We are so excited to announce Livia Franchini’s first poetry collection – and our twelth title – Our Available Magic. In Our Available Magic, poems and short poetic prose fold across 42 carefully observed pages that are insightful, fresh and craftily bold.

“In August the dust was deafening, all things dry. Small anxieties of high summer. Drops of water from your plastic bottle cutting circles like coins on the pavement. Eating a tomato from the hand in an empty apartment. Stand in the corridor, think of all the other flats stacked below you, the ones above you, all empty. When you hear her car pull in, cross the street running.”
–from Estate

Livia Franchini is a writer and translator from Tuscany, Italy. She has translated Natalia Ginzburg, James Tiptree Jr. and Michael Donaghy among others. Her poetry has appeared in 3 a.m. magazine, Funhouse, LESTE, Spells: 21st Century Occult Poetry (Lingua Ignota, 2018), Wretched Strangers (Boiler House Press, 2018) among others. Her debut novel Shelf Life will be published in English by Doubleday in August 2019 and in Italian by Libri Mondadori in Spring 2020.

THE LAUNCH
The book will be launched with a reading from Livia and special guests on Tuesday 9 April at Pages of Hackney – one of the best independent bookshops in London – we’d love to see you there! Please note that while this event is free to attend, space is limited so please RSVP via Eventbrite here if you’d like to join us.

PREORDER TODAY
The first 50 preorders will ship with a 58mm badge and Makina bookmark. We also offer a Collect from Makina option via the website for local customers.

OTHER THINGS

I’ve been busy working on a number of projects this year – including upcoming titles with David Moore, Maike Hale-Jones, Martha Orchard and Angus Carlyle.

Good friends of Makina, Tome Records told me about an interesting collection currently being published online as the Dalston Rio Tape/Slide archive. The account is updated most days and is full of wonderful ’80s work by photographer Alan Denney – I am hooked – the photographs (which were recently discovered in the basement of the Rio Cinema) have so much joy and fun within them.

I have been looking forward to Paul Reas’ monograph Fables of Faubus (GOST publishing) for what feels like years now. I first saw his documentary photographic work for the project I Can Help on a poster at work about 15 years ago and it felt electrifying. The book is very beautifully put together with several great essays and includes earlier projects by Reas in large colour reproductions that do so much justice to his works – much of them lit with bright flash in daylight on a medium format camera.

The People on the Street is an interesting new bookworkby photographer Nigel Shafran that tackles homelessness in London but without showing a single homeless person in it. The book is bound in polystyrene and contains 52 images. You can buy a copy (all proceeds to homelessness charities) here.

Richard Phoenix‘s DIY as Privilege (published by The Fringe and Underground Music Group at Goldsmiths) pamphlet is an essential 13 point read of what Phoenix has “learnt over the past 12 years being involved with supporting people with learning disabilities”. Buy this, share it widely and put it up at work  on the noticeboard.

I just got a parcel from the essential Dostoyevsky Wannabe publishers (amazing project using print on demand models) and am currently reading the writer and critical theorist Isabel Waidner’s We Are Made Of Diamond Stuff and now I can’t wait to read Gaudy Bauble. Give Dostoyevsky Wannabe everything you have!

Lastly, we are delighted that Patrick Doyle‘s book, Max was recently featured on It’s Nice That and obtained by The Whitney Museum of American Art. Thank you to all who supported the project – in particular Marion Herbain and Owen Myers who helped coordinate the book and also to Paul Sammut, Roxanne Clifford, Helen Skinner, Good Press and Monorail and The White Cubicle Gallery. Keep your eyes peeled for a reprint (again with proceeds to the LA LGBT Center). We love you Patrick.

Thank you for reading

Robin x