CBe: next

Details of the four new CBe titles for February and March 2014 – May-Lan Tan, Things to Make and Break; Will Eaves, The Absent Therapist; Agota Kristof’s memoir The Illiterate (trans. Nina Bogin) and a re-issue of her novel The Notebook (trans. Alan Sheridan) – are now on the website, where the books can be pre-ordered. Click the links and see.

At present, there are no new titles planned for after March. The website will stay live, orders will be fulfilled and emails replied to, titles in print will continue to be sold – bless Inpress, bless Central Books – and please do carry on buying these books. But as for more of them, it’s time for a break.

After six years – November 2007 to now – there are 33 titles in print (plus one now with Faber and one with Bloomsbury). The extras have included bookish events in many places (from the now-gone Colony Room in Soho to Shakespeare & Co in Paris), and the pop-up shop last July, and the setting up in 2011 of the Free Verse Poetry Book Fair (which looks set to be an annual event). But here I am now in a classic bind that will be familiar to many others – more work than I handle solo with due competence, no money to pay anyone else (let alone myself).

Possibly, CBe will get back on track, but with some reconfiguring. Entering Year 7 of this thing, I wonder if I’m simply having a seven-year itch. The break in itself is not a bad thing: small presses come and go, it’s a thing that they do.

Meanwhile, huge thanks to the readers and buyers of the books; and for the record, here’s the list, year by year. That I’m as proud to have published Erik Houston’s novel (2007) or Andrew Elliott’s poetry (2013) as any of the books that have attracted more attention and sales goes, I hope, without saying.

2007
Stefan Grabinski, In Sarah’s House, trans. Wiesiek Powaga
Erik Houston, The White Room (out of print)
Jack Robinson, Days and Nights in W12 (1st edition; out of print)
Jennie Walker, 24 for 3 (McKitterick Prize; now published by Bloomsbury)

2008
Gert Hofmann, Lichtenberg & The Little Flower Girl (trans. Michael Hofmann)
Greg Loftin, Saxon: the screenplay
Francis Ponge, Unfinished Ode to Mud, trans. Beverley Bie Brahic (shortlisted for Popescu Prize for European Poetry in Translation)
Elise Valmorbida, The TV President

2009
Andrzej Bursa, Killing Auntie and other work, trans. Wiesiek Powaga
J. O. Morgan, Natural Mechanical (Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, shortlisted for Forward First Collection Prize, PBS Recommendation)
Christopher Reid, The Song of Lunch (filmed by the BBC with Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman; now published by Faber)
Jack Robinson, Recessional (out of print)
Nicky Singer, Knight Crew (staged as a youth opera at Glyndebourne)

2010
Fergus Allen, Before Troy
Gabriel Josipovici, Only Joking
Tony Lurcock, Not So Barren or Uncultivated: British Travellers in Finland 1760–1830
David Markson, This Is Not a Novel
Marjorie Ann Watts, Are they funny, are they dead?

2011
Jonathan Barrow, The Queue
Nancy Gaffield, Tokaido Road (Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, shortlisted for Forward First Collection Prize, PBS Recommendation)
J. O. Morgan, Long Cuts (shortlisted for Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Poetry Award)
D. Nurkse, Voices over Water (shortlisted for Forward Prize)
Jack Robinson, Days and Nights in W12 (new edition)

2012
Apollinaire, The Little Auto, trans. Beverley Bie Brahic (shortlisted for NCBA Award)
Beverley Bie Brahic, White Sheets (shortlisted for Forward Prize)
Joaquin Giannuzzi, A Complicated Mammal, trans. Richard Gwyn
Miha Mazzini, The German Lottery, trans. Urska Zupanec (IMPAC Dublin longlist, 2014)
Dai Vaughan, Sister of the Artist

2013
The Palm Beach Effect: Reflections on Michael Hofmann, ed. André Naffis-Sahely and Julian Stannard
Fergus Allen, New & Selected Poems
Alba Arikha, Soon
Andrew Elliott, Mortality Rate
Tony Lurcock, No Particular Hurry: British Travellers in Finland 1830–1917
Todd McEwen, The Five Simple Machines
J. O. Morgan, At Maldon
D. Nurkse, A Night in Brooklyn
Dan O’Brien, War Reporter (Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, shortlisted for Forward First Collection Prize)

2014
Will Eaves, The Absent Therapist
Agota Kristof, The Illiterate, trans. Nina Bogin
Agota Kristof, The Notebook, trans. Alan Sheridan
May-Lan Tan, Things to Make and Break