Mansfield Poet Laureate going global after securing deal with international agent

Richard C Bower, aged 48, who lives in Whitwell, has been signed up by One Piece agency in Beijing, who want to publish his four current books and upcoming fifth around the world in different languages – from China, to Saudi Arabia, to the USA.

Richard said: “Even now, when I say it out loud that I have an international agent, I’m still taken aback by it, I’m still taking it in.

“The nature of an agent is to open doors around the world and when he reeled off these places he could get me into as part of his opening gambit, it was very exciting.

"It’s such a milestone and an achievement in itself to get an agent and I know how hard I’ve worked to get to this point but I like to think now it’s going to pay off.

Richard currently has four books out – POSTMODERN, Sanctuary, Pleasures in the Pathless Woods and An Expedition Around My Garden, which were all published through small UK independent publisher Soulful Group, but that deal has now ended.

However, the book An Expedition Around My Garden – which is an epic poem – garnered some international attention, notably in India from professors at Visva-Bharati University in West Bengal and the online publication Gitanjali, named after a collection of poems by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore who, in 1913, became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and counted esteemed writers like WB Yeats and Ezra Pound among admirers of his work.

Richard continued: “These professors likened An Expedition Around My Garden to Tragore and they invited me over the annual celebrations in India to mark his birthday last year and that was the day my book was launched.

"Tragore is still a huge figure over in India, they celebrate his work and legacy every year and me being there with my book got me plenty of attention.

"It got me into the newspapers over there, the book was translated into the local language and it brought me to the attention of Mr Wu at One Piece, who has seen the reaction I had got in India.

"I sent him the manuscript for my latest book and he got back to me to immediately.

"The plan now is for all my books to be re-issued with a bigger publisher in the UK and there will be US edtitions of all my books, he’s talking to publishers in China about getting them all translated and published on to the Chinese market, as well as Saudia Arabia and Dubai.

Richard continued: “This is just for starters, there’s a lot more endeavour and work to come but I’m passionate about being a writer, I believe that’s what I’m here to do in life and something like this happening is just to reassuring and affirming that I’m doing the right thing.”