Chris  Torrance Biography & Mission statement Photo: Chris Torrance at home (2004) NEWS - Heaventree Press are to Publish Chris's new collection, PATH, in 2008. For more details click on PATH   To read a blog by Billy Mills on Chris and his new Book  on the Guardian Books page go to  http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/02/the_hidden_beauty_of_the_magic.html Chris Torrance encountered poetry properly for the first time in his mid twenties, stimulated by becoming an editor of and a contributor to Carshalton, Surrey based magazine ORIGINS DIVERSIONS. Each issue was launched with a live reading, emphasising the concept of poem as performance. The  audience empowered the poet on stage, or not as the case may be.    The poem had to be got "all the way over" to its audience - to  use words of Charles Olson.  Followed a first collection GREEN ORANGE PURPLE RED, from Ferry Press, and an appearance in Penguin CHILDREN OF ALBION (ed. Michael Horovitz). Torrance moved to Wales in 1970. Urban hippie living in the country for the first time.  Discovery of miraculous nature.  Learning the names of things: insects, birds, plants, trees. Weather systems. Geological layers. All of which fed into the never-ending long poem THE MAGIC DOOR, many books of which appeared from Albion Village Press,  Galloping Dog Press, Stone Lantern Press & Cwm Nedd Press over 30 years.

Mission statement

PALE GREY MADDER YELLOW

Jack Kerouac declared that he saw his work as all one book. When I came to live in upland Wales in 1970, I soon came to the same conclusion – that all my work here should be considered as one epic length book under the general title THE MAGIC DOOR, & that all this works subject matter would be The Transformation Process in Nature & in Mankind.

36 years on & I am still engaged on THE MAGIC DOOR. At least one critic has suggested that TMD has lost its way. But that critic has no idea what I have in my stock cupboard.

The world of small press publishing has radically shrunk since the 1960’s when I began writing, & there are now very few small press publishers left in the UK. It’s worth recalling what the 60s, then the 70’s were like. There were hundreds of small active literary mags, many of which also published collections & anthologies by often unknown poets. Fast forward 30 or 40 years & the number of viable magazines & poetry publishers has severely diminished, under pressure from profit-driven globalised materialism & the very limited and circumscribed funding available to poets and publishers.

By &large cash prize competitions encourage meretricious writing rather than bold, audacious, or even avante-garde writing. The official literary mags are grey & daunting & often boring in content and presentation, with little attention given to integrity of design, the sort of detail which made US poetry & publishing so distinctive in the 2^nd half of the 20C.

The one bright spot would appear to be poetry on the internet, which is now an active and lively sector. But there is a limit to the amount of poetry that can be comfortably read off a screen. To me the real pleasure of reading poetry is allied with the tactile handling & visuality of the package, the book or magazine. Is it a pleasure to hold? To flick through? Or to slowly read, contemplate? – savouring the delight of selected type fonts on serious paper, as well as actual words.

Some specimen material from PATH  will shortly appear on this site. It is hoped that the book, which is to be published by Heaventree Press in 2008, may be launched at the Hen and Chicks pub (upstairs room), Abergavenny, but details have yet to be confirmed. Please watch this space .  .  .    

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For a list books and CDs which feature Chris Torrance's work click on Publications

Copyright Chris Torrance. 

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