Sophie Essex : on Salò Press

 

Salò Press grew out of a magazine we started in 2012: Fur-Lined Ghettos. We published ten issues of this experimental poetry and prose publication, and began to pick up submissions from folk who we thought deserved a bigger audience with solo collections. The name Salò Press comes from one of my favourite films, Salò, or 120 Days of Sodom, directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. It’s fair to say that the film isn’t for everyone, but the concept of ‘anything goes’ fit the remit we wanted for the press. We’re not after purely transgressive writing, but we’re also not into censoring submissions. We’ll read whatever comes in. We wanted a broad remit for the Press although – ultimately – what we publish comes down quite simply to work that resonates with me.

Our first publication was a collection of poetry by Dalton Day (Actual Cloud) which was followed up with Father, Husband by Scheherazade Siobhan, and then our first anthology, A Galaxy of Starfish. We’ve since published two other anthologies: Milk (an anthology of eroticism) and I Transgress (edited by Chris Kelso), as well as full length collections by seven other poets.

In 2015 we branched out into smaller chapbooks under our “Flirtations” series. We were getting submissions which were shorter than book-form, and we felt some poets (or rather, certain bodies of work), would sit better as chapbooks than full collections. We also publish single short stories in this format. Since then, we’ve published 21 chapbooks in that series. Two of the short stories have subsequently been reprinted in the Best British Short Story series published by Salt Publishing.

Salò Press is predominantly myself, Sophie Essex, and I am also a published poet. My partner, Andrew Hook, is a well-established short story writer. I tend to read the submissions whilst Andrew gives input when asked. He also tends to typeset and do the layout. The artwork for our most recent titles has come from The Miius Studio, but we’ve used a variety of different artists, usually drawing on existing artwork which we can then licence for our products.

We describe ourselves as an independent micro-publisher focusing on poetry & prose of an experimental / weird / surreal / cerebral nature. We operate on a DIY/Punk ethos, meaning we put our hearts into what we do without succumbing to the machine of traditional book publishing. Whilst our publications tend to be short runs, we’ve always made profits which we split 50/50 with our writers, as that seems a fair way to operate.

Sometimes promotion can be challenging and we might think of parking the press for a while, but inevitably we receive another submission that excites us and we have to go on. It’s a delicious compulsion.

Our most recent chapbooks include fil/Uh by Gemma Jackson (poems which seek to peel back the confines of literary perspective and, ultimately, interrogate what shape consent would take on a page), Unfaithful by Charley Barnes (which explores the journey of an illicit relationship through a series of vignettes which form a soundtrack to a marital affair), and Verges Green by Heleina Burton (poems which look for, and sometimes find, traces of lost forests and meadows beneath the tarmac of the motorway).

Finally, whilst Fur-Lined Ghettos ran its course shortly after we expanded into books, we are currently preparing to launch a new magazine, PISSOIR. Guidelines for this publication – and also for our chapbooks, can be found on our website.

 

 

 

 

 

Sophie Essex is a poet, award-nominated editor, & softcore bunny living in Norwich, UK, where she runs the tiny independent Salò Press, lit-mag PISSOIR, and has edited the weird fiction anthologies Dreamland: Other Stories (for Black Shuck Books) and At The Lighthouse (for Eibonvale Press). Her own poetry has appeared in Leste, Lighthouse, The Belleville Park Pages, HVTN, and others. Her chapbook Some Pink Star is available through Eibonvale Press. Find her @salopress @capitanofelixio