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Mercedes Roffé  The Radiance of Things

1.8 Mb, 84pp, published in 2022.
Translated by Judith Filc and Lucina Schell; design by Alfi Baldo.

An extraordinary mixture of artwork, text and (e)book design, this is Argentinian poet Mecedes Roffé's latest work in translation.

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Geoffrey Squires: Abstract Lyrics

Geoffrey Squires  Abstract Lyrics

115kb, 6x6ins, 77pp, published in 2011.


Another instalment in Geoffrey Squires' explorations of space, silence and abstraction.

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Geoffrey Squires: Abstract Lyrics

Andrew Nightingale  Hermegasmica

160kb, 6.875x6ins, 30pp, published in 2011.


A non-linear murder mystery.....

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Andrew Nightingale Hermegasmica

Gautam Verma  The Lines

86kb, 6x6ins, 31pp, published in 2011.


Gautam Verma's poetic response to an exhibition by Swiss artist Silvia Baechli, with a cover image provided by the artist.

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Gautam Verma: The Lines

Gautam Verma  Days Dreams

123kb, 8.5x5.5ins, 36pp, published in 2011.


A long poem embedded in a travel diary.

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Gautam Verma: Days Dreams

Virgilio Piñera  La isla en peso / The Whole Island

Translated by Mark Weiss.
200kb, 7x7ins, 40pp, published in 2010.


Best known for his plays and fiction, Virgilio Piñera (1912–1979) has become in the past two decades a totemic figure for younger Cuban poets, despite the relative paucity of his poetic production. As he said himself, "I have always considered myself a casual poet."
     Piñera was written out of history and refused the right to publish or leave the island, like so many others in the dark decade of the 1970s, and he owes his current status perhaps as much to that repression and his legendary if sometimes exaggerated resistance to the powerful, and to his open homosexuality, as to his irreverent humour and his embrace of everyday event and the language and culture of the streets.

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Virgilio Piñera: La isla en peso / The Whole Island

Lady Fanshawe  Memoirs

400kb, 8.5x5.5ins, 178pp, published in 2008.


This volume is made available as a supporting document for our anthology Spanish Poetry of the Golden Age, in which many of the translations were by Sir Richard Fanshawe. Fanshawe's wife wrote this charming memoir after his death, as an instructive volume for their son. The book sheds light on how it was to be a senior diplomat (and the wife of one) in the mid-17th century, and Sir Richard was a very senior diplomat indeed, as Ambassador first to Lisbon (where he negotiated the marriage of Charles II and Catherine of Braganza), and finally to Madrid.

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Lady Fanshawe: Memoirs

Ken Edwards  Chaconne

188kb, 6x6ins, 56pp, published in 2007.


A long sequence of 5-line poems that are variations on musical themes, taking off from the form of Bach's Chaconne, while splicing elements of Coltrane and medieval music.

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Ken Edwards: Chaconne

Geoffrey Squires  So

224kb, 4.5x6ins, 63pp, published in 2007.


Another spare text by Geoffrey Squires, pendant in some ways to Lines (see below), in which a very few words, their position and a lot of white space allow contemplative reverberations to occur.

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Geoffrey Squires: So

Rodney Nelson  Swede Poems

103kb, 6x5ins, 38pp, published in 2007.


The Swede Poems are selections from a much longer work, Stranger Kin, found material and composed lyrics interweaving over a Scandinavian background.

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Rodney Nelson: Swede Poems

Carlos T. Blackburn  Portraits

290kb, 6x6ins, 30pp, published in 2006.

Carlos T. Blackburn's penetrating Portraits sequence is based on his work in a care home.

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Carlos T. Blackburn: Portraits

Geoffrey Squires  Lines

268kb, 5x6ins, 92pp, published in 2006.


Geoffrey Squires' latest poem is a very spare text, consisting often of no more than one line per page. A poem that strains after the unsayable, that seeks meaning in the corners of language and in the echoes and repetitions of phrases, the text builds up slowly and insistently, challenging the reader's receptivity. To be read in single-page mode.

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Geoffrey Squires: Lines

Gautam Verma  Tombs

156kb, 5x5ins, 44pp, published in 2006.

Gautam Verma's second e-book with Shearsman is a long, spare, meditative work that revolves around death and its aftermath.

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Gautam Verma: Tombs

Gautam Verma  In Ladakh — A Poem

364kb, A5 format, 18pp, published in 2005.


Gautam Verma, originally from India, now lives in Piacenza, Italy following the completion of his PhD in English at the University of Denver. His work has also appeared in Drunken Boat, Slant Review, Segue, Diagram, Folio, Free-Verse, and Art Times among others.

In Ladakh is a narrative poem of a journey in the Himalayas. Cover photo of crows at Lamayuru by the author.

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Gautam Verma: In Ladakh — A Poem

Stephen Vincent  Triggers

80kb, A5 format, 40pp, published in 2005.


Stephen Vincent lives in San Francisco. His most recent books include Walking (Junction Press), A Walk Toward Spicer (Cherry On the Top Press), and Sleeping With Sappho (faux ebooks). 

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Stephen Vincent: Triggers

Anne-Marie Albiach  Two Poems: Flammigère and The line . . . the loss

Translated by Peter Riley
112kb, A5 format, 27pp, published in print form 2004, and online in 2005.


Anne-Marie Albiach (1937-2012) was one of France's leading avant-garde poets. Although much of her work has been translated and published in the USA, little has been available in Britain. This chapbook unites two texts from very early and very late in her career: Flammigère was her first book, a long poem published in 1967 as a limited edition by Siècle à Mains in London, where she was then living; 'La ligne … la perte' appeared in 1999 in a festschrift volume dedicated to fellow poet Claude Royet-Journoud and was later collected in the volume Figurations de l'image (Flammarion, Paris, 2004). Flammigère was never collected in any of Ms. Albiach's French volumes and she always declined permission for its republication, although her posthumous Collected rectified that. She did however permit an Italian translation and, in 2004, this English translation and Shearsman Books remains grateful for her permission to bring these two poems together. Originally issued as a print chapbook, this is now only available in PDF form.

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Anne-Marie Albiach: Two Poems: Flammigère and The line . . . the loss

Robert Sheppard  The Anti-Orpheus: a notebook

100kb, A5 format, 18pp, published in print form 2004, and online in 2005.


Robert Sheppard is well-known as a critic and a poet of a decidedly experimental bent – as exemplified by his enormous long poem Twentieth-Century Blues, many parts of which have been made available over the past decade or so. The Anti-Orpheus is a later composition which fuses his poetic and his academic concerns with poetics into one text, the whole full of humour, and of insight. Originally issued as a print chapbook, this is now only available in PDF form.

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Robert Sheppard: The Anti-Orpheus: a notebook

Mark Weiss  Different Birds

248kb, 7x7ins, 44pp, published 2004

Different Birds is a long poem that records the American author's encounter with Australia in 2003. Different birds, indeed…


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Mark Weiss: Different Birds

M T C Cronin  Talking to Neruda's Questions

(172kb, 7x6ins, 78pp, published 2004)

First published in 2001 by Vagabond Press in Australia, Talking to Neruda's Questions is M.T.C. Cronin's response to Pablo Neruda's final book, The Book of Questions (El Libro de las preguntas). Also available for download here is a separate PDF (70kb) containing the author's introductory essay to this project.


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M T C Cronin: Talking to Neruda's Questions

David Giannini  Others' Lines (Second Series)

(68kb, 8x5ins, 36pp, published 2003)

A collection of poems that the author terms 'collage-haiku'. Collage, in that each three-line poem consists entirely of lines by other poets. (A full index of the sources is also provided, and you'll find the juxtapositions extraordinary.)

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David Giannini: Others' Lines (Second Series)

Michael Ayres  Recent Poems

(268kb, A5, 80pp, published 2003)

Originally made available in connection with a special feature in the now-deleted Shearsman Gallery, An Introduction to the Work of Michael Ayres, this e-book is 80 pages long and contains poems written after the completion of the author's second collection, a.m. (Salt Publishing, 2003).

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Michael Ayres: Recent Poems

Michael Ayres  What Ariel Did Next. Poems from 'Dash'.

(296kb, A5, 45pp, published 2003)

Originally made available in connection with a special feature in the now-deleted Shearsman Gallery, An Introduction to the Work of Michael Ayres, this PDF e-book consists of poems from an abandoned book project from the mid-1990s, between the author's first two major collections. This e-book includes 17 poems and a 4-page afterword in which the author discusses the project and the nature of his work at the time.

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Michael Ayres: What Ariel Did Next. Poems from 'Dash'.

John Muckle  Firewriting

(136kb, A5, 22pp, published 2003)

Contains the entire text of the long poem originally featured in the now-deleted Shearsman Gallery. Firewriting imagines that the German-Jewish critic Walter Benjamin escaped death by his own hand on the French-Spanish border in 1940 – his revolver misfired – and has survived as a kind of wanderer and witness. After the war he returned to Paris, but later moved to London where, in the now of the poem at the age of 120, he is recalling some of his ideas – and confessing – to a nurse, whom he imagines might also be a student of his work. Click on the image on the left to download the PDF now. Please note that the version of Firewriting presented here is an earlier draft of the text which subsequently appeared in the author's 2005 Shearsman collection Firewriting & other poems.

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John Muckle: Firewriting

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