Putting art and poetry where they should be - in the hands of readers

Created by John Osborne and Bruce Woodcock, LegalHighsPress is a small, agile indie outfit that moves away from the yearly publishing cycle in order to get words and images onto book shelves in a matter of months.

Based in Hull, famously home to Philip Larkin, we wish to honour and learn from his example while overthrowing the notion that the city’s cultural life is coterminous with his genius. Part of our mission is to rescue neglected masters like George Kendrick, Geoff Squires, Peter Didsbury and Tony Flynn, juxtaposing their formidable achievements with those of younger talents like Mary McCollum, Rachael Allen and Rachel Long.

In pursuing this agenda, LegalHighsPress has specialised in combining the verbal and the visual sign, providing a platform for new photographers, artists and graphic designers, as well as poets and fiction writers.

John Osborne [right] with Hull performance artist and model Danny Phelps

About the Team

 

Meet Bruce

Son of the legendary 1940s British heavyweight boxing champion, Bruce Woodcock lectured in the English Department at the University of Hull between 1973 and 2013 when he retired. He has published two previous collections of poetry: Hunting Mushrooms: Poems 1978-87 and Saying Goodbye in Thailand: Poems 1988-97 (Avenues Books, 2013), as well as being in a number of Hull bands. He lives in the Avenues, the Greenwich Village of Hull.

 
 

Meet John

John Osborne’s numerous publications include studies of such luminaries of the Hull poetry scene as Philip Larkin, Douglas Dunn, Peter Didsbury, Sean O’Brien, Douglas Houston and Tony Flynn. In 1995 he co-founded the Larkin Society, on whose behalf he curated two exhibitions of Larkin’s photographs. His most recent books are: the critical monograph Radical Larkin, Seven Types of Technical Mastery (2014); A Little Book of Attestation (2019), a collection of political poems with photographs by Jason Shipley; Electric Avenue (2019), a celebration of the Avenues area – Hull’s answer to Bloomsbury in the blue plaque stakes – with photographs by George Norris; The Geometry of Minima (2020), a tessellation of fragments on the theme of Small is Beautiful with graphics by Hilary Pitt; New Generation Women Poets and the Larkin Legacy (2021), a conversation with Rachael Allen, Rachel Long and Mary McCollum (transcribed and edited by Kyra Piperides); Grammatology (2023), a deconstructive prose-poem in fifty parts with visual collages by Paul Vallance; and Love Letters to Olhão (2023), a homage to European values as exemplified in an unfashionable part of Portugal, with photographs by Jane Thomas.

 

Poets, Writers and Artists

  • Rachel Long

    Rachel Long’s My Darling from the Lions (Picador 2020) has attracted rave reviews - including in the TLS - and a deal of media attention not least on BBC Radio 4). Rachel took a B.A. degree in American Studies and Creative Writing at the University of Hull. She is the founder of the Octavia Poetry Collective for Women of Colour which is based in London’s south Bank Centre. My Darling from the Lions was shortlisted for the 2022 Costa Poetry Prize and is presently long-listed for the 2021 Rathbones Folio Prize

  • Mary McCollum

    Mary McCollum’s living by the law of light (dancing sisters, 2019) won a commendation from the Forward Poetry Prize Committee. Mary took a Masters degree in Creative Writing in the University of Hull’s Larking Centre, whose staff included the poets Carol Rumens, Christopher Reid, David Wheatley and John Wedgewood Clarke. Born and bred in Belfast, she permanently relocated to Hull in 2008 where her work has been championed by Jim Orwin’s dancing sisters press.

  • Rachael Allen

    Rachael Allen’s first collection Kingdomland (Faber, 2019) was a Poetry Book Society Choice. She is the co-author of a number of collaborative artists’s books, including Night of Poor Sleep with Marie Jacotey, and Almost One. Say Again! with JocJohnJosch. She is the recipient of an Eric Gregory award and New Writing North’s Andrew Waterman award, and was a Burgess Fellow at The University of Manchester.She is poetry editor for Granta magazine and Granta Books.

  • Kyra Piperides

    Kyra Piperides is a freelance writer and teacher. Having lectured at the Universities of York and Huddersfield, she has now turned her attention to sixth form colleges in the Hull area. Her first book, Modern and Contemporary Yorkshire Poetry: Cultural Identities, Political Crises was published by Routledge in 2023; she edited About Larkin: Journal of the Philip Larkin Society from 2020 to 2022, and New Generation Women Poets and the Larkin Legacy (LegalHighsPress, 2022). Kyra is a prolific vegan food and travel blogger and YouTuber, and can be found at www.aroundtheworldinveganeats.com.