My publication plans for 2023.

 

Photo © David A Nissen 2022.

2022 was largely a year of new writing. 2023 will be largely devoted to new publishing. (And, hopefully, losing some of the weight I've put on in being glued to my desk for the best part of a year.)

It turns out I'll be releasing three books in 2023! There's not only Breaking Into Pentridge, the memoir of my time running prison poetry workshops. There are two other associated volumes. 

Letters to a Dead Man is a poetry chapbook, a spin-off from the memoir. It starts at the end and finishes at the beginning, and a lot is left unexplained. In spite of all this, when I've tried the manuscript on people who don't know the back story, I'm pleased they have understood it well. I want it to be able to stand alone, and clearly it can. (However, it would be ideal to read the memoir first.)

Also I'm proposing to re-issue Blood from Stone, the 1982 anthology of poetry which arose from the prison workshops. It was published under my Abalone Press imprint, the first book in a 10-year program. The later Abalone Press publications included a runner up in the (national) Anne Elder Award and a book short-listed for the (state) Victorian Premier's Prize. (You bet I'm skiting! Not bad for such a very small press.)

Now that the remaining old Pentridge buildings are being repurposed by the National Trust as a historically-themed tourist precinct – and at a time when the Melbourne poetry scene of the eighties is being recorded for posterity by those who lived it – there is renewed interest in Blood from Stone, as both a literary and historic document.

I thought of reviving Abalone Press, but decided not. That had a different agenda, and was brought to a good completion. Nevertheless, for a number of reasons, I've decided I will self-publish these particular books. I love ebooks; many people still prefer paperbacks. These publications will be in both.

Publishing is very different nowadays, so I'll be doing some new learning and also looking for relevant experts such as a good cover designer.

I'll keep you posted!

Breaking Into Pentridge – my memoir about poetry workshops in prison

(workshops conducted on behalf of what was then the Melbourne Branch of the Poets Union of Australia).

Photo © David A Nissen 2022

It's taken me 40 years to feel able to write about a brief but life-changing experience: running poetry workshops in Pentridge Prison, Melbourne, which no longer exists as a prison – having closed in 1997 and gradually being repurposed – but which, during its long life, was always notorious.

Once I finally began to write this story, it poured out!

It took me three months to get down the first draft, and it’s been three more of editing, tweaking, and seeking opinions from a small, trusted group of other writers, including some who were very much involved in those workshops too.

It involved mentally re-living an experience which, at the time, was both traumatic and transformative. This process has been painful but also cathartic. And sometimes the memories were warming. Those were times not only of grimness and tragedy, but also of much fun and affection.

I’m now doing what is hopefully a final (structural) edit before embarking on the journey to publication.

The above photo, which I’m using on the cover page of my working draft, was kindly taken for me by my son David, as I no longer live in Melbourne.