Enitharmon Press is an independent British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 publishing house specialising in poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

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The name of the press comes from the poetry of William Blake

William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...

: Enitharmon

Enitharmon

Enitharmon is a major female character in William Blake's mythology, playing a main part in some of his prophetic books. She is, but not directly, an aspect of the male Urthona, one of the Four Zoas. She is in fact the Emanation of Los, also male. There is a complex verbal nexus attached. The Zoa...

 was a character who represented spiritual beauty and poetic inspiration. The press's logo "derives from a Blake woodcut".

History

The Press was founded by Alan Clodd

Alan Clodd

Alan Clodd was an Irish publisher, book collector, and dealer. Edward Clodd was his grandfather. Born in Dublin, Ireland, Clodd went to Bishop's Stortford College and later worked with the insurance firm Scottish Widows. During World War II he was a conscientious objector and worked with the...

 in 1967. Sharing a belief with close friend Kathleen Raine

Kathleen Raine

Kathleen Jessie Raine was a British poet, critic, and scholar writing in particular on William Blake, W. B. Yeats and Thomas Taylor. Known for her interest in various forms of spirituality, most prominently Platonism and Neoplatonism, she was a founder member of the Temenos Academy.-Life:Raine was...

 in the "sacrificial stresses which seem to be the means by which the vision of outstanding creative spirits is enhanced for the benefit of their fellow beings", Clodd had little faith in the publishing mainstream. Since its founding Enitharmon Press has been distinguished as an independent press whose two major concerns have been the quality of its books (from paper and binding to typesetting and design) and maintaining a "wide-ranging literary culture outside the realm of agents, public relations and television tie-ins".

Under Alan Clodd

Alan Clodd

Alan Clodd was an Irish publisher, book collector, and dealer. Edward Clodd was his grandfather. Born in Dublin, Ireland, Clodd went to Bishop's Stortford College and later worked with the insurance firm Scottish Widows. During World War II he was a conscientious objector and worked with the...

's stewardship Enitharmon published over 150 titles. Some of the most prestigious include books by Kathleen Raine

Kathleen Raine

Kathleen Jessie Raine was a British poet, critic, and scholar writing in particular on William Blake, W. B. Yeats and Thomas Taylor. Known for her interest in various forms of spirituality, most prominently Platonism and Neoplatonism, she was a founder member of the Temenos Academy.-Life:Raine was...

, David Gascoyne

David Gascoyne

David Gascoyne was an English poet associated with the Surrealist movement.-Early life and Surrealism:...

, Vernon Watkins

Vernon Watkins

Vernon Phillips Watkins , was a British poet, and a translator and painter. He was a close friend of Dylan Thomas, who described him as "the most profound and greatly accomplished Welshman writing poems in English"....

, Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

 and John Heath-Stubbs

John Heath-Stubbs

John Francis Alexander Heath-Stubbs OBE was an English poet and translator, known for his verse influenced by classical myths, and the long Arthurian poem Artorius .- Biography :...

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Recent Publications

In 1987, as he neared the age of 70, Clodd passed on the directorship of Enitharmon to Stephen Stuart-Smith. Alongside the poetry list, Stuart-Smith established Enitharmon Editions, now the leading British publisher of collaborations between distinguished artists and authors. Artists include Paula Rego

Paula Rego

Paula Rego is a painter born in Portugal although she is a naturalised British citizen.-Biography:Rego was born in the Portuguese capital Lisbon, the daughter of an electrical engineer who worked for the Marconi Company. Although this gave her a comfortable middle class home, the family was...

, Gilbert & George, Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. He was an early adopter of 35 mm format, and the master of candid photography...

, Jim Dine

Jim Dine

Jim Dine is an American pop artist. He is sometimes considered to be a part of the Neo-Dada movement. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, attended Walnut Hills High School, the University of Cincinnati, and received a BFA from Ohio University in 1957. He first earned respect in the art world with...

, Robert Creeley

Robert Creeley

Robert Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...

, R. B. Kitaj

R. B. Kitaj

Ronald Brooks Kitaj was an American artist who spent much of his life in England.-Life:Born in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, near Cleveland, United States, his Hungarian father, Sigmund Benway, left his mother, Jeanne Brooks, shortly after he was born and they were divorced in 1934. His mother was the...

 and Victor Pasmore

Victor Pasmore

Edwin John Victor Pasmore was a British artist and architect. He pioneered the development of abstract art in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s.-Biography:...

, and authors Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes

Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...

, Thom Gunn

Thom Gunn

Thom Gunn, born Thomson William Gunn , was an Anglo-American poet who was praised both for his early verses in England, where he was associated with The Movement and his later poetry in America, even after moving toward a looser, free-verse style...

, Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...

 and Blake Morrison

Blake Morrison

Philip Blake Morrison is a British poet and author who has published in a wide range of fiction and non-fiction genres. His greatest success came with the publication of his memoirs And When Did You Last See Your Father? which won the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography. He has also written a...

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The list of Enitharmon Press, while still specialising in poetry, diversified to include translations, memoirs, fiction and literary criticism. Poets published since the beginning of Stephen Stuart-Smith's directorship include Anthony Thwaite

Anthony Thwaite

Anthony Simon Thwaite, OBE, is an English poet and writer. He is married to the writer Ann Thwaite. He was awarded the OBE in 1992, for services to poetry. He was mainly brought up in Yorkshire and currently lives in Norfolk....

 (collected works), UA Fanthorpe (collected works), Jeremy Reed

Jeremy Reed

Jeremy Thomas Reed is an American professional baseball outfielder who is a free agent.Reed graduated from Bonita High School in 1999, and went on to play college baseball at Long Beach State University...

, Kevin Crossley-Holland

Kevin Crossley-Holland

Kevin John William Crossley-Holland is an English translator, children's author and poet.-Life and career:Born in Mursley, north Buckinghamshire, Holland grew up in Whiteleaf, a small village in the Chilterns...

, Ruth Pitter

Ruth Pitter

Emma Thomas "Ruth" Pitter, CBE, FRSL was a 20th century British poet.She was the first woman to receive the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1955, and was appointed a CBE in 1979 to honour her many contributions to English literature.In 1974, she was named a "Companion of Literature", the highest...

 Alan Brownjohn

Alan Brownjohn

Alan Charles Brownjohn FRSL is an English poet and novelist.He was born in London and educated at Merton College, Oxford. He taught until 1979, when he became a full-time writer...

 and Edwin Brock

Edwin Brock

Edwin Brock was a British poet. Brock wrote two of the best-known poems of the last century, Five Ways to Kill a Man and Song of the Battery Hen.-Early life:...

. The press has published first collections, and subsequent ones, by Martyn Cruecefix, Jane Duran

Jane Duran

-Background:Duran was born to an American mother and a Spanish father who had fought with the Republican army in the Spanish Civil war. He fled Spain after Franco's victory but would never talk about his experiences. The themes of silences, loss and exile haunt much of her work...

, Martha Kapos and Pascale Petit

Pascale Petit

Pascale Petit is a poet. She grew up in France and Wales. She trained as a sculptor at the Royal College of Art and was a visual artist for the first part of her life...

; memoirs from Michael Hamburger

Michael Hamburger

Michael Hamburger OBE was a noted British translator, poet, critic, memoirist, and academic. He was known in particular for his translations of Friedrich Hölderlin, Paul Celan, Gottfried Benn and W. G. Sebald from German, and his work in literary criticism...

 (Larkin), Anne Ridler

Anne Ridler

Anne Barbara Ridler OBE was a British poet, and Faber and Faber editor, selecting the Faber A Little Book of Modern Verse with T. S. Eliot . Her Collected Poems were published in 1994...

 (Eliot), Edward Upward

Edward Upward

Edward Falaise Upward was a British novelist and short story writer and, prior to his death, was believed to be the UK's oldest living author.-Biography:...

 (Auden and Isherwood), and Edmund White

Edmund White

Edmund Valentine White III is an American author and literary critic. He is a member of the faculty of Princeton University's Program in Creative Writing.- Life and work :...

 (autobiographical); and prose from David Gascoyne

David Gascoyne

David Gascoyne was an English poet associated with the Surrealist movement.-Early life and Surrealism:...

 and Edward Upward

Edward Upward

Edward Falaise Upward was a British novelist and short story writer and, prior to his death, was believed to be the UK's oldest living author.-Biography:...

, two veteran writers particularly championed by Enitharmon.

In recent years Enitharmon has published collections by Geoffrey Hill

Geoffrey Hill

Geoffrey Hill is an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at Boston University. Hill has been considered to be among the most distinguished poets of his generation...

, Michael Longley

Michael Longley

Michael Longley, CBE is a Northern Irish poet from Belfast.-Life and career:Longley was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and subsequently read Classics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus...

, Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage CBE is a British poet, playwright, and novelist.-Life and career:Simon Armitage was born in Marsden, West Yorkshire. Armitage first studied at Colne Valley High School, Linthwaite, Huddersfield and went on to study geography at Portsmouth Polytechnic...

 and Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published over thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 - 2004. At Princeton University he is both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and...

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Location

Historically Enitharmon Press was run out of Alan Clodd's home in East Finchley, north west London. It is now located in Kentish Town.