About Smokestack Books

Smokestack was founded and edited by Andy Croft. He has worked in university adult education and community writing projects, in over 400 schools and a dozen prisons. He ran the Writearound Community Writing Festival in Cleveland (1989-2000), the T-junction International Poetry Festival in Middlesbrough (2014-18) and the Ripon Poetry Festival (2017-24). He wrote a monthly poetry column in the Morning Star from 2004-22, and for many years edited the ‘poem of the week’ feature in the paper. He helped run Teesside community-publishers Mudfog Books from 1993 to 2003, and edited Smokestack Books from 1004-2024. Writing Residencies include the Hartlepool Headland, the Great North Run, the Southwell Poetry Festival and the Combe Down Stone Mines Project.

His books include Red Letter Days, Out of the Old Earth, A Weapon in the Struggle, Selected Poems of Randall Swingler, After the Party, Forty-six Quid and a Bag of Dirty Washing, Bare Freedom, The Years of Anger and The Privatisation of Poetry.

His books of poetry include Nowhere Special, Gaps Between Hills (with Mark Robinson), Headland, Just as Blue, Great North, Comrade Laughter, Ghost Writer, Sticky, Three Men on the Metro (with W.N. Herbert and Paul Summers), Nineteen Forty-eight (with Martin Rowson), Les éléphants de Mudfog, Letters to Randall Swingler and The Sailors of Ulm. Edited collections include Red Sky at Night (with Adrian Mitchell), North by North East (with Cynthia Fuller), Not Just a Game (with Sue Dymoke), The Night Shift (with Michael Baron and Jenny Swann), A Modern Don Juan (with Nigel Thompson), Speaking English and Smokestack Lightning.