Bloodaxe … what an arresting name for a poetry publisher. I may have first come across Neil Astley’s name when my wife gave me the second anthology in the Bloodaxe Staying Alive series, Being Alive, as a Valentine’s Day present. In such an enormous volume, you could not help but find poetry that you liked. Coincidence or not … but 2004 was also the first year that I started writing poetry since my teens. I haven’t stopped since. So when I heard that Julian Jordon had secured Neil’s services as our competition judge, I was properly impressed.

In the lockdown year of 2020, Write Out Loud conducted a wide-ranging email interview with Neil Astley, to coincide with publication of the fourth volume in the anthology series, Staying Human. In that interview he explained that “the many responses we’ve received from readers and reviews of books in the Staying Alive anthology series – and for the Bloodaxe output as a whole – have shown great appreciation and enthusiasm for the wider range of poetry we’ve made available from around the world”. But Neil didn’t claim sole credit for pushing at the boundaries of poetry, of course, and acknowledged the role of other publishers, as well as festivals, live events, and the internet.  

Bloodaxe has also published a number of other memorable anthologies, including The Hundred Years’ War, Land of Three Rivers, Soul Food and Soul Feast. 

What will Neil be looking for as the judge of our competition? He has said: “I am most interested in subject matter, breadth of vision, engagement with language, and a lively interplay of intellect and emotion. I want to be grabbed by a writer doing something different. Not just well written but an original voice.”

Neil is a former journalist, who gave up that trade after suffering a near-death experience in 1974 in Australia, while working as a sub-editor on the Northern Territory News, trapped under a collapsed house in the wake of a cyclone. The experience confirmed his desire to go to university to study English literature with a view to working in publishing as an editor.

I’m still in awe of Neil Astley, and in admiration for all that he’s done in opening the gates of contemporary poetry to a much bigger audience - and quite often bump into him these days, now I live in the north-east, at events such as Berwick literary festival, Newcastle Centre for Literary Arts, and last year’s launch of TS Eliot-shortlisted Katrina Porteous’s collection Rhizodont at Barter Books in Alnwick.

Bloodaxe publishes up to 30 new titles a year by a range of new and established writers from Britain, Ireland, America and many other countries, including poetry in translation and proportionally more collections by women poets than any other British imprint. It was founded in Newcastle by Neil Astley in 1978, and was originally based in offices on Newcastle’s Quayside for many years, and later behind the station. Its main office is now at South Park, Hexham, Northumberland.

And the name Bloodaxe? The publisher is named after Erik Bloodaxe, the last Viking king of independent Northumbria, and who features in Briggflatts by Basil Bunting - a remarkable poet that you become much more aware of, once you move to the north-east.