It took a while to make its way across the Atlantic, but I’ve quite enjoyed this first volume in a new pamphlet (chapbook) series from a new press that sprouted up on British Poetry Substack. Editor Victoria Moul’s taste and sense of what a general reader needs to know are both very good, so just as advertised, this serves as a fun and painless introduction to the sort of verse popular in Britain in the early modern period. I took it with me on a walk yesterday and found two poems in particular that struck me as beautiful and useful to my current frame of mind.
The first was this one by Robert Devereux
which was pure serendipity, because it’s where I opened the pamphlet immediately after setting aside the other book I’d brought with me into the woods, Peipei Qiu’s landmark study from 2005, Bashō and the Dao, where I’d just read her translation of one of the most famous poems from the Chinese recluse tradition, which set up a useful East-West comparison:
The other poem that has burrowed in like a tick is this brief piece on the ephemerality of life:
The pamphlet is well designed and printed, not by some print-on-demand platform but by a printing press in East London. I’m not sure it makes financial sense to pick up an overseas subscription (four volumes for £58) but I like the subscription model a lot and will be rooting for Headless Poet’s success.