Bloodaxe Books archive returns to Newcastle University

Thirty-five years ago poetry lover Neil Astley set up his own publishing house from an admin office on the Newcastle University campus. From these humble beginnings, Bloodaxe Books would become one of the most important contemporary poetry publishers in the world, giving a voice and in many cases a break, to leading writers, including Simon Armitage, Helen Dunmore, Tony Harrison and Benjamin Zephaniah; major figures in world poetry such as Mahmoud Darwish, Miroslav Holub and Nobel Laureate Tomas Tranströmer; and Newcastle University’s own Bill Herbert, Jackie Kay and Sean O’Brien.
Now, three and half decades later the university has acquired its archive and Bloodaxe Books is returning to the place where it all began. The university has just taken delivery of the first part of the archive and is starting the long task of cataloguing it. It is hoped that the archive will be available for reference within two years.

For more information, see www.ncl.ac.uk/ncla.

Source: New Writing North