Small poetry publisher once again steals thunder from Fifty Shades
In a move set to rattle the producers of Fifty Shades of Grey, due for cinematic release on 13th February, the Emma Press has announced a new call for ‘mildly erotic’ poems.
The publisher is planning an expanded second edition of The Emma Press Anthology of Mildly Erotic Verse (2013), featuring more poems about ‘love, sex and romance, focusing particularly on the headspace of eroticism’.
Publisher Emma Wright said: ‘I appreciate that our announcement will overshadow the release of the film, but I’m sure everyone will still be able to get just as excited about Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson as they do about the chance to send us erotic poems. My apologies to Sam Taylor-Johnson and Vintage Books nonetheless.’
Poets are invited to submit up to two poems by 15th March 2015. Mildly Erotic Verse: Darker (kidding!) is publishing in February 2016 and will be edited by Rachel Piercey (Newdigate Prize, 2008) and Emma Wright, founder of the Emma Press.
The Emma Press first published The Emma Press Anthology of Mildly Erotic Verse in September 2013. It was accompanied by the Arts Council-supported Mildly Erotic Poetry Tour and the publisher has since produced one-off mildly erotic poetry events at Ledbury Poetry Festival, the Freud Museum and at the opening weekend of the Southbank Centre’s inaugural Festival of Love.
Publisher Emma Wright says: ‘When we first put out a call for mildly erotic poetry in 2013, we were a very new press but we had some great submissions even then and we chose 23 poems which I still really love. It’s now been a year and a half since we published The Emma Press Anthology of Mildly Erotic Verse and people are still enthusing about it, so we thought we would throw it open to more poets who have discovered the Emma Press since then. The whole point of the original anthology was to showcase and celebrate the diversity of human erotic experiences, so I’d love to double the number of poems and experiences depicted in Mildly Erotic Verse: 2nd Edition.‘
‘We’ve continued to work closely with several of the poets who first came to us through our call for erotic poems, and I don’t think this is a coincidence: if I connect with someone’s erotic vision, I’m likely to connect with their literary voice too.’
The Emma Press is presenting further mildly erotic verse at the Purbeck Literary Festival on Saturday 21st February, in a reading at the Worth Matravers Tearoom featuring Jo Brandon, Richard O’Brien and Rachel Piercey (ticket information here).
Further details of the call for submissions can be found on the Submissions page.
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