Poetry Books:

• The Sex of Art (London: North and South, 1988)
• Hula Hoop (London: Other Press, 1993)
• Porous, an art book by Irma Irsara, with words by FP (London: Irma Irsara, 1995)
• Linocut (London: Oasis, 1997)
• Private writings (Exeter: Maquette, 1998)
• Neither the one nor the other, a collaboration with the poet Elizabeth James (London: Form Books, 1999. CD version also available)
• Automatic cross stitch, a collaboration with the artist Irma Irsara (London: Other Press, 2000)
• Somerset letters (London: Oasis, 2002)
• Paravane: new and selected poems 1996-2003 (Cambridge: Salt, 2004)
• Myne: new and selected poems and prose, 1976 - 2005 (Exeter: Shearsman, 2006)
• Lines of sight  (Exeter: Shearsman, 2009)
• Stone settings, with Tilla Brading (Minehead: Odyssey Books, 2010)
• An Alphabet for Alina, with Peterjon Skelt (Hereford: Five Seasons, 2012)

Selected Anthologies:

• Prospect into Breath: interviews, ed. Peterjon Skelt (North and South, 1991)
• Climbing through Fire, editor (Other Press, 1993)
• The Smallest Poetry Festival in the World, ed. Robert Sheppard (Ship of Fools, 1994)
• Feminist subjects, multi-media: new approaches to criticism and creativity, ed. Penny Florence & Dee Reynolds (Manchester University Press, 1995)
• Odyssey 20, Spring 1996, guest ed. Elizabeth Bletsoe
• Sub-Voicive Poetry 20, 1996; 24, 1997
• Angelaki, 5(1), April 2000, ed. Anthony Mellors & Robert Smith
• Oasis, 100, June 2000, ed. Ian Robinson
• In the Company of Poets, ed. John Rety  Hearing Eye, 2003
• Wozu Vogel, Bucher, Jazz: Gedichte aus England, ed Hans Thill  Heidelberg: Verlag Das Wunderhorn, 2005
• Gertrude Stein Awards in Innovative Poetry   ed Douglas Messerli, Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2006
• >2: an anthology of new collaborative poetry  ed.  Sheila E. Murphy and M. L. Weber Colorado: SugarMule.com, 2007
• quickflip: a How2 e-chap ed Frances Kruk, 2007
• The Reality Street Book of Sonnets, ed Jeff Hilson (Hastings: Reality Street, 2008)
• Infinite Difference: other poetries by UK women poets, edited by Carrie Etter (Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2010)
• The Ground Aslant: an anthology of radical landscape poetry, edited by Harriet Tarlo (Exeter: Shearsman, 2011)
• Entanglements: new ecopoetry, ed. David Knowles and Sharon Blackie (Uig: Two Ravens, 2012) 
• Cusp: recollections of poetry in transition, ed. Geraldine Monk (Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2012)
• Catechism: poems for Pussy Riot, ed. Mark Burnhope and others (London: PEN, 2012)

Critical writings

• MA dissertation on 'The convergence of art and poetry in the work of Guillaume Apollinaire and Ezra Pound' (Univ Sussex, 1976)
• MPhil thesis on contemporary French poet and art critic, Yves Bonnefoy  (Univ East Anglia, 1986).
• "Surrealism and Women, edited by Mary Ann Caws", Word & Image, 9(1), 1993, pp. 90-92
• "Cultural and poetic constructedness: review of Nicole Brossard", PQR (Poetry Quarterly Review, 8, 1997, pp. 2-3
• "The grace of being common: the search for the implicit subject in the work of Denise Riley", Southfields 5(2), 1999, pp. 47-55.  Also in How2, September 1999.
• "Dream drover by Geraldine Monk: a review" in How2, February 2000
• "foil: defining poetry 1985-2000, edited by Nicholas Johnson: a review" in How2, March 2001, as above
• "Collaboration: Neither the one nor the other by Elizabeth James and Frances Presley, with an introduction on working practice", in How2, Fall 2001, as above
• "Neither the one nor the other: aspects of performance within a feminist collaboration", in Additional Apparitions (ed. David Kennedy & Keith Tuma, Cherry on the Top, 2002), pp 172-180.
• "September 11: a view from London", part of "Poetry post 9/11: witnessing dissent" in How2, Spring 2002, as above
• "Nomadic: a folio for Fanny Howe", PQR, 19, Spring 2002, pp. 19-20
• "Sign language and babble: David Miller and Richard Price" Poetry London, 51 Summer 2005, pp. 45-47
• 'Writing outdoors and outside: Harriet Tarlo and elizabeth james'  Poetry London, 52, Autumn 2005, pp. 33-36
• "Common pink metaphor: from The Landscape Room to Somerset Letters", in How2, 2008
• "Ring a-ring a-rosy: girls' games in the poetry of Geraldine Monk", in Salt companion, ed Scott Thurston, 2007
• "Humour and gravity: the poetry of Alice Notley"  Poetry Salzburg Review, 12, Autumn 2007, pp 173-178
• "Inventories", Poetry Review Winter 2008  pp 102-105
• "Briggflatts, by Basil Bunting and The Land Between, by Wendy Mulford", Poetry Wales, Winter 2009/10 pp 59-61
• "Notes on 'Fluid Canvas'" Forum for Modern Language Studies, 46(4) 2010, pp. 388-390
• "Hazel Eardley-Wilmot: a search for origins", Exmoor Review, 52, 2011, pp. 48-50 and longer version in Junction Box, 1, 2011

Translation

• One of a group of poets co-translating the long modernist poem by Paul Van Ostaijen 'Bezette Stad', organised by Karlien Van den Beukel.
• Salt on the eye: selected poems  Hanne Bramness  (co-translated by Hanne Bramness and Frances Presley)  Exeter: Shearsman, 2007
• Outside the Institution: selected poems  by Lars Amund Vaage, co-translated by Hanne Bramness and Frances Presley  (Exeter: Shearsman, 2010)
• No film in the camera  by Hanne Bramness, translated by Frances Presley and Hanne Bramness  (Exeter: Shearsman, 2013)

Journals and websites

• My work has appeared in a wide variety of journals, both in print and online, including Poetry Review and Poetry Wales. 
• Websites include: Shearsman Publishing; Salt Publishing; British Electronic Poetry; Poetry International; and my own website www.francespresley.co.uk.
• I was commissioned to collaborate with the American poet Julia Cohen for www.likestarlings.com

Naked boy

 

1

nest more
perforce
range up

naked boy
nay   nay    ced
head truculent cede

it has its spine
like a boy leaning
like a boy stripped bare

a green coat for the quartz
a pelt
let us pelt

 

2

the naked boy
rests into the stone
put him up against

what did he say

he's disappearing
he's going to turn right
he's climbing over the gate

two bodies that prop each other up
one animal one human

 

3

fossilised face
worn down
ossified
turn away

 

we have gone down
we have gathered
we have emerged

watching the wind farm

leave
drink
protest

high flown pheasant

 

4

he holds a lap
it shapes a lap

shIPS that we need?

SHAPES

shiplap
just the common name for over
lapping
slates    and  plates

we have overlapped

 

at Naked Boy, a Neolithic standing stone on Exmoor
12 April 2007

 

from Lines of Sight

c

 

corn or finding spaces

to insert a body a core as if

in sand  cupped corn crushed

sinking body  singing cornflower

at the end of summer   corn  o tone

 

cactus corner a lexis can spike

can needle the finger that would

touch that would explore a corner

cupboard capacity to close to exclude

she keeps a collection that says look out

 

john barleycorn is dead

they came and cut him down

but a bloodless combine has left

three days stubble and the capacity to

cut you are too cutting and break the code

'Frances Presley's writings range from vivid human stories to a bareness where it's as though one is witnessing the process of creating language. We're invited to enter a landscape of intimate histories, past and present: the marvels and mysteries of other people's lives, their 'ordinary' lives, and the natural world that surrounds them. It's a poetry that pulls us in, that involves us in conversations and questions. There's an immediacy that makes us look again at our shared world.' -- Lee Harwood

'Frances Presley is a splendid and authentic poet whose work shines with exact edge and luminous presence of what she notices and chooses to translate into language' -- Kathleen Fraser

'Presley's poems are minesweepers working below the surface to explode the breezy assumptions of Thatcherist consumer capitalism, or to explore what has already caved in' -- Meredith Quartermain

'Frances Presley's writing engages with serious political concerns underscored with deeply personal experience. The world 'out there' of unrest, injustice and conflict is not something to be compartmentalised but co-exists with the domestic on equal terms. A summer flower or childhood memory in Somerset blossoms next to the exploding horrors of semtex. She is not a poet to shy away from life but pushes language into its face until it yelps.' -- Geraldine Monk

'In Automatic cross stitch Presley achieves an intricate interstitching of voices, narratives and linguistic textures. She exploits the multivalency of the language of cloth, allowing individual words to raise questions of body politics.' -- Harriet Tarlo

See also:

‘Go Quotiently: contemporary British poetry from Shearsman’, by G. C. Waldrep, Kenyon review, Spring 2012

 ‘Pattern needs another stone: Lines of Sight’ by Anna Reckin Jacket 40 (2010)

 ‘Remembering & interpretation: Lines of Sight’, by Steve Spence Stride

 ‘Leading off the path: a review of Frances Presley, Myne: new & selected poems and prose’ by Clive Bush Jacket 31 (October 2006)