From JACKIE WILLS, poet, Royal Literary Fund Fellow University of Surrey 2009-10; University of Sussex 2010-12
I am writing because like many people, I was shocked at the Arts Council decision to remove Arc Publications from its list of regularly funded organisations.
Arc published my first collection in 1995, which was shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize and selected as a Poetry Book Society recommendation. My third collection, Fever Tree, secured me a place in the Mslexia's 2004 list of the best new women writers of the decade.
I am proud to be with Arc, respected internationally for its publication of established and emerging UK writers who include Michael Hulse, Katherine Gallagher, the late Julia Darling, Michelene Wandor and more recently, Lorna Thorpe and James Byrne, as well as for its inspirational list of writers from elsewhere in the world in English and in translation.
Some of the most respected writers in the UK have contributed critical introductions to Arc collections - they include Nobel prize winner, Seamus Heaney, Fiona Sampson and Penelope Shuttle. The preface to Amarjit Chandan's Sonata for Four Hands is written by John Berger the author of one of the most influential books on art, Ways of Seeing.
Arc is also responsible for the first UK publication of Palestinian writer, Mourid Barghouti: Midnight and Other Poems, with a preface by Ruth Padel and for publishing the unique French poet, Valerie Rouzeau translated by an equally impressive British poet, Susan Wicks.
The sheer range of Arc's list and its geographical stretch are unrivalled. Without Arc, English readers would have missed the opportunity of reading the work of so many important poets writing in languages other than English. I believe Arc, in the way it showcases world writers, is the literary equivalent of Peter Gabriel's Real World records.
That is only part of the story - Arc's 40 years in poetry publishing has drawn many other important voices to it, some experimental, like Bob Cobbing and Jeff Nuttall,some who are among the most well-known writers in the UK, such as Adrian Henri, D M Thomas and of course the unique Ivor Cutler.
It is hard to understand how the Arts Council could fail to continue supporting an independent publisher with such a history, such an important international vision and energetic commitment to poets and poetry.