Longbarrow Press was launched at The Red Deer, Sheffield, on 27 April 2006, which makes this our 15th anniversary. Thanks to everyone - poets, collaborators, readers, audiences, and many others - who has been part of this project, and for helping to make it possible.

I'm not going to single out books and pamphlets from the last 15 years, as it doesn't work like that (for me, as an editor/publisher). None of the books are possible without the others.

There's no 'definitive' account of our development, either (which is as it should be), though this recent interview (kindly facilitated by @robmclennanblog) might serve as a retrospective of sorts:
http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/2021/01/12-or-20-small-press-questions-with_19.html

'There was no plan. There is still no plan.' Fifteen years of working 'with the resources at hand', whatever that means, and it means different things at different times, as it does for us all. A few (haphazard) reflections:

1. With hindsight, scheduling a poetry walk, an exhibition, and a performance all on the same day (as we did in November 2008) wasn't the sharpest instance of event management (as I conceded while assembling parts of the exhibition in a moving van, en route to the venue).

2. The spaces of transport enabled the completion of a surprising amount of Longbarrow work during this period. Fond memories of hand-stitching Lee Harwood's pamphlets on a semi-darkened National Express coach at 4am in March 2011, while in the early stages of gastroenteritis.

3. Or, in May 2009, trimming and glueing the inserts for an audio publication by @kramawoodgin on the floor of a Plymouth-bound train's hot, crowded vestibule, in close proximity to an incontinent dog, the train disintegrating en route (first the aircon, then the power).

4. Somehow it's always worth persevering with, even when it doesn't quite work out. One journey leads to another. Even if the journey terminates in a book fair where two books are sold in two days. Two books found two new readers.

5. We've missed book fairs over the past year, and not least for the spirit of community - in the broadest, most democratic sense - that they can offer. Chance encounters. Unexpected discoveries. I wrote about this in 2016: https://longbarrowblog.wordpress.com/2016/12/31/marketplace-brian-lewis/