poetry / prose / interdisciplinary projects / anthologies

Creating new possibilities in the publishing of fiction and poetry through a flexible, interdisciplinary approach and the production of unique and beautiful books.

PROTOTYPE 1

The first instalment of Prototype’s annual anthology: a space for new work, open to all and free from formal guidelines or restrictions. Poetry, prose, visual work and experiments in between.

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Try To Be Better

ed. Sam Buchan-Watts & Lavinia Singer

A multidisciplinary anthology of art, poetry, prose and collaborations foregrounding experiment and process. Inspired by and responding to the work of W. S. Graham, Try To Be Better consists of original commissions from a diverse range of writers, artists and thinkers responding to prompts Graham left himself in notebooks and letters.

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Forthcoming Titles

Fatherhood

by Caleb Klaces

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(type 2 // prose)

The debut novel from Caleb Klaces, combining prose and poetry in an experimental work of verse fiction. Moving between history, memory and autobiography, its shifting form captures a life and language split open by fatherhood. An experiment in rewriting masculinity, it asks how bodies can share both a house and a planet.

Plainspeak

by Astrid Alben

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(type 1 // poetry)

‘Oh poet I love you Poet if no one else will love you Poet / without you I am shadowless the naked parts of canvas.’
In Plainspeak, readers will experience Astrid Alben’s unorthodox alter-ego-thinking-out-louder poems with the same exhilaration as they might engage with art or jazz. This sequence of poems plays with formal boundaries, exploring gendered linguistic identity and the lyrical poetic voice.

alphabet poem: for kids!

text by Emily Critchley & Michael Kindellan; collages by Alison Honey Woods

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(type 3 // interdisciplinary projects)

An experimental collaboration inspired by and dedicated to the poets’, artist’s and publisher's children. Surreal, imaginative, playful and unlike any picture book of poetry you’ve read or seen before, alphabet poem is absolutely for kids! no matter how old they really are.  

(type 1 // poetry)

Type 1 is the foundation upon which Prototype has been built. From debut collections to resurrected manuscripts and works in translation, our aim is to discover poetry which is ambitious, unafraid, expansive and free, and our books are liberated from formal restrictions.

(type 2 // prose)

Type 2 encompasses an evolving range of prose works, from novels to short story collections, and those works less easily defined by genre but using prose as their medium. It takes a broad and open-minded approach to the various forms taken by experimental fiction.

(type 3 // interdisciplinary projects)

Type 3 is the natural evolution of the flexible approach we take to poetry and prose. A response to the exciting and necessary demand for interdisciplinary and collaborative publications which require new and innovative ways of thinking about writing and publishing.

(type 4 // anthologies)

Type 4 is the home of prototype, an anthology of new work published once a year, capturing that year’s activity and looking ahead at what’s to come. It is also a space for commissioning and inviting anthologies of original works of prose, poetry and collaborative artforms.

Featured Titles

Established in 2019 to continue and develop the work begun by Test Centre, Prototype is an independent publisher working across genres and disciplines, committed to discovering and sharing work that exists outside the mainstream. Each publication is unique in its form and presentation, and the aesthetic of each object is considered critical to its production. Test Centre’s back catalogue is the foundation of Prototype's future archive, with all past publications available here.