Desk Publishing evolved out of the ashes of Gravity Publishing as an expedient way of disseminating my written work. It was never intended as a commercial publishing company, but more an umbrella term for various design and manufacturing activities which enabled me to produce zines and books myself (with a little help from my friends, and print shops). Over time I viewed it as a serious part of my art practice, which often incorporated practices which were collaborative and facilitatory, in the direction of working as a collective within an informal framework of stewardship and singular vision.

A little history… Sometime around 2008*, as I seem to recall, Stu Bryan and I stayed up late in our student house “The Forge” watching The Baader Meinhof Complex and were inspired to scheme up some kind of creative project, as documented in this reimagining of our night of megalomaniacal creative dreaming by legendary Herefordian illustrator Russell Taysom. Russell actually said he liked my original drawings but was happy to redraw them for me. See the uncensored comic here in the zine Gravity Serpent that followed, a zine which set the format for eight issues of the truncatedly titled “Gravity” https://gravityserpent.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/serpent-1.pdf *must’ve been 2011 then, my grip on the passage of time is slippery at best.

Gravity became the name of the incidentally formed micropublishers that was effectively me with a laptop throwing these zines together, usually in InDesign. I used the same name to publish a novella called “Dark”, which I attributed to David Marshall Mahoney but not wanting to lose credit for it entirely, dropped in a fictitious quote from Gravity Zine attributed to myself, praising the book! Not quite how pen names are usually done.

I also published a collection of ten years’ worth of poems as my first poetry collection, titled “We R All One, We Always Win”. These were sold hand to hand to friends and at readings. I’d long had aspirations for writing poetry and publishing a collection, but my mental health difficulties had made it difficult to be persistent and thorough enough to secure an agent or a publishing deal. It just seemed more realistic to lay the thing out myself and have it printed in the print shop. There were some good poems in there, but perhaps some that could have been left out. Most, if not all of the 100 or so (I think) I had printed have sold now and gone to good homes. I doubt I will ever reprint it in the form it was done.

I produced eight issues of Gravity zine between 2013 and 2018 (dates ‘estimated’!), relying very much on my artistic peers to submit content, which would make up the zines. From Issue 4-8 I had the valuable assistance of Liam Bromage at Fishbone press who would help print, collate, bind, trim the zines as well as produce beautifully letterpressed covers which gave them a little more, ahem, gravity. Some material from inside can be seen here: Gravity Blog

Issue 1 of Gravity (32pp. A5 b/w stapled 100gsm paper) was printed by PIP Printing in Hereford, in an edition of maybe 100 copies. The cover was designed by yours truly from collaged elements. The back cover was an elephant repeat pattern by Rosie Woods, who provided patterns for each issue.

Issue 2 (40pp b/w 80 gsm copier paper stapled) was the zinester’s zine. Jed Hate said he liked the cover because it gave an insight into where it was made. The cover is a photograph of me assembling the elements of the zine prior to binding. It was a cut and paste, ripped and torn, type affair with black marker pen drawn straight onto a printed photo, and everything assembled in the scanner bed before being printed on the toner printer I co-owned with Liam Bromage, which gave a photocopied effect that some would view as a more authentic zine look than the clean first issue. The pages of each issue were printed out of order and the editorial refers to this, saying it was put together on a photocopier, but I think I was simplifying the truth here. I have made zines on photocopiers such as my virgin outing CU NXT TUES which was made every week for a period of 7 weeks in 2003 before I collapsed in a state of exhaustion and packed it in. Issue 2 is most reminiscent of those zines which were inspired by the original punk fanzines and what followed them.

Issue 3 (52pp. 80gsm copier paper b/w stapled) featured a cover by Liam Bromage of an anvil balanced on an egg, I think from a linocut. Rosie Woods provided a pattern of gas taps for the back which was originally reproduced in black and white. These were collated in the home of Rex Birchmore, with the assistance of Lucy Baxendale, John Burrage, and Tom Rees (sorry if I’ve forgotten anyone). My friends were often happy to help put the zines together with me as well as contribute work for it. The first edition featured an inserted photo printed on thin card of the result of a conceptual submission by designer/artist Daniel Eatock, who instructed that the finished zines were bound in string and thrown from a high point, to be photographed where they land. We decided to take the zines to the top of the multistory carpark in Hereford and after checking nobody was coming (we had people on the ground too as I recall) we dropped them off with a thud. As a result of these directions, this edition is especially dented and crumpled but made an intelligent and playful connection to the name of the zine as well as a memorable experience. There was a second press of the zine in colour, even though some pages remained black and white anyway.

Issue 4 was themed around music, and the first to bear any such theme at all (Letterpressed cover by Liam Bromage, 44pp. b/w inner page by Rosie Woods, body content all printed on Kyocera toner printer on 120gsm recycled paper from Five Seasons Press, figure of 8 bound with white string, included a cover cd inside) This was the first issue made at Fishbone Press and as well as the beautifully letterpressed cover with an array of woodblock characters in green ink, also had guillotined edges and was printed on better quality paper which was part of a tendency towards approaching finesse, something I often haven’t bothered with, even fairly consciously avoided. Liam’s influence was towards precision and quality control of a higher standard. The cover CD was mostly musicians based in Hereford or with connections to the place, at the very least through me.

Issue 5 – The Fashion Issue (42pp. numbered edition of 75, 2 colour cover designed by artist/designer Josh Hight, printed by Liam Bromage on his vintage letterpress machines, rounded corners, 120gsm recycled paper, body content printed on Kyocera as usual)

Issue 6 “Tell me a story” 2015* Cover letterpressed by Liam Bromage on various coloured cards (peach and russet at least), and inners again printed on recycled 120gsm paper from Glen Storhaug’s Five Seasons Press. Printed, collated, and hand-bound figure of 8 style at Fishbone Press making use of the friendly expertise of Liam once again. QR code on cover links to Gravity Blog online. This issue as you might have guessed was mainly writing/fiction.

*The fact I wrote the date of publication on this probably indicates I was hopeful that people would actually keep these initially ephemeral chapbooks for good.

****(ISSUE 7 MIA due to me not being able to find a copy to photograph. One may turn up. It was called For Dinner, and was the Food Issue. Cover art was by Hanna Kas and featured a pizza pacman eating his way around a labyrinth populated by chicken legs and cherries or some such. Letterpressed by Liam Bromage at Fishbone press in red ink on Five Seasons recycled paper. Again, hand bound.) Will update if and when I come across a copy. Some content can be found reproduced in colour on Gravity Blog**** EDIT found the cover at least

Gravity 8 – the cinema issue (cover printed by Liam from what was originally a lino cut I did of cinemagoers looking at a screen with the word EIGHT on, printed onto pale blue card and given away free to contributors and to anyone who came to the Gravity/SCree Cinema Night which was hosted by myself and Johnny Burrage, and featured the premier of our film Lorem Ipsum, which was a silent surrealist fable about social anxiety and mortality starring musician Elspeth Anne Macrae and with a soundtrack we produced. Should you want to see the film, you can here. Other films by Siobhan Joan, Tom Cherril, and several others were shown. We sold t-shirts with Johnny’s designs on. It was a great evening and meant that Gravity went out with a bang. Packed out even as it was, as a launch for SCree magazine, it was less successful, as we didn’t get around to making the Berliner format colour art zine. Eventually I would go on to produce a zine bearing the name SCree in the usual black and white format, described by illustrator and longtime collaborator Russell Taysom as an “ongoing response to not having a brief”.

With gratitude to all historical contributors to Gravity

without you the zine would never have existed…

Abell, John (issue 1)

Hollie L Anderson (issue 4)

BANS illustration/Hannah Prebble (issue 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8)

Baxendale, Lucy (issue 3, 4, 5, 6, 8)

Birchmore, Rex (issue 1, 2, 3, 6, 8)

Boyd, Floss (issue 3)

Bromage, Liam (issue 2,

Brown, Ben (issue 1, 4, 8)

Bryant, Craig (issue 2)

Bulswick, Jerald (issue 2, 3)

Burrage, John (issue 2, 4, 5, 6)

Clemens, Ruth (issue 6)

Crossland, Beth (issue 4, 5, 8)

Deacon, Jack (issue 3)

Eatock, Daniel (issue 3)

Evans, Nana (issue 4)

Farr, Nigel K (issue 3, 4, 6, 8)

Fontaine, Faye, (issue 4)

Hall, Daniel (issue 1, 3)

Henry, Stephen (issue 6)

Fonseca, Louis (issue 3)

Hate/Artley, Jed (issue 2, 3, 5, 8)

Hight, Josh (issue 2, 3, 5, 8)

Kas, Hanna (issue 8)

Kirby, Gerry (issue 5, 6)

Leech, Felix (issue 1)

Leech, Frances (issue 1, 2)

Matheron, Christian (issue 1, 3, 6)

Macrae, Elspeth Annie (issue 5, 8)

Martinson, Henforthe (issue 5)

McClarity, Spike (issue 1, 2, 3)

McDonald, Keir (issue 4)

McDonald, Lucy (issue 4)

Muller, Boris (issue 6)

Oliver, Vincent (issue 2, 3, 4)

O’Sullivan, Sarah (issue 2)

O’Toole, Emer (issue 1)

Parker, Toby (issue 3)

Pigeon, Christopher (issue 2)

Postans, Gareth (issue 1, 2, 3, 5)

Rees, Tom (issue 4, 6, 8)

Rose, John (issue 8)

Ross, Lucy (issue 1, 2, 3, 8)

Rueben, James (issue 5)

Savager, David (issue 3, 8)

Simpson, Arrabella (issue 8)

Sparrow, Sina (issue 5)

Summers, Phoebe (issue 2)

Taysom, Russell (issue 2, 4, 6, 8)

Titterton, James (issue 6)

Twigger-Holroyd, Amy (issue 5)

Waller, Daryl (issue 1, 3)

Wanklyn, Siobhan Joan (issue 4)

Watkins, Llew (issue 1, 3, 4, 5, 8)

White, Chris (issue 8)

Wilding, Stacey (issue 6)

Williams, Gareth Mostyn (issue 1, 3, 4, 5, 8)

Woods, Rosie (previously Rosie Freeman)  (issue 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8)

Wright, Ffion (issue 5)

NB issue 7 is currently excluded from this list until such a time as I find a copy

Dewey Decimal System (paperback) was pitched as contemporary poetry on the subject of the sum total of human knowledge, filtered through my solipsistic viewpoint and the conceit of using prompts from the Dewey Decimal System of Library Classification. There was an expanded second edition with a bit more biography at the back. The poems took the forms of thoughts, sometimes broken over lines, sometimes not. This first edition had a black and white cover, the second was reproduced with colour.

Foliage was a photography zine of black and white photos of plants taken on my phone

SCreeZine was a fanzine roughly in the Gravity mould but renamed. It came out in summer 2022 and was put together entirely by myself to the detriment of my mental health. I was very happy with the breadth and variety of contributions from my peers and contacts, and aimed to make 200 but in actual fact made about 80.

Test Card was a zine made with the conceit that its purpose was to test our new printer. We must have been fairly confident it was going to work, because we put a shout out on social media for visual contributions from artists we knew. The submissions were interesting and varied. The zine was given away free.

Get Well Soon was a record of the drawings I made in residence at an installation I’d made in a pop-up show in a shop in Maylord Orchards for our Masters’ studies. I used NLP techniques to reexperience dissociative and disordered mental states I’d felt during my psychoses. The drawings are very crude, and basic, with wordplay and loosely associative connections made in them. This was a numbered edition of 50.

The vast majority of Desk Publishing’s output has been either my own work wholly or collating a variety of artists’ work under my stewardship. Gareth T Postans’ Dark Tales was the first publication of stories that Desk Publishing put out from another single writer. Gareth broke his ankle during lockdown and wasn’t able to go on his daily run, which he needed for his mental health. I advised him to write short stories. He liked the idea, and turned over a book’s worth of microfiction over the course of three months at a rate of 3 a day, which I laid out and typeset. Russell Taysom generously contributed the eye-catching cover image. We announced the book on Kickstarter with a goal of selling 100 copies. There was a USP in which Gareth (for a larger pledge) would accept thematic prompts or allow readers to suggest characters. In this sense, the book was not only crowd funded but in a way crowd written! Gareth included a story about me and Johnny Burrage having a trip to Mars to see the three-breasted woman from Total Recall. It was a very entertaining book and perhaps annoyingly for me, Desk Publishing’s biggest success! Really I’m pleased we did well with this book.

“Still Here (20 Years Later)” does what it says on the tin, and was the result of a callout for a response to that sentence as a prompt, which as usual was suggested as something to be interpreted as loosely or creatively as contributers desired. Many of the contributors were the usual suspects from the Gravity days as well as some new faces.

WhatsUpp zine was presented as a document of a conceptual zine that existed for the duration of a specific WhatsApp group to which people were gathered and requested that people added art and photos etc. The “zine” was the whatsapp group. In reality, lots of people were overwhelmed by the comments and sense of humour clashes in the group, but it was fun.

NOT ART ZINE – a response to a call out for things that were not art. (PDF below)

This zine was created by Elizabeth Campbell who photographed skips around the Whitecross area of Hereford, in a topographic study of the metal disposal bins and their surroundings. All photos were taken in motion, except the last one in which the skip itself was moving.