Because the Trent Book Shop is in Nottingham

Abstract

In 1972 Stuart Mills, co-founder of the Tarasque Press, made the following comment in the catalogue for the exhibition ‘Metaphor and Motif ’ held at Nottingham’s Midland Group Gallery:

This exhibition, in its own way, sets the balance straight. If it is seen, if the catalogue is read widely enough then it should be clear that something surprisingly consistent has been going on in Nottingham for the past few years.

This chapter is an attempt to explain some of the activities to which Mills was alluding. It is a story of an overlooked literary and artistic life in Nottingham from 1964 to 1972 which centred on the Trent Book Shop. This was a brief but significant period when avant-garde bookselling and the British Poetry Revival came to the East Midlands.