Rupert Loydell

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Rupert M. Loydell

(Editor, Stride Books)

Rupert M. Loydell was the Managing Editor of Stride Publications, and is currently the Editor of Stride magazine, as well as Reviews Editor of Orbis, Associate Editor of Avocado magazine and a regular contributor of articles and reviews to Tangents magazine. During 2003-2004, he was a Royal Literary Fund Project Fellow, working in Exeter schools, following a RLF Fellowship at Bath University. In 2004-2005, he was a RLF Fellow at Warwick University and Visiting Poet at Sherborne School. He is currently a Lecturer in Creative Writing at University College Falmouth. His publications include A Conference of Voices, The Museum of Light and Endlessly Divisible, and four collaborative works. He has worked in hundreds of schools and colleges, and run workshops for the Arvon Foundation.

Q: How has publishing changed with the advent of short-run printing and print-on-demand possibilities? Does this negate any need to sell a specific number of a title? Is this a freedom from traditional print expectations/values?

A: Yes, because it is now more financially viable to sell less than 50 copies than ever. It used to be more in the region of 300-500 copies, now you can self-typeset a book on your computer, PDF it and email it to a print-on-demand company and have a good-looking paperback in print with very little layout. I think that's one of the major troubles in the mainstream book trade - the overheads. You simply don't need hundreds of staff, big offices and suchlike now. The small presses who have an editor and freelance typesetters, designers and printers are actually in a much stronger position than even operations such as Bloodaxe who have fulltime staff to pay.

Q: Why does poetry continue to create schools and movements who feud?

A: Because we are egotistical and bad-tempered. On a more serious note, we obviously find affinities with others who write in a similar way, or have similar concerns. My concern would be with those who want only themselves and their cronies to be seen as “true poetry”. Schools and movements are terms we have invented as a useful shorthand in literary and critical history; if we can group certain poets together we can compare and contrast them with others. Postmodernism has made clear that this is a construct, but perhaps a useful one. We recognise that history is now plural (his/her stories). I'm happy to read all sorts of poetry, I'm glad that an even greater number of poets are out there - just don't try and dictate to me that someone whose work I like is too academic or writing nonsense, nor that I should enjoy confessional shaggy-dog stories when I don't. It's the proscriptive element that we've seen recently in the New Statesman that I don't like: stop being a school ma'am and get on with publishing books, accepting that we don't all think Bloodaxe is God's gift to poetry publishing. I mean I think there’s some great titles on the Bloodaxe list, but there’s also stuff I wouldn't let into the house. But then I think that about most poetry presses, and I'm sure that other editors and publishers think the same about Stride. I couldn't get onto a web forum recently to debate the issue, when someone was being pejorative about Luke Kennard's The Solex Brothers the other day. Each to their own, but it wasn't published because I thought it would make Luke or I a fortune, I published it because I think it's a great comic book of prose poems. It makes me laugh aloud; I wanted to share the work.

Q: With POD possibilities, including various organisations that will take on anything without a set-up fee and simply send royalties to the author, do poetry publishers need arts council subsidies any more?

A: I'd be hypocritical if I said 'no', as I'm sure I will be reapplying soon, but the truthful answer is probably 'no'. The Arts Council delight in finding ways to say that they don't endorse this or that as good art/product, and tend to concentrate on publicity, production, marketing or design; anything except agreeing that certain art or writing is good and deserves to be read or seen. I think there is an argument - that's been made many times over the years - for funding the artists and writers themselves rather than the mediators of the result. The bottom line is if a publisher can find a way to live, and that involves grants that's fine. If you don't apply for them somebody else will.

But it's well known that small press publishers don't like marketing and sales. I confess I'm just the same. I've recently got a real buzz out of producing some photocopied pamphlets, a buzz that I haven't had for a long time, however beautiful some of the Stride paperbacks over the last few years have been [thanks Neil!]. I think it's going to be very interesting watching Shearsman and Salt in the next few years, especially with the recent award of serious money to the latter, as they seem to be the two poetry publishers who are really on top of the potential of the web's and POD technology. I really struggled this summer with getting The Redgrove Library into print using POD. I didn't enjoy the process at all.

Q: If poetry presses are concerned with cultivating a wider readership, could this not be done more effectively via the Internet (where there are thousands of potential readers) rather than worrying about sales of printed poetry?

A: Yup. And I think a lot of people understand that there's a difference between readership and book sales. I remember Sheila Murphy saying to me a long time ago that writers had to start taking online publication seriously, and she was right. I submit my work to a lot of online journals and know they get more readers (and I receive more comment and feedback) than when they are in small press magazines. But I think as writers we all still want our book to read from and sell at readings. It may be a long time before we accept that that may not happen. I suspect that many writers have now accepted this truth, but that it will take a while for publishers to reposition themselves. My own feeling is that there are a lot of exciting new online magazines springing up, and that paper magazines are in decline. I think that publishing is being repositioned, and that in the next few years new presses will start up with different ideas, plans and concepts. We've just been through a phase of re-assessing the 20th Century, with lots of big retrospective selecteds and collecteds, often by neglected authors; now it's time to move on.