Look North Belfast Arts: & Beyond 2026
New Isles Press Issue 5: Publishing Across Shared Traditions
By Christoph Thackaberry Publisher
“Rather than treating language as a boundary, the anthology approaches English, Irish, Scots, Ulster-Scots, Manx and Welsh as meeting points; spaces of inheritance, exchange, and creative possibility.”
Independent literary publishing has long provided a space for dialogue across these islands, and anthologies remain one of its most effective forms. With the launch of New Isles Press Issue 5 as part of the Look North Belfast Arts Festival, Yellow House Publishing Ltd continues its commitment to publishing work that reflects the diversity and complexity of contemporary writing across Ireland and Britain.
New Isles Press was conceived as an anthology series to allow sustained engagement between voices that might not otherwise meet. Issue 5 brings together poets, essayists, dramatists, and critics working within shared language traditions, English, Irish, Scots, Ulster-Scots, Manx and Welsh, as well as forms that move between them. The anthology treats language not as a marker of division, but as a site of inheritance, exchange, and renewal.
The launch event places these ideas firmly in the public realm. A panel discussion chaired by historian Dr Connal Parr will explore the themes of the anthology and the wider role of independent publishing. The panel includes Dermot Bolger, Jane Coyle, Linda Ervine, and Dr Arthur Broomfield, editor of New Isles Press. Readings from contributors will return the focus to the work itself, the poems and prose that give the anthology its shape.
Publishing anthologies today is not without difficulty, yet it remains one of the most effective ways to foster meaningful literary dialogue across traditions too often kept apart. In bringing together shared languages without collapsing their differences, New Isles Press Issue 5 suggests a literary future shaped not by isolation, but by attentive and critical listening of voices within the Island of Ireland and the United Kingdom.