 |
SCOTUS PRESS
P.O. Box
9498
Dublin 6
phone/fax: +353 (0)1 4126663
info @
scotuspress.com
www.scotuspress.com
|
|
|
| |
Current Publications
|
|
Black PR and other acts by Toma Markov
Her Excellency, Bisserka Benisheva, Ambassador of Bulgaria to Ireland, launched Toma Markov’s collection of poems, ‘Black PR and other acts’, in the Irish Writers’ Centre on 24th May, 2007.
The collection is translated into English by Theodora Nikolaeva.
Toma Markov is one of Bulgaria’s leading poets. He won the Bulgarian National Prize for Poetry in 2000 with his collection, ‘Geroin’.
Born in 1972 in the Southeast of Bulgaria, Markov has had many jobs.
He has been a sugar seller, a night watchman, a stage worker and a backstage go-for, a freelance writer and magazine journalist.
His collections of poetry include:
The Mad Hens – 1993
Letters To An Eventual Sophie From An Eventual Beach – 1997
GEROIN – 2000, ( winner of Bulgarian National Prize for Poetry)
TOMATERIALIST – 2001
Life Without Poetry – 2004
To read more about Toma Markov, click here.
Black PR and other acts
ISBN 0-9547194-9-2, price €9.95
|
|
SERAGLIO 55 by Georgy Pryakhin
'Seraglio 55' is a
sequence of sketches based on the author's experiences
traveling around the world and through life. Observing
and reflecting, he filters his experiences through
dreams to tease out personal significance. Here is
variety, from stories about growing up in a village
which was the remnant of a Stalinist penal colony, to
stories of meeting international figures with Gorbachev.
Georgy Pryakhin was born in 1947 in a village in
the steppes of Southern Russia, a penal colony to which
his father and mother had been separately deported by
the Stalin regime. Orphaned as a child he was brought up
in one of the infamous Stalinist orphanages. After
graduating from Moscow University he worked as a
newspaper, then a television journalist.
Pryakhin's first novel, 'A Boarding School', an
exposé of the Stalinist orphanages, was published in the
70's by the legendary radical journal, 'Novyi Mir'. The
Cold War being in full swing, the Voice of America radio
station broadcast the novel across the USSR as
anti-Soviet propaganda. Nevertheless, Pryakhin rose
through the ranks of the Communist Party and he was sent
to Armenia when the catastrophic earthquake struck in
1988. There he met and engaged with the President of the
USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, who invited him to join his
Inner Circle of advisors.
After the fall of
Gorbachev, Pryakhin concentrated on the publishing
house, Voskresenye, which he heads. But in 2000 he
helped to found the centre-left political party, Russia
Revival, in an effort to bring the social-democrat
option into Russian politics.
His books have
been translated and published across Europe and Asia,
but this is the first to be published in English.
To read more about Georgy Pryakin, click here.
Seraglio 55
ISBN 0-9547194-6-8, price €9.95
|
|
In the wake of the Bagger by Jack
Harte
This novel is published on behalf of Sligo
Co Council who commissioned it, the first time a novel
has been commissioned under the Per Cent for Art Scheme.
This first novel by the master storyteller has
two circular narratives, one set in the Nineteen
Fifties, the other in the present day. At once a social
document and a meditation on change, it is the
enthralling story of the Dowd family who are uprooted
from their home in Killeenduff, Co Sligo, to re-settle
as economic migrants in the Midlands, where the
industrial development of the bogs is providing jobs and
opportunities. The tension between the old traditional
way of life and the first stirring of industrialization
in rural Ireland is captured graphically. The story of
the protagonist and his family is told with great
warmth, but without sentimentality.
From the reviews of In the Wake of the Bagger
This is one of the great books about Ireland ….
full of astounding scenes …. a truly fabulous book.
Don't miss it.
This first novel from the accomplished short story
writer Jack Harte is truly a many-splendoured thing.
A gem of a book that demands to be read and
flagged for its imaginative plotting, authentic
characterization, and colloquially colourful dialogue.
The jewel in the crown of this book is Jack Harte's craftsmanship.
This is a beautifully written book which deserves to be read again and again.
This is one of those beautiful books that you pick you and simply cannot put down until you have finished the very last word. Jack Harte hails from Sligo and this county forms the basis of this seriously interesting novel. We meet the Dowd family who are uprooted from their Sligo home to find work on the Bogs in the Midlands and the effect this has on the family. The story is well told with a wonderful sense of pathos and the text is measured and balanced. A true delight.
In the Wake of the Bagger
ISBN 0-9547194-5-X, price €9.95
|
|
The Big Pampering by Vergil
Nemchev
A collection of stories from a young
award-winning Bulgarian writer.
Vergil Nemchev
was born on August the 22nd, 1970 in the town of Razlog
in the southwest of Bulgaria. He studied English
Philology at Sofia University. His stories have been
published in several Sofia and Plovdiv literary
periodicals. His translations from English include works
by T.S.Eliot, Jack Harte, Woody Allen, Charles Bukowski,
Celia de Freine.
A first selection of short stories,
“The Big Pampering,” was published by Janet 45
Publishing House. It was officially presented at the
“6+” performance at the National Palace of Culture made
together with five other poets. He is the winner of 2003
"Rashko Sugarev" literary award, which was presented at
this year's Balkan Dekameron Forum in Plovdiv. He has
also published a book of poetry - “The Railings of the
Term.” Vergil Nemchev lives in Sofia.
The Big Pampering
ISBN 0-9547194-3-3, price €9.95
|
|
Lighthouse by Colm McHugh
A
first collection of poems, introducing a new voice to
Irish poetry.
Lighthouse is a first collection of
poems from a new voice on the Irish literary scene. It
is a voice of quiet intelligence, orchestrating the
rhythms of everyday life into a poetry that continues to
resonate in the mind. Contemporary living is McHugh’s
preoccupation, and he combines acute observations with
beautifully crafted images in verse which will surely
find a response in the mind of the modern reader. Even
when he draws directly on the tender aspects of family
life, there is no sentimentality, and the nuances of
feeling are conveyed with a sure hand and a clear mind.
Here is a poet who writes with an instinctive grasp of
the form.
If you do one thing this week, read
'Lighthouse'. This is a wonderful first collection of
poems by Colm McHugh, who finds his subject matter in
contemporary living, his inspiration in familiar
landscapes.
Lighthouse
ISBN 0-9547194-2-5, price €9.95
|
|
Scarecrows at Newtownards by Celia de
Fréine
First volume of poetry in English by the
Patrick Kavanagh Award winner who has published two
acclaimed volumes in the Irish language.
Celia de
Fréine is a poet and playwright who writes in Irish and
English. She was born in Northern Ireland and now lives
in Dublin and Connemara.
Many of her plays have been produced,
including most recently, Anraith Neantóige by Aisling
Ghéar in 2004.
Her poetry has won many awards, including
the Patrick Kavanagh Award (1994), Duais Chomórtas
Filíochta Dhún Laoghaire (1996), the British Comparative
Literature Association Translation Award (1999), Duais
Aitheantais Ghradam Litríochta Chló Iar-Chonnachta
(1999) Duais Smurfit/Lá (2003), and Gradam Litríochta
Chló Iar-Chonnachta (2004).
She was awarded Arts Council Bursaries in
1997 and 2000, and Duais an Oireachtais for best play in
2003 and 2004.
From the reviews of Scarecrows at
Newtownards
De Freine's evocative meditations seize
the reader with a strange and unique mixture of
sensuality and pain. Here too is the true poet's gift to
surprise. Poem after poem captures its moment, its
insight deftly, visually, forcefully… The death of
poetry, I heard someone say. Not with books like this
around. More like the death of criticism if poetry like
this is not widely praised and recognized.
Rory Brennan, Books Ireland
It may be that this creative traffic
between languages is responsible for the colloquial ease
and flexible syntax that are so welcome in De Freine's
work, and perhaps it is responsible also for peppering
her fables of contemporary life with odd but compelling
medieval allusion s. Either way, the more surreal the
mixture, the better it works….This is an enjoyable and
angular successor to 'Fiacha Fola'.
Selina Guinness, Irish Times
Scarecrows at Newtownards
ISBN 0-9547194-4-1, price €9.95
|
|
Lament for the Birds
This CD of
stories and songs, thematically structured and
integrated, features the author reading some of his
stories set in his native Sligo, and Sligo
singer/musician, Carmel Gunning, singing his lyrics and
playing the traditional airs to which the songs were
set.
The focus of the compilation is the sense
of a tradition in Sligo stretching back to the era of
mythology. Harte's demented farmer of the 1960's,
Sweeney, mirrors the mythological figure of Mad Sweeney
who resisted the spread of Christianity, fifteen hundred
years earlier - and both paid with their sanity for
championing the cause of Nature.
This CD was commissioned by Sligo Co
Council and funded by the Department of Environment
Heritage and Local Government under the Per Cent for Art
Scheme.
Lament for the Birds
ISBN 0-9547194-1-7, price €9.95
|
|
From under Gogol's Nose
Paul
Durcan once aptly described Jack Harte's stories as 'at
once pure symbolism and pure realism'. This selection of
stories demonstrates Harte's extraordinary versatility
as he himself sets out to explore the possibilities of
the form. In the prefatory section, his 'Storyman'
rejects definition of the form, declaring, 'a short
story is a short story. Let's see what it can do. Let's
see what we can do with it. Let it sprout wings and fly.
Let it veer deliriously from one extreme to another. Let
it skim so close to the discursive essay that it almost,
but not quite, becomes one. Let it veer so close to the
poem that it is preserved from absorption only by its
narrative soul.' The ensuing stories are written in the
spirit of this declaration.
Jack Harte
For more information
on Jack Harte, go to http://www.jackharte.com/
From the reviews of From Under
Gogol’s Nose
Harte is a genuine master, moving from tales that
recall Aesop and La Fontaine to the Latin American
surrealists. While asking us to “eat the fruit of the
tree of imagination”, Harte demonstrates how the story
may reach into the deepest fortresses of the human
soul. Here is an Ancient Mariner taking the reader by
the ear and leading him into strange territories where
he suddenly recognises himself and is astounded. We
are all called to be witnesses – to love, pain, the
horrors of war, the failure of the imagination.
There are stories here that are set to
be classics, like ‘Murphy in the Underworld’, ‘Queen
B’, and ‘A Message to Sparta’, and there are stories
whose lyrical pitch and rhythm approach the condition
of song, such as ‘Turfman’ and ‘Birds’. An essential
collection for anyone still touched by the Irish short
story.
Marvellous opening material on the state
of the short story in prospect and retrospect ….
Wonderful stuff.
Jack Harte has been delighting readers
for a couple of decades with his unique brand of
symbolism and mischief. His imagination is wild, but
tethered in a taut diction to give it credibility. A
story that begins with the words, “It came as a
pleasant surprise to Murphy to find that he could
leave Hades at all,” could be deemed to be sailing
very close to wind, but he pulls it off.
Harte’s stories in their matter-of-fact
referencing of the preternatural and supernatural, and
in their blending of the fantastic and the mundane may
be seen as affiliates of Magic Realism. However, Harte
instinctively resists definition and its concomitant
limitation. In an entirely entertaining and
provocative prefatory piece, ‘The Storyman Interview’,
Harte speaks of the straitjacket of Cork Realism on
Irish story writing …. His use of language is
inventive, and often startlingly illuminating of an
individual character or situation.
If you do one thing this week - Ponder
‘Painter’, one of the short stories in the excellent
collection, entitled ‘From Under Gogol’s Nose’, by
Jack Harte, the inspirational founder of the Irish
Writers’ Centre.
In ‘Birds’, a unique adaptation of the
myth of Mad Sweeney, Harte is at his most
iconoclastic, investing the yarn with poetic form.
Fearless artificer. Forever pushing the boundaries. In
his blending of the magic of myth with realism he has
fashioned a fiction that is truly magical. Sound
plotting, cracking dialogue, and credible
characterisations do the rest.
Each story is a powerful evocative
voyage which forces the reader to contemplate his/her
unique response.
Harte is an excellent storyteller. His
stories are wonderfully varied. Deep emotion, wisdom,
and irony, all feature strongly. ‘A Message to Sparta’
is as eloquent an expression of opposition to war as
you’ll find. …. ‘Gelding’ opens with “You asked me
whether sexuality is a bridge or a barrier between men
and women.” The story that follows is truly shocking.
This collection will make new converts to the
genre.
The form is so near the poem that it
revitalises not only the prose form, but also the
narrative poem format, indeed fusing the two until it
could be either. The modern themes complement the
ancient truths explored, thus enhancing the reader's
enjoyment … In this work Harte explores the
possibilities of the short story form with more
confidence and more success than most living writers.
It is still the hardest form to conquer, but Harte is
clearly a master of it.
In the introductory Preface section
Harte teases out the short story form, stressing that
he believes in the infinite possibility of the form.
He expects the short story to challenge his
imagination and to savour the sense of wonder with the
tools that every good writer employs: subtlety of
language, psychological insight, sharp
characterization, novel plots, a sense of symbol, and
a mystery that yields itself up to clearer definition
only through exploration and effort. Harte sets
himself a demanding headline but he achieves it with
disarming ease.
From Under Gogol's Nose
ISBN 0-9547194-0-9, price €9.95
| | | |
 |
