Rack Press ever impresses – Poetry Review
The consistently reliable Rack PressTimes Literary Supplement
I have come to hope that a Rack Press pamphlet may be a tiny gift-box of unusually good poems – Alison Brackenbury, PN Review
Rack Press has the courage to be brief and elegant – The Rialto

Saturday 23 June 2012

Dream Endings Wins 2012 Michael Marks Award


Róisín Tierney’s poetry collection Dream Endings has won the 2012 Michael Marks Award for the year’s best poetry pamphlet.  Rack Press was also shortlisted for the 2012 Michael Marks Publisher's Award (won on the night by Yorkshire publishers Smith Doorstop).  In addition to the prize of £5000, Róisín (seen here at the awards ceremony at the British Library with publisher Nicholas Murray) has won a place on the Harvard poetry school this summer in Greece.

The winner was announced at a ceremony at the British Library on 22nd June. It is the first time since the award was launched four years ago that a Welsh publisher or poet has been shortlisted.

When the shortlist for publisher of the year was announced, the judges said: "Rack Press, run by Nicholas Murray  and based in Powys, is notable for its beautifully minimalist, elegant pamphlets. Whilst the appearance of each is identical - a slim volume with simple typography on high-quality cream laid paper - Rack's published poets have a real diversity of style. Murray states that he believes 'in the poetry pamphlet as the natural vehicle for the single poem or sequence' and the judges felt that this was particularly effective in this year's Rack Press pamphlets.”

Roίsίn Tierney was born in Dublin in 1963 and studied psychology and philosophy at University College Dublin. She moved to London in 1985, where she has held jobs ranging from make-up artist to museum administrator. She has been widely published in magazines and group anthologies, and won many prizes, but Dream Endings represents her first solo published collection.

As the judges put it: "Dream Endings assembles a cast of misfits and eccentrics to explore illness, madness, incest and death, but Tierney's vision is at all times tender and non-judgemental. Her language is remarkable both for the lucidity of its surface and for the depths that it allows us to apprehend."

Dream Endings has very nearly sold out but a reprint has been arranged and it can be ordered now online here.

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