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UCL Special Collections launches Small Press in Residence
13 October 2025
UCL Special Collections has appointed Monitor Books as the inaugural Small Press in Residence as part of celebrations marking 60 years since UCL’s Small Press Collection was established.
Working in collaboration with the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL Special Collections has appointed publication platform Monitor Books as the 2025 UCL Small Press in Residence.
Founded in 2019, Monitor Books specialises in the publication of experimental poetry and shortform works, collaborating with designers and printers to produce bespoke editions.
During the residency Monitor Books will have access to UCL’s Small Press Collections, a studio space at the Slade School of Fine Art, and the Slade printing workshop. They will produce works in response to two types of holding from the Small Press Collection: Performance scores - poets' instructions for poetry performances which are often viewed as artworks in their own right - and Concrete Poetry, a form of experimental poetry in which design and typography play a central role in conveying meaning.
Monitor Books will take part in collaborative events with the UCL Special Collections team, including a book display marking 50 years of the small publishing press Coracle Press. In 2026 the residency will culminate in the launch of a new series of publications which will be showcased at an interdisciplinary 60-year celebration event incorporating poetry, performances and sound.
Liz Lawes, Collection Manager of the Small Press Collections said:
"The UCL Small Press Collections represent a diversity of marginal and avant-garde voices from the mid 20th century to the present, from experimental art and literature to countercultural activist groups. The collections reveal the dynamic relationships that exist between these alternative cultures and the enabling nature of independent publishing, which is in contrast to that of the mainstream. Through our Small Press in Residence we aim to not only collect the output of independent presses, but to be directly engaged in the production of that material."
Works recently published by Monitor Books include coal by former Barbican Young Poet Remi Graves, who previously collaborated with Library, Culture, Collections and Open Science (LCCOS) through “Labels of Care”. In this activity hosted at the Grant Museum of Zoology, visitors responded to prompts provided by Graves to re-write the labels for three museum specimens.
Small Press in Residence is part of broader celebrations by UCL Special Collections celebrating 60 years of collecting small press publications. Established in 1965 by UCL English Librarian Geoffrey Soar in response to a burgeoning international culture of self-publishing, UCL’s Small Press Collection contains works of global significance and was one of the first institutional collections of small press publications. It includes countercultural publications, literary magazines, experimental art and poetry in a variety of print formats.
So far, 60 years of Small Press has been marked by a poetry symposium, talks and printing workshops hosted by UCL Special Collections, with more events yet to come.