have used these poems to create a magical mood, to sanctify, to raise energy. They are invocations and blessings – ways of honouring the gods, our sacred times and places, and ourselves.'
Poetry, ISBN 0-9546136-3-2 £9.99
THE LONG WOMAN
Kevan Manwaring
An antiquarian's widow discovers her husband's lost journals and sets out on a journey
of remembrance across 1920s England and France, retracing his steps in search of healing and independence. Along alignments of place and memory she meets mystic Dion Fortune, leyline-pioneer Alfred Watkins and a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle obsessed with the Cottingley Fairies. From Glastonbury to Carnac, she visits the ancient sites that obsessed her husband and, tested by both earthly and unearthly forces, she discovers a power within herself. The Long Woman is an exploration of the sacred landscapes of the past and the secret landscapes of the soul.
The Windsmith Elegy volume I
Funded by the Arts Council of England
Fiction, ISBN 0-9546137-5-9 £5.00 (2004 edition)
WINDSMITH
Kevan Manwaring
A man of peace in a time of war, Isambard Kerne must choose between the power of words or swords. The fate of both Earth and its Shadow hangs in the balance. Will he be able to master the Way of the Windsmith in time to save the valley of his ancestors? Or will the terror of war change Kerne into what he fears the most?
'You have captured the strong physicality of the ancient Celtic Afterlands from their myths and legends, without sacrificing any of their ‘otherness’, their spirituality. It is gripping story made even more poignant and potent for being woven out of familiar and haunting strands from ancient Irish and Welsh traditions, and familiar and haunting images from modern wars… It is a chilling concept that we affect the Afterlands by our actions in this world. It is a thought-provoking book…apart from being a thoroughly readable yarn. I love that your skill in poetry comes through in your prose. I love the quotes at the beginnings of the chapters drawing the threads of time together and weaving a rich tapestry of different, yet similar, realities. Moyra Caldecott, author ‘Guardians of the Tall Stones’ and many others
This is the latest collection of poetry from the Winner of the Bardic Chair of Caer Badon, Kevan Manwaring (author of The Bardic Handbook & The Long Woman), featuring poems about various personal places of spirit: Northampton, Bath, Bardsey Island, Isle of Man, Isle of Purbeck, Cardigan Bay, Gower, Malvern Hills & Venice.
Spirit of Place Volume 3
Poetry ISBN: 978-1-906900-03-8 £4.99
THE SUN MINERS
Kevan Manwaring
A magical adventure for all ages
In Darkmoor, a land of endless night, an orphan pit-boy called Tallin Candleson is plunged into a dangerous quest to find the source of the sunblood, the bright liquid slaved for in the lightmines. He makes strange allies on his magical journey; a telepathic shambler, a trickster marsh-sprite and an exiled princess called Rosa. Together they try to escape the clutches of Kowl the Nightbringer in a race to the edge of the world. Beyond, they are rescued by a lost tribe who live on the Starry River. Guided by Uku, a warrior-priest, Tallin and Rosa return to meet their destiny – to liberate both Dunmires and the Bright Ones from the sinister Tenebros, who keep them all in darkness. They must unite the worlds in a final battle, and Tallin must face Kowl in the Void, before the secret of the sunblood can be discovered and the wound of the land healed.
For older children & adults
Fiction, 180 pages, 6" x 9", jacket-hardcover binding, cream interior paper (50# weight), white exterior paper (100# weight), full-colour cover, featuring black & white illustrations by author. ISBN 978-0-9546136-5-4 £14.99 hardback
THE WINGED UNICORN
Marko Gallaidhe
This magical collection brings together Marko Gallaidhe’s articles from The Green Book, Bath’s legendary arts journal published throughout the Seventies: the mysteries of Gawain and the Green Knight, Mary Magdalen, St John the Baptist, the Sidhe, the Holy Grail...all are explored in original ways from this peer of RJ Stewart and Caitlin Matthews. Also included: a fairy story, the long-lost song-cycle ‘The Birth of Merlin’ and a full profile of the extraordinary author.
Fully illustrated by the author, a trained artist and stone-sculptor.
Non-fiction/poetry ISBN 978-1-906900-02-1 £6.99
SPRING FALL
The Story of Sulis and Bladud of Bath
Kevan Manwaring
***The Winning Poem of the Bardic Chair of Caer Badon 1998***
An epic poem cycle relating in colloquy the sacred marriage of Bladud, legendary winged king of Bath (father of King Lear) & Sulis, goddess of the springs.
Illustrated by the author.
Originally published 1998
10th Anniversary Edition
Now featuring the previously unpublished ‘Taking the Waters’ - winner of the Writers News/Bath Chronicle Ghost Story competition 1999.
Poetry/fiction, ISBN 987-1-906900- 04-5 RRP £9.99
WRITING THE LAND
an anthology of natural words
Foreword by Peter Alfred Please
Edited by Kevan Manwaring
Lovers of nature will enjoy this collection of poetry and prose. Within these pages you will find pieces on wildlife, trees, water, earth, light, places, travel, memory and time. They range form the funny to the profound, the down-to-earth to the spiritual. Informative, but never preachy, these words are to be enjoyed. Dip into this anthology for relaxation, companionship and inspiration.
Shortlisted for the Arts Council of England Raymond Williams Publishing Prize 2004.
Poetry, 124pp. ISBN 0-9546137-0-8 £5.00 (all proceeds go to Friends of the Earth)
THE BARDIC HANDBOOK
the complete manual for the twenty first century bard
Kevan Manwaring
This complete manual for the Twenty-First-Century Bard contains all you need to know to start you on the Bardic Path. Here you will find inspiration and instruction, whether you want to dedicate yourself to the Way of Awen, or simply wish to improve your public-speaking skills and be able to express yourself with confidence. Learn how to enchant an audience with gramarye, through poetry, storytelling and songcraft, and how to use the magic of words to bless, honour, heal and celebrate your identity, community and heritage. With an easy-to-follow 12 month self-study programme and week-by-week exercises and mini-lessons about bardic lore, this book will lead you along the Way of Awen. For ease of understanding and to invoke inspiration, the book is divided into five parts corresponding to the elements of the Western Magical Tradition: Spirit, Air, Fire, Water and Earth.
An inspiring handbook of creative wisdom, The Bardic Handbook also includes ‘The Dialogue of the Two Sages’ by Robin Williamson (master harper, storyteller, and author of The Craneskin Bag and co-author of Celtic Bards, Celtic Druids) and features a foreword by Emma Restall Orr, author of Druid Priestess, Ritual and Living Druidry.
Creativity/Spirituality ISBN 0 906 362 67 9 Published by Gothic Image Publications £12.50
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edited by Jay Ramsay
Poet and psychotherapist Jay Ramsay has been drawn to wild places all his writing life, in search of a particular deep listening experience. Here he shares his soundings. ‘Trwyn Meditations’, set in Snowdonia, begins this 23 year odyssey. ‘By the Shores of Loch Awe’ takes us to the fecund wilds of Scotland. ‘The Oak’ celebrates an ancient tree in 
The exotic, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder..
The Fifth Quarter is Romney Marsh as defined by Rev. Richard Harris Barham in The Ingoldsby Legends: ‘The World, according to the best geographers is divided into Europe,Asia, Africa, America and Romney Marsh…’. It is a place apart, almost another world and this collection explores its ancient and modern landscapes, wonders at its past and reflects upon the present. 
What do you do when you are torn apart by your ‘selves’? Mary Palmer tells her story though poems, prose and images. 
This enchanting and deceptive collection by Chrissy Derbyshire is guaranteed to whet your appetite for more from this budding wordsmith. A collection of short stories inter-laced with captivating poems, depicting chimeras, femme fatales, mountebanks, 
This posthumous collection from a daring poet captures something of Simon Miles’ wild genius. The Signature of Kisses explores the distant intimacies of lovers, the negative spaces of our lives, and life’s divine comedy, as the poet searches for his Muse 
What is the raison d’être of the arts in an age of global ecological crisis? In this audacious document, Fire Springs present a new vision for the arts, one that holds together commitment to artistic integrity and craftsmanship with responsiveness to the peculiar challenges of our time. Foremost among those challenges are the strained relationship between human beings and the ecosystem we inhabit and the vital need to 
Celebrate the turning of the wheel with this collection of bardic verse. It is based upon Tallyessin's (3rd Bard of Bath) repertoire as a performer and has developed over fifteen years. Each one of these 32 poems he performs from memory in the bardic tradition. He suggests you do the same. 'In learning the words by heart we can speak from the heart and not from a piece of paper – the performance becomes immediately more powerful and personal, audience awareness increases as eye contact can be maintained, and the audience’s respect for the poet also is heightened. I have used these poems to create a magical mood, to sanctify, to raise energy. They are invocations and blessings – ways of honouring the gods, our sacred times and places, and ourselves.'
An antiquarian's widow discovers her husband's lost journals and sets out on a journey 
A man of peace in a time of war, Isambard Kerne must choose between the power of words or swords. The fate of both Earth and its Shadow hangs in the balance. Will he be able to master the Way of the Windsmith in time to save the valley of his ancestors? Or will the terror of war change Kerne into what he fears the most? 
A magical adventure for all ages 
This magical collection brings together Marko Gallaidhe’s articles from The Green Book, Bath’s legendary arts journal published throughout the Seventies: the mysteries of Gawain and the Green Knight, Mary Magdalen, St John the Baptist, the Sidhe, the Holy Grail...all are explored in original ways from this peer of RJ Stewart and Caitlin Matthews. Also included: a fairy story, the long-lost song-cycle ‘The Birth of Merlin’ and a full profile of the extraordinary author.
***The Winning Poem of the Bardic Chair of Caer Badon 1998*** 
Lovers of nature will enjoy this collection of poetry and prose. Within these pages you will find pieces on wildlife, trees, water, earth, light, places, travel, memory and time. They range form the funny to the profound, the down-to-earth to the spiritual. Informative, but never preachy, these words are to be enjoyed. Dip into this anthology for relaxation, companionship and inspiration. 