Bio

Punk Dust Poetry is a press / publisher of poetry books.
Our first release was Rebel Blood Cells, a 2023 pamphlet by Jamie Woods.
We are based in Swansea, Wales, UK.
We don’t set out to make any money on the books we sell, and if we do, it goes to charity after taxes, envelopes, and any additional costs incurred in the manufacture / promotion of the products.
We have raised money for Leukaemia Care UK, Palestine Red Crescent Society, and Medical Aid for Palestinians.

Buy and Sell our Books

We are struggling our socks off to get distribution. It’s not easy when you’re small.
If you can’t get our books via conventional methods, then please email us on punkdustpoetry@gmail.com and will happily offer you the best discount price we can, while still making sure we fulfil our commitment to charitable giving and fairly compensating our authors.

The Name

We took our name from the poem Dusting by Richard Gwyn, from his collection Walking on Bones.
“You run your finger down a ledge and it returns covered in the filth of 1976. Punk dust. It is now the twenty-first century.”
It means a lot to us, both the poem, and the concept.
Punk Dust Poetry was conceived in 1976, damn it.
We are that filth. We grew up in a world where punk had already happened.

Manifesto

How do you rebel when your father had longer hair than you will ever have?
How do you smash the system when algorithms and firewalls and the rising costs of living prevent you even getting access to a sledgehammer?
How do you protest when you can’t leave your home?
How do you stand up and speak when you’re too anxious to be in a crowd, when society isn’t accessible, when you haven’t the time or the energy or the platform because life is challenging enough as it is?
How do you get heard when there are seven billion other voices out there shouting, pleading, crying, celebrating at the same time?

Punk Dust Poetry believes in poetry from voices that are often ignored and side-lined.
We believe in poetry as a form of protest.
We believe in poetry as a form of personal expression.
We believe in the raw power of poetry.
We believe in love and kindness, despite everything.
We love the poetry of urban decay.
We love the poetry of desperation.
We love the poetry of the inner workings of confused, frustrated, tired minds.
We love the poetry that tries to make sense of the 21st Century and the mess we’re in.

Production

Punk Dust Poetry is always looking for ethical business partners. We want to use recycled materials where possible, and try to avoid chopping down trees when it could be an email.

Unfortunately we are squarely based in the UK, and don’t have the dexterity or time to pursue an overseas distribution network. We haven’t even worked that out for the UK! As such we make use of Amazon’s KDP infrastructure for International book sales, print on demand and Kindle eBooks. These are the best tools we have found so far. If anyone can suggest a cheaper / more ethical / more accessible means of doing print on demand with a global reach, then please get in touch, we’d love to know.

We will no longer produce new UK physical books with Amazon, and are actively moving production of our older books away from there. Amazon are not perfect, neither are Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Twitter X, Facebook. But this is the playground we’re in, you pick your battles. We won’t use X anymore, or do events in C*n*m* & C* in Swansea, and we’re done with Amazon’s record of workers rights, coupled with the damage it does to the high street and our beloved book shops.

Ideally we’d seize the means of production, but we live in a capitalist world where postage seems to get higher every day and the cost of printing hundreds of books is ridiculous. The overheads! The trees! We could photocopy and cut and staple them all together and send everything from the post office par avion every day, but as much as we admire this approach, it is not feasible. This model also makes it easier for us to reach a global audience for our authors, and makes it super easy to get a decent return on our books. Again, this is for our authors – we don’t make any money on the books we sell, and if we do, it goes to charity after taxes, envelopes, and any additional costs incurred in the manufacture / promotion of the products.