It’s with mixed feelings I send off batches of pamphlets for review. They look so good together and it feels empowering to be sending them out into the world, but I also know they’ll probably vanish without trace into some editor’s slush pile. Hard as it is to get reviews anyway, I’m told it’s even harder with pamphlets. So how exciting to have had three pamphlets reviewed so far this year. Ron Scowcroft’s Moon Garden has a review by Liz Bahs in The Frogmore Papers. Carole Coates’ Crazy Days and Pauline Keith’s By the Light of Day are reviewed by Mike Bartholemew-Biggs, while Elizabeth Burns’ A Scarlet Thread and Ron Scowcroft’s Moon Garden are reviewed by Richie McCaffery, both in www.londongrip.co.uk

The same mixed feelings apply with copies sent to The Poetry Book Society. They’ll always get listed, of course, but the chances of getting selected are slim. However the latest bulletin has included Elizabeth Burns’ A Scarlet Thread for special mention.

So all this re-charges my optimism. And it does feel as if the pamphlet form is enjoying good health at the moment. A look at the pbs listings reveals a lot of recent pamphlet presses and those selected as choice or for special mention are often from the ranks of these.

One of the reasons for starting up Wayleave was my own growing preference for the pamphlet over the full collection. It seems to offer opportunities for small focused gatherings of work. Of course there’s still plenty of scope for discrete individual poems, but putting a pamphlet together does invite you to use it as a crucible for cooking something more cohesive.

Which brings me to Wayleave’s two new pamphlets, to be published very soon. In Jane Routh’s The White Silence her usual eloquent and thoughtful style considers Franklin’s ill-fated voyage to find the north-west passage, concentrating on the mystery of what is not known rather than the few facts we do know.

And in Monkey Puzzle Bill Gilson’s distinctly American voice moves between Cumbria and New England as he considers the conflicting emotions of a transition from his native USA to live over here.

Both Bill and Jane will be launching their pamphlets on 18th March at the open mic event at Zefferelli’s in Ambleside, organised by Andy Forster of The Wordsworth Trust. Also reading from their Wayleave pamphlets will be Carole Coates and Elizabeth Burns. More information to follow.

It all started with self-publishing. A couple of years ago I had a group of poems I felt went together in terms of style. With most pamphlet publishers not taking new submissions and pamphlet competitions being a long shot, I decided to self-publish, using my own basic skills and sense of design and the services of the local printer.

The result went round to friends and fellow poets and the response was encouraging. Being a relatively straightforward and enjoyable process, I wanted to do it again. Perhaps I could publish other people the same way, I thought.

My original intention was to publish either small collections by poets who hadn’t previously had such an opportunity and/or small thematically coherent collections that suited the pamphlet format. The poetry market being what it is, I knew I’d have to rely on poets themselves to sell the majority of copies through readings or their own networks, while as a publisher I’d take care of reviews and submissions to various awards etc.

After much thrashing around, the name of the press emerged like something obvious I’d been staring at all along. Wayleave is a contraction of the term ‘way leave’ which refers to permission required to cross land for the purpose of laying water pipes, electricity etc. There’s something there about permission to be out in the world, but all the dictionary definitions are boringly practical, so I needed a more general definition, something which remained faithful to the idea but didn’t actually mention electricity and water pipes. So:

Wayleave: ‘permission granted to enter or cross territory from which one has previously been excluded.’