The Happy Dragons' Press is a non-profit private press in North Essex, UK, [1] which publishes limited edition volumes of poetry using letterpress printing methods. There are currently two series produced by the press, the Dragon Poems in Translation series (edited by Shirley Toulson) and the New Garland series (edited by Rosemary Grant). [1] The books are hand printed in-house by founder Julius Stafford-Baker.
Founded in 1969 but originally producing only ephemera and the occasional book, [2] the press was asked to adopt the Keepsake Poems project after the death of long-term collaborator Roy Lewis (founder of the Keepsake Press) [3] [4] and has since published 21 titles.
The press is notable for its focus on Poetry in Translation. Languages published to date include Cornish, German, Hebrew, Irish, Latin, Manx, Polish, Russian, Scots Gaelic, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish. A number of poems in local dialects such as Perthshire, Northumbrian, Lincolnshire and Shetland have also been published by the Happy Dragons' Press.
The press is also notable for popularising a type of letterpress packing, used behind paper to improve impression quality, which they call Swiss Style Packing. The packing consists of a synthetic foam rubber blanket and a hard plastic top layer. [11]
Dame Carol Ann Duffy is a British poet and playwright. She is a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's Poet Laureate in May 2009, resigning in 2019. She was the first woman, the first Scottish-born poet, and the first LGBT poet to hold the position.
Lenore Kandel was an American poet, affiliated with the Beat Generation and Hippie counterculture.
Vernon Scannell was a British poet and author. He was at one time a professional boxer, and wrote novels about the sport. His published poem count stands at 53.
Bernard Hugh Gutteridge (1916–1985) was an English poet, novelist, and playwright. He is primarily known for his war poems, considered "verse-journalism of a very high order" by Vernon Scannell.
Jon Silkin was a British poet.
Peter Neville Frederick Porter OAM was a British-based Australian poet.
— Opening lines from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, first published this year
Priscilla Muriel "Cilla" McQueen is a poet and three-time winner of the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Kay Ryan is an American poet and educator. She has published seven volumes of poetry and an anthology of selected and new poems. From 2008 to 2010 she was the sixteenth United States Poet Laureate. In 2011 she was named a MacArthur Fellow and she won the Pulitzer Prize.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Bernard Kops is a British dramatist, memoirist, poet and novelist.
Wes Magee is a poet and children's author who was born in Greenock, Scotland in July, 1939. One of his most well known works is the poem "Windows". He has published 6 collections of poetry for adults, and more than 90 books for children including poetry, fiction, plays, picture books, and anthologies. He now lives in the hamlet of Thorgill, on the North Yorkshire Moors.
The Keepsake Press was a private press founded by English writer Roy Lewis. The press published more than 100 books and chapbooks using letterpress techniques. It ceased to operate in 1996 when Lewis died. Its archive is now housed at Reading University.
Gerda Kamilla Mayer is an English poet born to a Jewish family in Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia. She escaped to England from Prague in 1939, aged eleven, on a Kindertransport flight organised by Trevor Chadwick. Having composed her first poem, in German, at the age of four, she continued her education in Dorset and Surrey and began writing poetry in English. She has published several volumes of verse and her poems have appeared in many anthologies. She has been described by Carol Ann Duffy as a fine poet "who should be better known."
Greg Kuzma, is an American poet, essayist, poetry reviewer, and editor, who has written and published more than 30 books. Mostly in the 1970s, more than 300 of his poems were published in the nation's most prestigious journals. At that time, he founded the Best Cellar Press, under which he produced handset letterpress chapbooks giving other poets who have become some of America's best known poets an early audience, including U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, Albert Goldbarth, Wendell Berry, Alfred Starr Hamilton and Richard Shelton. The Best Cellar Press was the inspiration for the current Backwaters Press in Omaha. In the 1970s, Kuzma also founded the pioneering and influential literary magazine, Pebble. As an author, he has been largely collected by libraries worldwide.