Luke Allan - Editor
Oxford, UK
Expert editor, copy-editor and editorial consultant specialising in poetry, essays and literary fiction.
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Overview
I live and work in Oxford, where I run a publishing house and a magazine. Before that I worked as managing editor for Carcanet Press and the poetry magazine PN Review. I'm an experienced developmental and copy editor, with skills across the board from proofreading to book production. I've edited about two hundred published books.
I specialize in poetry, having worked on many award-winning collections. Past authors include Vahni Capildeo, Gillian Clarke, Elaine Feinstein, Ian MacMillan, Sinéad Morrissey, Stanley Moss and Stephen Romer. Books I've worked on have gone on to win the Forward Prize, the Ted Hughes Award, the Costa Prize, the Shine Strong Award, and the Seamus Heaney Prize. As well as poetry I've edited numerous novels, novellas, and collections of essays. Recent prose books include Gabriel Josipovici's novella The Cemetery in Barnes and his collection of essays The Teller and the Tale.
I hold degrees in Literature and Creative Writing from the Universities of East Anglia and Oxford. I've given talks and seminars for students and the public at various universities, including Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Oxford. I judged the 2015 Singapore Prize for Poetry and the 2017 PN Review Prize for Poetry and Translation.
My work includes developmental editing, in which I help writers to refine style and structure; editorial commissioning and assessment; and copy-editing/proofreading. I work on poetry, novels, essays and anthologies. I can also handle book production, working with the printer to see books through press.
Services
Languages
English (UK)
English (US)
Fiction
Anthologies
Literature
Poetry
Short Story
Non-Fiction
Art
Biographies & Memoirs
History
Philosophy
Work experience
Managing Editor
Carcanet Press Ltd
December, 2014
–
August, 2018
(over 3 years)
Editing, designing and managing the production of forty books a year, including classics (published under the Fyfield imprint) and contemporary works. Collaborating directly with designers, typesetters, printers and authors. The press specialises in English-language poetry, but publishes a handful of works in translation each year. Books have received the Forward Prize, the Ted Hughes Award, the Seamus Heaney Prize, and the Costa Prize.
Director
Sine Wave Peak
February, 2012
–
Present
(over 6 years)
Sine Wave Peak was founded in 2012. It's a independent poetry press that publishes roughly ten books a year, specialising in new and experimental writing. It has been described by as 'one of the brightest literary presses operating today' (Aram Saroyan), publishing books that are 'beautiful, both light and deep' (Kathleen Jamie).
Manager
Studio Alec Finlay Ltd
September, 2009
–
January, 2015
(over 5 years)
Studio Alec Finlay is an international artist's studio and publisher, incorporating the imprint Morning Star. As studio manager my involved project management of large-scale public artworks, often text-based. Clients included Tate Modern, the National Trust, Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh and the University of Warwick.
Portfolio (100 selected works)
Commotion of the Birds
John Ashbery
as new unused
On Bunyah
Les Murray
one small dent top causing a minor aesthetic defect AKA minor shelf ware
Waiting for the Past
Les Murray
The clearly-focussed lyrics of Les Murray's Waiting for the Past are rich in topographies and the languages peculiar to them - wonga vines, lyre birds, gum trees, shrike thrushes, tallow boughs, boab trees, the octopus in Wylies Baths killed by sterilising chlorine. With the erasures the modern world brings, words, landscapes and lives descend to the Esperanto of the modern. The poet, with a s... read more
The Observances
Kate Miller
Observances
Muddy River: Selected Poems
Sergey Stratanovsky
as new unused
Farm by the Shore
Thomas A. Clark
as new unused
Zoology
Gillian Clarke
In Search of Dustie-Fute
David Kinloch
Steep Tea
Jee Leong Koh
The poems in Jee Leong Koh's Steep Tea are rich in detail of the worlds he explores and invents as he follows his desire for an unknown other, moving tentatively, passionately, always uncertain of himself. His language is colloquial, musical, aware of the infusion of various traditions and histories. "You go where? / I'm going from the latterly to the litany, from writs to rites." The poems sh... read more
Almost Complete Poems
Stanley Moss
new unused very minor bump to corner
Fast
Jorie Graham
Crossing the Mirror Line
Judith Willson
Collected Poems
Dennis O'Driscoll
Smoothie
Claudine Toutoungi
stack
James Davies
A Michael Hamburger Reader
Michael Hamburger
In These Days of Prohibition
Caroline Bird
Mexico in My Heart
Willis Barnstone
Willis Barnstone is a literature in himself: poet, translator, interpreter, in one year he can range from Jesus to Sappho and Borges with calm authority and good humour. He re-translates the New Testament in a version Harold Bloom describes as ‘a superb act of restoration'. Borges himself declared, ‘Four of the best things in America are Whitman's Leaves, Melville's Whale, the sonnets of Barns... read more
Set Thy Love in Order: New & Selected Poems
Stephen Romer
Set Thy Love in Order: New & Selected Poems gathers the work of some thirty years, taken from Stephen Romer's four previous collections, along with a substantial selection of new poems. The title is a Dantesque imperative as old as the Trecento: Ordina questo amore, O tu che m ami set thy love in order, o thou who lovest me. Romer's central theme is encapsulated by these words, and his prolong... read more
Raking Light
Eric Langley
Measures of Expatriation
Vahni Capildeo
as new unused
The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx
Tara Bergin
Poems
Yves Bonnefoy
To Fold the Evening Star: New And Selected Poems
Ian McMillan
as new unused
Diary of the Last Man
Robert Minhinnick
as new unused
Collected Poems
Lorna Goodison
European Hours: Collected Poems
Anthony Rudolf
City Gate, Open Up
Bei Dao
Waiting for the Nightingale
Miles Burrows
Sarajevo Roses
Rory Waterman
On Trust: A Book of Lies
James Womack
Trinity Poets: An Anthology of Poems by Members of Trinity College, Cambridge
Angela Leighton, Adrian Poole
as new unused
The Clinic, Memory: New and Selected Poems
Elaine Feinstein
Poems Without Irony
Alex Wong
as new unused
Blotter
Oli Hazzard
Cavalcanty
Peter Hughes
In Darkest Capital: Collected Poems
Drew Milne
The President of Planet Earth
David Wheatley
Complete Poems
Muriel Spark
In her foreword to All The Poems (2003) Muriel Spark wrote, 'Although most of my life has been devoted to fiction, I have always thought of myself as a poet. I do not write "poetic" prose, but feel that my outlook on life and my perceptions of events are those of a poet.' Including previously uncollected work, this new edition demonstrates her ear for the rightness of a line and her eye for th... read more
Seasonal Disturbances
Karen McCarthy Woolf
as new unused
On Balance
Sinead Morrissey
Long Pass
Joey Connolly
Winter Migrants
Tom Pickard
Through
David Herd
as new unused
Poems
Alain-Fournier
Moon for Sale
Richard Price
as new unused
Chance of a Storm
Rod Mengham
as new unused
The World Before Snow
Tim Liardet
World Before Snow
Keats Lives
Moya Cannon
Moya Cannon's new collection reaches back into the long past, showing how traces left behind - textile fragments, buried thimbles, cave paintings - enable us to make imaginative connections with our distant ancestors, emphasising the commonalities of human lives lived many centuries apart. At the heart of the book is the vital importance of art, as the means by which we give permanence to the ... read more
The Windows of Graceland
Martina Evans
The Occupant
Jane Draycott
Pandemonium
Thomas McCarthy
as new unused
The Number Poems
Matthew Welton
Playing the Octopus
Mary O'Malley
Muddy River: Selected Poems
Sergey Stratanovsky
as new unused
Herne the Hunter
Peter McDonald
Herne the Hunter is the sixth collection from one of Ireland's most accomplished lyric poets. In this new body of work, Peter McDonald deepens his interest in myth and storytelling through the legend of Herne, a phantom huntsman of English folklore. In McDonald's poetic treatment of the legend, opposing forces are held in tension: body and soul, present and past, possession and desire, death a... read more
Skies
Alison Brackenbury
The beauty of the Goucestershire landscape and sky-scape are Alison Brackenbury's commanding theme, her landscapes are historied, the skies always in vivid motion, moving towards elegy. The two World Wars and their poets are present, but also the nearer histories of family, the intimate arrest of older poems. Brackenbury's work has been featured on BBC Radio and she was recently awarded a Chol... read more
Spills
Angela Leighton
as new unused
The Observances
Kate Miller
Observances
Marrying the Ugly Millionaire: New and Collected Poems
Sophie Hannah
Marrying the Ugly Millionaire
Several Deer
Adam Crothers
Addressing themes of destruction, consumption, misogyny, gods, sex, form, failure and rock n roll, "Several Deer" is the debut collection by a Northern Irish writer as much indebted to Bob Dylan and Lana Del Rey as to Emily Dickinson and George Herbert. The poems many of them sonnets and doomed attempts at clear-eyed love poems are suspicious as to the legitimacy of the big beautiful transcend... read more
The Invisible Gift: Selected Poems
David Morley
New Selected Poems
Shuntaro Tanikawa
New Selected Poems
The Little Sublime Comedy
John Gallas
The Alexandra Sequence
John Redmond
What Must Happen
Jeffrey Wainwright
as new unused
A better tale to tell
Alec Finlay
A work of collaged contemporary history - this book-length poem is composed entirely from individuals submissions to the Smith Commission. The text brings out a range of ideas and issues in the guise of rhetorical, personal and quirky voices, juxtaposing contradictory statements.
the road north
Ken Cockburn, Alec Finlay
the road north is a word-map of Scotland, composed by Alec Finlay & Ken Cockburn as they travel through their homeland, guided by the Japanese poet Basho, whose Osu-no-Hosomichi (Narrow Road to the Deep North) is one of the masterpieces of travel literature. Ken and Alec left Edo (Edinburgh) on May 16, 2010 - the very same date that basho and his companion Sora departed in 1689 - and on their ... read more
Taigh: a wilding garden
Alec Finlay
An account of the traditions, stories, and ideas that inspired the National Memorial for Organ and Tissue Donors, a wilding garden and drystane Taigh, constructed this year in the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh.
Global Oracle
Alec Finlay
A book-length illustrated poem interweaving the bee-cults of the ancient world, most famously the Melissai of the Delphic oracle, with the science of apiology, bee communication, and the predominant 'oracle' of our era, the Navstar satellite system.
there were our own there were the others
Alec Finlay, Ken Cockburn
A book documenting 23 silent walks in remembrance of the victims of conflict to commemorate the outbreak of the First World War, 17th June - 30th August, 2014
a-ga: on mountains
Alec Finlay, Ken Cockburn
A new collection of pensée on mountains, walking and viewing, illustrated with photographs of word-mntn.
A Company of Mountains
Alec Finlay
14 conspectuses on the Isle of Skye for viewing hills and mountains. The book accompanies a blog featuring commentaries, photographs, word-mntn drawings, and illustrations.
some colour trends
Alec Finlay
A genealogy of place-names relating to colour in The Cabrach, the region of the Scottish uplands lying between the Cairngorms and Strathbogie. The area's history of settlement, transhumance and wayfaring is hinted at in its place-names, particularly those mentioning colours, which Finlay - aided by collaborators Ron Brander, Peter Drummond, and John Stuart-Murray - translates across Gaelic, Ga... read more
today today today
Alec Finlay
Poems on illness and healing, gathered over the past few years, published by Animate Projects as an artwork composed with and for the patients and staff of Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre, Glasgow.
Dirt
William Letford
Selected Poems (Fyfieldbooks)
Nancy Cunard
as new unused
Posthumous Cantos (Fyfieldbooks)
Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound's Posthumous Cantos collects unpublished pages of his great poem, drawn from manuscripts held in the archive at Yale's Beinecke Library and elsewhere. They are assembled by Pound's Italian translator, the critic and scholar Massimo Bacigalupo, into a companion book to the Cantos, running from 1917 to 1972 and including the Cantos he wrote in Italian in 1944-5. An Italian edition was... read more
Vladimir Mayakovsky: And Other Poems (Fyfieldbooks)
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Was and Is: Collected Poems
Neil Powell
as new unused
Breezeway
John Ashbery
Breezeway
In These Days of Prohibition
Caroline Bird
new unused very minor shelf wear only
Almost Complete Poems
Stanley Moss
new unused very minor bump to corner
It's About Time
Stanley Moss
as new unused
as new unused
R. F. Langley Complete Poems
Jeremy Noel-Tod
R.F. Langley is known for his meticulous observation of the natural world and his highly original voice. This volume brings together his two previous Carcanet collections, Collected Poems (2000) and The Face of It (2007), along with his celebrated but uncollected late poems, including 'To a Nightingale', which won the 2011 Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem. The book includes a biographica... read more
Dog Star Notations: Selected Poems 1999 - 2016
Hakan Sandell
Serengeti Songs
Chris McCully
as new unused
Holy Toledo!
John Clegg
The Teller and the Tale: Essays on Literature & Culture (1995-2015)
Gabriel Josipovici
‘We seem to live, intellectually and emotionally, in sealed-off universes,’ writes Gabriel Josipovici in an essay on Hebrew poetry in medieval Spain, just one in a lively multiverse of writings gathered in The Teller and the Tale. The book draws on a quarter of a century’s worth of critical reflection on modern art and literature, Biblical culture, Jewish theology, European identity, the natur... read more
Haunted House
Pierre Reverdy
Haunted House
Beyond the Barbed Wire: Selected Poems
Abdellatif Laabi
As When: A Selection
Tom Raworth
As When
as new unused
A Doctor's Dictionary: Writings on Culture and Medicine
Iain Bamforth
In this pithy abecedarium, doctor and poet Iain Bamforth takes a close look at the conflict of values embodied in what we call medicine - never entirely a science and no longer quite the art it used to be. Bamforth brings his wide experience of medicine around the world, from the high-tech American Hospital of Paris to the community health centres of Papua, together with his engaging interest ... read more
The Season's Vagrant Light: New and Selected Poems
Sheri Benning
This book marks the UK debut of Canadian poet Sheri Benning, featuring new poems alongside work previously published in Canada. Benning's early work draws on her strongly felt connection to her native landscape, rural Saskatchewan. In poems that couple sinew and roots, blood and sap, skin and stone, Benning explores an ecology of affiliation between humans and the natural world. The poems are ... read more
Herne the Hunter
Peter McDonald
Herne the Hunter is the sixth collection from one of Ireland's most accomplished lyric poets. In this new body of work, Peter McDonald deepens his interest in myth and storytelling through the legend of Herne, a phantom huntsman of English folklore. In McDonald's poetic treatment of the legend, opposing forces are held in tension: body and soul, present and past, possession and desire, death a... read more
Luke has 7 reviews
Professionalism
Quality
Value
Communication
I've worked with Luke twice and will do so again. He gave me honest feedback regarding my work and helped me see small changes I could make to enhance my writing. His feedback has been truly helpful helping me improve.
Read moreGeorge Bradley, September 2018
It has been a pleasure to work with Luke on my first collection of poems and photographs. I was especially delighted to learn that he had travelled and spent time in some of the places that feature in the collection - this was an unexpected bonus. Luke demonstrated a great sensitivity to voice in his editorial suggestions and was very helpful in his advice about formats and flow when working...
Read moreXenia Tran, September 2018
Luke Allan is such a talented editor, very professional and knows very well how to use words and poetry, I really enjoyed working with him and I would definitely highly recommend him.
Read moreDr. Hussein Kandil, September 2018
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