The Orderly Demise of the Hedgehog

In September 2017 Hedgehog began on a spreadsheet, developing into a plan based upon the idea that if I could find 100 like minded poetry lovers to join, what became, the Cult of the Spiny Hog, it would allow us to publish a lot of poetry collections and anthologies, without any kind of Arts Funding, or my developing the publisher’s twitch you see on the faces of all those sitting behind piles of unsold books at literary fayres across the land.

It sounds obvious, but I aimed to publish books and pamphlets of a quality that we could all be proud of, and most importantly, all of the poets would receive their royalties up front in the form of books they could sell and would retain all of their publication rights.

The famous ‘if I go under a bus…’ clause.

Of course the weakness in this was me – sat in the middle – the one-man-band – but even with that handicap, amazingly it worked and until Covid and ultimately Brexit came along and changed the world.

Whilst it never ran smoothly, and I often got buried by the mass of emails I couldn’t keep on top of, publish poetry we did and I am very proud of the vast number of collections, conversations and anthologies that may not have been out there otherwise.

But the world did change and I’ve belatedly realised that I no longer have the time, health, wealth or energy to prop it up and keep it going, and so I’m sad to say that our 31st Cult, running from October until December 2025 will be our final one.

And of course it has never just been about the Cult and so our final collections and anthologies will be published by the end of March 2026, by which time we’ll have published 300 book-shaped-objects, an average of three every month, since the first edition of our short-lived magazine ARFUR came out on the 30th of March 2018.

Well, we all need a little symbolism.

It is a little overwhelming to consider, I have to say.

So I just wanted to say many thanks to all the poets I have published or will publish as Hedgehog, cheers to everybody that joined the Cults that have funded all of these fine things and I’m sorry that I couldn’t have done a better job with it all, but this is only the beginning of the end as I intend to make our final Cult a doozy, and am looking forward to introducing you to some quite brilliant collections and anthologies over the next six months.

Many thanks to everybody that supported this fool’s errand.

Mark

 

Key Dates for the curious:

Hedgehog web site launched : 29th September 2017
First publication launched ARFUR #1 : 30th March 2018
First Book launched: 16th April 2018
Final Cult & Competitions: 1st October – 31st December 2025
Final Books published by: 30th March 2026

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