Rochford Press and Rochford Street Review wish everyone a happy and creative New Year.

2018 has been a period of transition: Rochford Street Review (RSR) was put on hold for a period of time while we examined options at making it more sustainable and engaging. We also looked at the role of Rochford Press, the publisher behind RSR, a series of chapbooks and the very occasional P76 Magazine

The outcome is a new format and renewed sense of excitement as the Press heads into 2019.

Rochford Street Review

1. Rochford Street Review will look a little different in 2019. Since the beginning of 2012 we have published 25 on-line issues, with close to 800 reviews, articles and discussion pieces and we have had over 180,000 visitors from around the world. We think this is a pretty impressive achievement and one which we can build on, but it also needs to be sustainable, especially if we continue to be ignored by the various funding bodies. So from Issue 26 we will look a little different:

• At the start of each quarter we will call for submissions and the journal will be published at the end of the quarter over a week to ten-day period. The call out will be for reviews and articles, together with creative work (poetry, prose artwork etc). We will continue to be a Journal of Australian & International cultural reviews, writing, art news and criticism.
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• We recognise, however, that there are some things that have an immediacy, that can’t really wait until the issue comes out (reviews of exhibitions or films for example). Items that are time sensitive will be published as appropriate in a new on-line feature called The Rochford Plateau and incorporated in the Review at the end of the quarter.
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• We will be reviewing our current system of subscriptions. While these have provided valuable support to us over the last two years they have barely covered our costs (we have just, for example had to pay out around $250 dollars for Web hosting and domain registration for 2019) and have made it difficult to pay contributors. While access to the review will remain free we be will looking at how to “suggest” to readers how they could subscribe to the journal. We will also be actively perusing other models of funding including crowd funding models to support payment to contributors etc.

Rochford Press

You may have noticed that Rochford Press has now dropped the ‘Street’ from its name. Following the move of the Press to the Blue Mountains, the physical connection to a street in inner Sydney became purely nostalgic, besides, when Mark Roberts came up with a name in 1982 for the Press while living in Rochford Street, Erskineville, he modelled it on Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press, so-called as they lived in Hogarth Place at the time.

For the past few years the Press has mainly been concerned with publishing a series of small, hand-produced chapbooks. While we will continue to produce these chapbooks into 2019, we will also be looking at other projects of literary, cultural and political importance. The first of these will be the publication of Rae Desmond Jones’ final collection of poetry The End of the Line. Rae worked on this collection during the last year of his life and we are particularly proud to be working with his family and friends in publishing this very important and uniquely curated collection.

The End of the Line will be available for prelaunch sales within the next week or so if you want to be added to a mailing list to be advised on available and launch details please email contact@rochfordstreetpress.com

We thank you for your support in the past and look forward to an exciting 2019 and beyond.

 – Linda Adair & Mark Roberts

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