About
Dare-Gale Press is not currently open for submissions. Please do not send unsolicited manuscripts. General advice can be found in our Guide to Getting Published by a Small Press.
If you wish to write to us please use the contact form.
Dare-Gale Press won the Michael Marks Publisher of the Year Award 2024
Judges Michael Symmons Roberts and Naush Sabah wrote:
Dare-Gale Press stood out for the range of entries, which is eclectic, and because the quality of poetry is excellent. Throughout this year’s judging process, there were Dare-Gale pamphlets in the mix. It was no surprise, when the finalists for the Poetry Award were selected, that two of them – including ultimately the winner – came from this list. All the pamphlets we saw from this press were striking and elegant in their design, including some stunning cover images arising from themes in the poetry. The choices of font, setting, and quality of paper are exemplary, and there’s a strong sense of environmental responsibility. For a relatively new press, we were impressed by the high quality and rich mix of established and early career poets. The publisher’s declaration states: ‘For us a pamphlet is like a concept album with both poetry and design focussed on a central idea or theme.’ These are pamphlets to sit and enjoy, and to collect, and Dare-Gale is definitely a press to watch.
The Michael Marks Awards are presented in partnership with the British Library, Wordsworth Grasmere, the British Academy, the Harvard University Centre for Hellenic Studies, and the TLS.
At the Awards ceremony at the British Library on December 9th 2024 Nicola Healey also won the Poetry prize 2024 for her pamphlet A Newer Wilderness.
We aim to publish poetry that will endure, in beautifully produced books and pamphlets that people will want to keep.
At the moment we are concentrating only on pamphlets by contemporary poets. We publish poets who are well-established as well as others just starting out, giving them a valuable chance to read alongside well-known voices and be part of a supportive community.
Dare-Gale Press is an independent small press founded in 2015. The first title to be published was Mary Borden's Poems of Love and War, launched at the Wimbledon Book Fest. This was the first of an inaugural series of collections by poets who saw active service in the First World War, but not with a gun in their hand. Their role was to save life, rather than to take it. Counter-Wave: Poetry of Rescue in the First World War is the first anthology of its kind, featuring ten volunteer humanitarian workers who saw front-line service, including E.E. Cummings, Ernest Hemingway and John Masefield.
In 2022 Dare-Gales Press launched a series of contemporary poetry pamphlets, featuring well-known poets as well as new voices.
Dare-Gale books are distributed by Central Books.
We are committed to a carbon-neutral and environmentally-conscious model of publishing. We limit our carbon use as much as possible, work with a local, environmentally-conscious printer and only use paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). We limit waste by not over-printing: our aim is to sell all the books we print.
Dare-Gale Press takes its name from the opening lines of Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem, 'The Caged Skylark':
As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage
Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells…
Since at least the time of the great Troubadour poet Bernart de Ventadorn, the skylark has been a symbol of both lyric poetry and what Hopkins calls 'man's mounting spirit', and its desire for freedom. For Shelley, the skylark is a 'blythe spirit' who teaches the poet to sing. Coleridge 'translated' the skylark's exuberant song as: 'I love my Love, and my Love loves me!'. We use it as a symbol of the freedom of spirit that we are looking for in the poetry we publish.
Dare-Gale Press is run by Paul O'Prey and Pilar Garcia. We are based in Brighton and Hove on the south coast of England.
For any further information, please get in touch.
