celebrating Tony Frazer

On Saturday afternoon at the Swedenborg Hall a celebration was held for Tony Frazer’s sixty-fourth birthday. At least this was the ostensible occasion but what it really represented was a unanimous vote of thanks to Tony for his work as a publisher over the years. I can’t imagine that many publishers would attract such a crowd of well-wishing authors. It says a lot about Tony that he could do this. My own experience with Shearsman Press began when Gael Turnbull sent a long poem of mine to the Shearsman magazine (at that time a smaller stapled affair). Tony published it though it took up some two-thirds of the issue. I discovered on Shearsman’s website that Tony had recommended my books (along with those of so many others) and had suggested that it would be good to see The Ash Range back in print. In 2005 he took up the project, producing at the same time a book of selected poems, Compared To What. Picador Australia had done an excellent job on the first edition of The Ash Range. There was one typo that I could trace. Tony’s Shearsman volume has no errors. Care is not a word that is always associated with publishers. The whole Shearsman corpus exhibits it. Above is Tony (right) with one of the editors of the marvellous online festschrift, Martin Anderson.