PAMPHLET!: Previously on...

This post was first published on my (now defunct) Substack on September 16th, 2025. It is being reproduced here as there will soon be the ability to discuss this piece of work in detail, and as there are a number of issues that need as a result to be either resolved or indeed put to rest...

The Pamphlet! feature will also, as a result, become a Thing again. Soon [TM]

A number of you will have had this email drop into your Inboxes from Hedgehog Poetry Press:

I have a story for you: it’s about choice, agency and decision-making. This wasn’t what I’d expected to be publishing, either. I thought I had today all organised on Saturday night: Instagram posts, Substack, BlueSky. The problem with planning is that sometimes the thing you don’t expect to happen actually does, forcing a reconsideration of your aims. Anyway, I am getting ahead of myself.

Writing poetry is a deeply personal and emotional experience. It requires trust and sensitivity during every stage of development. It is important that writers can trust publishers, that editing and design decisions are well-communicated and rationally addressed. Informing writers in a sensible and timely fashion of changes in intended schedules and difficulties during the production process is vital.

Leaving writers ‘in limbo’ and without proper timescales for promotion and marketing is damaging.

On March 22nd 2025, my pamphlet ‘Forest Management’, which was shortlisted for the Live Canon Pamphlet Prize the previous year, was announced as the winner of the Hedgehog Poetry Press ‘Proper Poetry Pamphlet’ Contest. That was also the last time I’d received email from the press’ owner, Mark Davidson… until Sunday, September 14th. Then I got an immediate reply because of an email that was sent several hours previously. Maybe I should have done that months earlier.

What that email did for me was start a chain of events that will now play out in the coming weeks and months. What it will never remove from my mind are the stories I have heard from people directly, or which have been told to me as part of a larger anecdotal body of evidence. The mental health consequences of being ghosted for close to six months when all the work I’d been asked to do and more had been done is… considerable.

This is also something that has not only happened to me.

I have been in many situations over the years in professional settings where it is apparent that calling someone out for wrongdoing is not often the closure you think it will be. In this particular case, I now accept, this is where I find myself. I have been offered the most basic apology for what happened: many people who never got answers to their emails, who were left wondering if their work was the problem, or indeed where they stood, have not.

To find myself in the position of being presented with publication in a manner that has been tainted by the knowledge I possess leaves only one option. This is not something I ever wanted for what is an incredibly important and ultimately hugely personal sequence of poems. I’ve reiterated therefore via email this morning that I have formally withdrawn permission to publish.

This is the right thing to do: saying this publicly is the correct course of action.

I’ve worked hard with a number of people in the last few weeks to get to this point, who have listened to my concerns and assisted me in pursuing a resolution that I accept was not for me, but for the other people who are yet to see their work in print, who have decision-making and agency returned to them. Knowing what I do, I cannot unsee and forget the stories that have been shared with me.

You won’t see Forest Management published by Hedgehog Poetry Press, and that for me will be the resolution that matters.