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Helena Nelson

POEMS LISTEN BIBLIOGRAPHY

Helena Nelson set up HappenStance Press in 2005 as an independent small press, specialising in publishing poetry in pamphlet form; in 2010 it won the Michael Marks Award for Poetry Pamphlets. The press publishes largely first-time collections by poets from the UK. In her editorial blog Helena Nelson often takes a refreshing look at the processes of poetry writing, publishing and reviewing, and she has documented the history of her small press in a series of booklets: The HappenStance Story. An associated activity is sphinxreview.co.uk, a site dedicated to promoting and reviewing poetry pamphlet publishing. She also reviews for a wide range of poetry magazines, includingThe Dark Horse and Poetry Review.

Helena Nelson’s pamphlets and book-length collections include Starlight on Water (Rialto Press, 2003), a joint winner of the Jerwood Aldeburgh Prize. She writes both serious and light verse: Unsuitable Poems (2005), The Unread Squirrel (2009) and Down With Poetry! (2016) represent her humorous and satirical side. In 2016, she published a HappenStance best seller: How (Not) to Get Your Poetry Published, a book that collects the insights and useful ideas she has gathered over the last twelve years in poetry publishing.

Read the poems

  • Poetry Forum
  • Eight Tips for New Poets
  • What Not to Write on the Back Jacket of Your Debut Collection
  • Blight
  • With My Mother, Missing the Train
  • Don’t
  • Flowers
  • Garden of Love

Listen

Selected Bibliography

Mr and Mrs Philpott on Holiday at Auchterawe, and other poems (Kingskettle: Kettillonia, 2001)

Starlight on Water (Rialto Press, 2003)

Unsuitable Poems (Glenrothes: Happenstance, 2005)

The Unread Squirrel: more unsuitable poems (Glenrothes: HappenStance, 2009)

Plot and Counter-Plot (Nottingham: Shoestring, 2010)

Down With Poetry!, HappenStance (2016)

Further Information

HappenStance Press

From the Library Catalogue

Publications about Helena Nelson
Publications by Helena Nelson

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