home PO Box 21314, Little Lonsdale St, VIC 8011 (new address, April 09)
Please click here for a flyer, with booklist, introduction to the Press, and terms for booksellers. Booksellers please click here for an order form. For print-friendly samples of poetry from each book, click here .
John Leonard Press is a leading publisher of new Australian poetry in single-author volumes. The aim is to present truly interesting work, well-edited, and attractively produced to sell. Our mission is quality. The publisher is LK Holt. John Leonard is the founder and present commissioning editor. He edited the well-known anthologies, Seven Centuries of Poetry in English (5th ed. OUP), Australian Verse (OUP), Contemporary Australian Poetry (Houghton Mifflin), and New Music (Five Islands Press). John Leonard Press is the sole distributor of its books to bookshops. Libraries can order directly from us or through regular library suppliers (see wholesale orders). Our books are in Bowker's Global Books in Print and the other regular catalogues. The Press began in 2006 with the desire to publish the first books of five younger poets, whose work impresses with its originality and remarkable technical maturity. All five of these collections have since made national prize lists: NSW Premier's Awards: winner, LK Holt (2009 Kenneth Slessor Prize) Our list now also includes poets who are highly regarded for earlier collections: Jordie Albiston, Julian Croft, John Jenkins, Aileen Kelly, Jan Owen, Marcella Polain, Peter Steele and Vincent Buckley. All of these poets have won national prizes for previous books.
Several John Leonards inhabit the literary globe. Note that ours, who is not himself a poet, has no other website. LK Holt, publisher of JLP, who is a poet, is also independently the editor of the magazine Blast Poetry and Critical Writing.
The schedule for future books at JLP is currently full; submissions are unable to be accepted for now.
a request Some good bookshops stock our books; they are listed under retail outlets. But seeking buyers is only part of our purpose. We are seeking readers for this poetry; and the main resource for finding poetry books is probably in libraries, where our books are thus far very scarce. (A set is in ANL, Vic and NSW State Libraries, and five university libraries; elsewhere, about 50 scattered copies from 12 titles.) Realistically, we will continue to publish only if we become available in more libraries. A request to our readers: Since we don't have the resources ourselves to approach libraries effectively, anyone interested please supply our flyer, with its list, to your favourite librarian - and perhaps to colleagues and friends to show to theirs. We have chosen all our titles to be genuinely recommendable to poetry lovers.
select list of longer reviews American Book Review:
Australian Book Review:
Australian Poetry Review: Petra White, The Incoming Tide: http://www.australianpoetryreview.com.au/0709white.htm September 2007.Blast: Poetry and Other Critical Writing: Paul Magee, Cube Root of Book, reviewer Elizabeth Campbell, No.7, 2007, p.45.Eureka Street Peter Steele, White Knight with Bee-Box: New & Selected Poems, reviewer Philip Harvey, November 2008.Poetry Ireland Aileen Kelly, The Passion Paintings: Poems 1983-2006, reviewer Catherine Phil MacCarthy, Issue 91, October 2007, p.109.Quadrant Jan Owen, Poems 1980-2008, reviewer Penelope Nelson, September 2008, p.116.Text: The Journal of Writing and Writing Courses Review of the first 8 JLP books and of the Press, reviewer Jen Webb, http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct08/webb.htm October 2008. For excerpts from the above, and from shorter reviews in Adelaide Review, The Age, The Australian, The Canberra Times, Cordite, Famous Reporter, Island, Radio National, Readings Monthly and Wet Ink, please see the entries under individual poets in the catalogue.
comments on the press From Maria Takolander, Australian Book Review, May 2008: ‘John Leonard Press produces beautiful books of poetry [with] precise standards . . . Leonard’s aesthetic is more radical than most.’ From Geoff Page, The Canberra Times, July 14 2007:
From Jen Webb, Review essay: Poetry in Australia and the John Leonard Press, http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct08/webb.htm October 2008:
Alan Wearne, Australian Literary Review, 4(1), February 2009, p.23:
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