Black History of Penzance: The People and Stories That Help Us See Cornwall Differently

By Mayar Akash | Published by MAPublisher

Order a copy

What do we really know about the people of African, Asian and other minority ethnic backgrounds who lived, worked, travelled through or helped shape Penzance and the wider Penwith landscape?

Their stories are not all found in one archive. Some survive in parish registers and newspapers. Others appear in ships’ records, photographs, family papers, business histories and the recollections of people who are still here to tell their stories.

Some names are familiar. Others have been overlooked, misunderstood or remain waiting to be discovered.

In Black History of Penzance: People, Places, Lives and Connections, local author and publisher Mayar Akash brings these strands together in an investigation that begins in Penzance and follows the evidence outward.

This is not simply a book about slavery, nor is it an attempt to squeeze the whole of Black history into a single narrative. It is an exploration of people, identity, belonging and the connections that link a Cornish town to a much wider world.

And it asks a question that matters to anyone interested in local history:

Whose stories have we yet to discover about the place we call home?

Penzance first — and then the wider story

The starting point is Penzance itself.

From there, the research follows connections into Penwith and, where the evidence makes it relevant, across Cornwall and beyond.

The book examines historical figures and events alongside more recent lives and experiences. Its subjects include Alexander “the Moore” and the fragments preserved in early parish records; the Africans associated with the Perle; musician Joseph Emidy and his family; the visit to Penzance by J. A. Rogers; the story of Mr Dass; Dickie Barr; and contemporary individuals whose lives connect Cornwall with a wider world.

Among those explored are Beverley Fitzgerald-Bevington, Ajay Singh and other people whose experiences contribute to the developing picture of Black and minority ethnic life in Cornwall.

These are not all stories of the same kind. They belong to different periods, emerge from different sources and raise different historical questions.

That diversity is precisely the point.

Black history is not one story. It is many stories — sometimes connected, sometimes distinct, and often more complicated than a simple label can convey.

More than slavery: people, lives and connections

The history of Black people in Britain is often introduced through the transatlantic slave trade and its consequences. That history is essential, but it does not encompass the whole experience of people of African and other minority ethnic backgrounds.

People travelled, worked, married, raised families, made music, established businesses, served in wartime and formed relationships with the communities around them.

Their lives were shaped by the circumstances of their times, but they were not defined by a single historical event.

Black History of Penzance looks beyond a single subject to consider the range of ways people became connected to this part of Cornwall.

It asks what the surviving records reveal, what contemporary accounts tell us, and how individual lives fit into the larger story of a place.

The result is an invitation to look again at Penzance — not as an isolated Cornish town, but as a community with connections extending far beyond its coastline.

History needs evidence — and honesty about what we do not know

One of the principles behind this book is straightforward:

What does the evidence tell us — and what does it not tell us?

Historical research can be tempting when a fragment appears to offer a complete answer. A name in a register, a description in an old document or a ship arriving in Cornwall may suggest a connection. But a suggestion is not automatically proof.

A ship reaching the coast does not establish that everyone aboard lived locally. A historical description does not necessarily tell us how a person understood their own identity. A family recollection can be invaluable, but it is not the same thing as a contemporary written record.

Equally, the absence of a name from the records that survive today does not prove that a person was never here.

These distinctions matter.

Rather than presenting every possibility as an established fact, the book recognises where the evidence is strong, where sources conflict and where a connection remains possible rather than proven.

That approach does not make history less interesting. It makes the investigation more meaningful.

It allows readers to see not only the stories that can be told, but also the work still needed to understand them fully.

From the historical record to living memory

Not every story belongs to a distant century.

Some of the book’s subjects are connected to more recent Cornish life, where personal testimony, photographs and family memories can help illuminate experiences that formal archives may not fully capture.

Living memory brings another dimension to local history. It can reveal how people experienced a place, how they were received, what they contributed and how their sense of belonging developed over time.

Such accounts also deserve care. Memories can differ, details can be uncertain, and experiences are personal. They should be heard and recorded without automatically treating every recollection as proof of every historical detail.

Bringing documentary evidence and lived experience into conversation gives the book its particular character.

It is not only about people who appeared in old records. It is also about the people whose stories are still being told.

Why this history matters to Penzance

Local history helps a community understand how it became what it is.

It can reveal the people behind familiar names, the connections behind apparently isolated events and the lives that may have remained outside the usual account of a town’s past.

For Penzance, this means looking beyond a narrow picture of Cornish identity.

The town’s history can be understood more fully when we consider the people who arrived from elsewhere, those who made their lives here, and the relationships that connected the local community with other parts of Britain and the wider world.

This does not diminish Penzance’s distinct Cornish character. It adds depth to it.

A place can have a strong local identity and an international history at the same time.

Indeed, discovering those connections can help us understand the place more honestly.

A beginning, not the final word

No single book can recover every forgotten name or settle every unanswered question.

There are still photographs to identify, family memories to record, documents to examine and possible connections to investigate. Some stories may become clearer as new evidence emerges. Others may remain uncertain.

For that reason, Black History of Penzance is intended as a beginning as well as a record of research already undertaken.

It offers readers material to explore, questions to consider and a reason to look again at the history around them.

Readers may recognise a name, know a family story or possess a photograph that could help illuminate a connection. Such contributions can be important, provided they are approached carefully and checked against the evidence wherever possible.

History is not always a finished product. Sometimes it is an ongoing conversation between the archive, the researcher and the community.

About the author

Mayar Akash is a Penzance-based author, publisher and community storyteller whose work explores heritage, identity, belonging and the preservation of overlooked voices.

Through MAPublisher, established in 2018, he has worked with poets, writers and artists to bring their work into print. His wider publishing interests include British Bangladeshi history, community memory, poetry and Cornish cultural life.

Black History of Penzance brings these interests together in a place-based investigation: beginning with the town he calls home and following the evidence wherever it leads.

Discover Black History of Penzance

Who lived here? Who passed through? Who made a life here? Which stories have been preserved — and which still need to be found?

Black History of Penzance: People, Places, Lives and Connections invites readers to explore those questions through a history rooted in Penzance, extending into Penwith and reaching further into Cornwall where the evidence connects the local story to a wider one.

For anyone interested in Cornish history, Black history, family history or the people who have helped shape local communities, this is an opportunity to look at Penzance from a broader perspective.

The world is present in Penzance. This book explores some of the people and connections that help us see it.

Book details

• Author: Mayar Akash
• Title: Black History of Penzance: People, Places, Lives and Connections
• Publisher: MAPublisher
• Format: Paperback, 232 pages
• ISBN: 9781915958471

Order the book:
https://www.mapublisher.org.uk/products/ma-publisher/black-history-of-penzance-53559916

 

Roger Underwood: The Author Who Lives on a Boat and Writes His Own Kind of Cornwall

Three books, a boat called Ocean Warden, Cornwall, imagination — and a storyteller who doesn't follow the usual rules

There are authors who sit down at a desk and write.

And then there is Roger Underwood.

Roger lives aboard the Ocean Warden, a familiar presence in Penzance Dock.

And perhaps that tells you something about the man before you have even opened one of his books.

Because Roger's writing doesn't feel like it came from a conventional literary office.

His stories are eccentric.

They are imaginative.

They move between Cornwall, fishing, family, mystery, magic, adventure and ideas that don't always behave themselves.

And at MAPublisher, we have published three books by Roger Underwood.

Two are aimed at children, young people and families.

The third takes Roger's imagination in a very different direction for adult readers.

His work has also gone beyond the printed page.

One of his books became an audiobook, meaning Roger's storytelling can now be experienced not only through the printed word but through the spoken voice as well.

This is the story of Roger Underwood.

The man behind the books

Roger is not the easiest author to put into a conventional biography.

And perhaps we shouldn't try too hard.

He is a Penzance character.

He lives aboard the Ocean Warden, his boat in Penzance Dock.

The boat itself has become part of the landscape — something people see and recognise as they move through the harbour.

And from that unusual home has come an equally unusual collection of stories.

Roger's author website describes his purpose as:

“Awakening The Passion For Reading In Children.”

That is a fitting ambition.

Because his children's books don't simply try to tell children a story.

They invite them into a world.

A world of boats.

Fishing.

Family.

Adventure.

Magic.

Cornwall.

And a little bit of the unexpected.

---

Meet Smiley and the Acorn

Roger's best-known fictional creation is Smiley and the Acorn.

The first book, Smiley and the Acorn: A Story from Cornwall, takes readers into the world of a magical acorn and the magnificent tree that grows from it.

The story then follows a chain of events involving three generations of a Cornish family.

At the centre is a very special boat — the Acorn — and the adventures surrounding it.

The published description explains that the story connects the tree, a hardworking fisherman, his grandson Denziland Jago and the magical boat.

It is a distinctly Roger Underwood idea.

Nature.

Family.

Fishing.

Boats.

Mystery.

Magic.

And Cornwall.

All brought together in one story.

---

It isn't just a children's story

One of the most interesting things about the response to Smiley and the Acorn is that adults seem to enjoy it too.

Roger's own author website carries a number of reader responses.

One reader described it as a “magical book for both children & adults alike”, highlighting its setting in the fishing ports of Newlyn and Mousehole, its insight into Cornish fishing life and its mystical elements.

Another reader bought copies for grandchildren after visiting Cornwall and said the children were captivated, particularly because they recognised places they had visited themselves.

Another reviewer said:

“this has to be one of the nicest story’s I have read in sometime”

while another parent said their children adored the book and would read it repeatedly.

Those responses tell us something important.

The books are not relying solely on an adult reading them as a literary exercise.

They are being shared.

Grandparents reading to grandchildren.

Parents buying copies for children.

Children recognising places.

Families connecting the fictional world with places they have actually visited.

That is exactly the kind of relationship with a book that publishers hope to create.

---

Cornwall is not just a backdrop

For Roger, Cornwall isn't simply somewhere the story happens to be set.

It is part of the story.

Newlyn.

Mousehole.

Fishing.

Boats.

The sea.

The people who work around it.

The families connected to it.

That gives the Smiley and the Acorn books an additional quality.

A child reading them may encounter Cornwall as a place of imagination.

A child who has already visited Cornwall may recognise the landscape.

And an adult may recognise something of the communities and maritime culture behind the fantasy.

Roger's unusual combination of real places and imaginative storytelling is one of the reasons the books have their own character.

---

And then came the Isles of Scilly

Roger didn't stop with Cornwall.

The next adventure took Smiley and the Acorn to the Isles of Scilly.

Smiley and the Acorn: Treasure on the Isles of Scilly was published by MAPublisher and became part of Roger's growing body of work.

It is also the book that provides one of the most significant pieces of external recognition for Roger's writing.

The Holyer an Gof Publishers' Awards 2023 shortlist placed the book in Class 2b — Books for young adults.

The official Gorsedh Kernow listing names:

“Smiley and the Acorn – Treasure on the Isles of Scilly” — Roger Underwood — MAPublisher (Writer's Champion).

That matters.

Because this wasn't simply Roger, or MAPublisher, saying that the book was good.

The book had reached the shortlist of a recognised Cornish publishing award.

For an independent author and an independent publisher, that is a significant milestone.

---

From Cornwall to the Isles of Scilly

The second Smiley book demonstrates something else about Roger's writing.

He has created a world that can travel.

The first story is deeply associated with Cornwall.

The second takes that world further west, into the Isles of Scilly.

The result is not simply another children's adventure.

It expands Roger's fictional landscape.

And that matters because Roger's writing is rooted in place.

He isn't creating a generic fantasy world that could be anywhere.

His characters inhabit a world of boats, islands, fishing communities and the sea.

That makes the stories recognisably his.

---

Then Roger changed direction

And this is where Roger becomes particularly interesting as an author.

After two books aimed towards children, young readers and families, Roger produced:

The Spirit Molecule

Published by MAPublisher in 2023, The Spirit Molecule is an adult-oriented work that takes Roger's imagination in a very different direction.

The published book record identifies it as an 86-page paperback, ISBN 9781915958013.

The premise involves questions of angels, spirit people and ideas that move well beyond the world of Smiley and the Acorn.

In other words, Roger isn't an author who has discovered one formula and decided to repeat it.

He writes according to the story he wants to tell.

Children.

Family.

Cornwall.

Magic.

Adventure.

And then something altogether different.

That is part of what makes him eccentric as a writer.

---

Three books — three ways into Roger Underwood

You can almost see Roger's publishing journey as three doors.

Door One: Cornwall

Smiley and the Acorn: A Story from Cornwall

A magical family story rooted in Cornwall, fishing and the sea.

Door Two: Adventure

Smiley and the Acorn: Treasure on the Isles of Scilly

The story expands into an island adventure and was shortlisted for the 2023 Holyer an Gof Publishers' Awards in the young-adult category.

Door Three: The unexpected

The Spirit Molecule

A very different book, aimed at an adult readership and exploring Roger's more unusual ideas.

Three books.

Three different experiences.

One author.

---

Roger's stories have escaped the bookshelf

There is another important development in Roger's publishing journey.

Audio.

Smiley and the Acorn: A Story from Cornwall was turned into an unabridged audiobook, narrated by Jamie Martin.

The audiobook is listed at Apple Books at 3 hours 13 minutes and is also presented through Audible.

That means Roger's story has taken another step.

It began as an idea.

It became a manuscript.

It became a printed book.

It became a book available through the wider bookselling system.

And then it became something people could listen to.

That is quite an achievement for an independent author.

---

Roger and MAPublisher

Roger's relationship with MAPublisher goes back to the point where he needed somebody to help turn his writing into published books.

MAPublisher's own website records Roger's testimonial.

He explains that his work was introduced to Mayar Akash by a mutual friend, after which Mayar offered to help him publish through MAPublishing.

Roger specifically says that he was kept informed throughout the publishing process, that support and guidance were first class, and that MAPublisher worked hard to promote his work. He wrote the testimonial in June 2022, following publication of his second book.

That is important to include because it shows the relationship from the author's side.

This isn't simply MAPublisher saying:

“Look at our author.”

Roger himself has publicly described what the publishing relationship meant to him.

---

A Penzance author with an unusual address

There is something else that makes Roger's story particularly Penzance.

His home is not simply in Penzance.

His home is on the water.

The Ocean Warden is part of the physical environment of Penzance Dock.

And that creates an almost perfect connection between the author and his books.

His stories are concerned with boats and the sea.

He lives aboard a boat.

His characters move through maritime landscapes.

His real life and fictional world aren't completely separate.

They overlap.

That gives Roger a very distinctive identity as a local author.

You don't have to manufacture a marketing story around him.

The story is already there.

---

The eccentricity is part of the appeal

I think it would be a mistake to try to make Roger sound like a conventional literary author.

He isn't.

And that's a strength.

His ideas are unusual.

His storytelling can be unexpected.

His subject matter can move from children's adventure into adult spiritual and speculative territory.

His home is a boat.

His stories are connected to Cornwall.

His characters encounter magical and mysterious things.

And his writing doesn't seem particularly interested in asking permission to fit neatly into one category.

That makes Roger Roger.

And readers who enjoy discovering something different may find that very appealing.

---

What makes these books worth owning?

There is a practical reason to buy Roger's books.

They are stories that can be shared.

A parent can read Smiley and the Acorn to a child.

A grandparent can read it to grandchildren.

A family who has visited Cornwall can recognise the places.

A child interested in boats can enter a maritime world.

A reader interested in the Isles of Scilly can follow Smiley there.

And someone who wants something completely different can pick up The Spirit Molecule.

The books therefore have value beyond simply being “local books”.

They create an imaginative connection between place, family and storytelling.

---

And there is a little piece of Cornwall in every one

That may ultimately be Roger's greatest strength.

He doesn't have to tell you that his stories are Cornish.

You can feel it in the settings.

The fishing ports.

The boats.

The sea.

The islands.

The family connections.

The local character.

And, of course, the fact that their author is himself part of the Penzance landscape.

---

Roger Underwood's books are now part of a bigger story

At MAPublisher, we have published three books by Roger Underwood.

But the three books are only part of the story.

There is Roger himself.

There is the Ocean Warden.

There is Penzance Dock.

There are the readers who have shared the stories with children.

There is the Holyer an Gof shortlist.

There is the audiobook.

And there is the possibility that more stories will come.

That's the wonderful thing about independent authors.

You never quite know what comes next.

Especially when the author lives on a boat.

---

Why MAPublisher is proud to have published Roger Underwood

MAPublisher is not interested only in authors who fit neatly into established publishing categories.

We are interested in voices.

Ideas.

Local stories.

Unusual perspectives.

People who have something inside them that wants to come out.

Roger Underwood certainly has that.

His three books demonstrate that an independent author doesn't have to stay in one lane.

He can write for children.

He can write for families.

He can write for adults.

He can take his story into audio.

He can build a readership.

And he can do it while living aboard a boat in Penzance Dock.

That's Roger Underwood.

And that is precisely why we wanted to help give his work a published life.

---

Discover Roger Underwood

Smiley and the Acorn: A Story from Cornwall

A magical Cornish family adventure involving fishing, family, a remarkable tree and the boat called the Acorn.

Smiley and the Acorn: Treasure on the Isles of Scilly

The next adventure — and a title shortlisted in the 2023 Holyer an Gof Publishers' Awards, Class 2b for books for young adults.

The Spirit Molecule

Roger's very different adult work — taking his imagination beyond the world of Smiley and into questions of spirits, angels and the unknown.

And for those who prefer to listen, Smiley and the Acorn: A Story from Cornwall is also available as an unabridged audiobook, narrated by Jamie Martin.

Three books. One very individual author. One boat in Penzance Dock. And a whole lot of imagination.

Published by MAPublisher.

Roger Lowry: The Artist Who Painted Penzance's Boats — and Why His Work Matter

 

Roger Lowry: The Artist Who Painted Penzance's Boats — and Why His Work Matters

Two MAPublisher books. Hundreds of paintings. A lifetime of boats, harbours and maritime memory.

Some artists paint a subject.

Some artists develop a relationship with it.

And occasionally, an artist paints something for so long, and in such volume, that the work begins to become something else:

a record of a place.

That is how I have come to see the work of Roger Lowry.

Roger is a Penzance resident, boat owner and painter. His fascination with boats has resulted in a body of work numbering more than 400 paintings, many connected to the maritime landscape of Penzance, Mount's Bay, Penwith and West Cornwall.

At MAPublisher, we have now published more than one book of Roger's work.

That is significant.

Because this is no longer simply the story of an artist producing a book.

It is the beginning of a published record of a much larger body of work.

Roger Lowry and the maritime landscape of Penzance

Roger's paintings are rooted in a very particular part of Cornwall.

Penzance.

Mount's Bay.

Newlyn.

Mousehole.

The harbour.

The coastline.

The fishing boats.

The visiting vessels.

The traditional craft.

The boats that have come and gone.

His paintings capture the things that caught his eye — often with bold colour, strong shapes and a distinctive naïve style.

His first MAPublisher book, Lowry's Boats – Paintings of Traditional Vessels Associated with Mounts Bay, Cornwall, was published on 5 December 2022.

It contains 79 pages of full-colour paintings and carries ISBN 9781910499962.

The book's description makes a striking claim: that Roger has inadvertently captured and recorded boats that have come and gone, creating a body of work documenting aspects of the heritage of Penzance, Penwith and Cornwall.

That is an important way of looking at Roger's work.

He wasn't necessarily setting out to create an historical archive.

He was painting boats.

But sometimes the archive happens because somebody keeps looking.

---

Four pieces of evidence that make Roger's story bigger

When promoting an artist, it is easy for a publisher to say:

“We think this artist is important.”

That is our opinion.

It is much stronger when other people, independently, have already responded to the work.

In Roger's case, there are several pieces of public evidence that deserve to be brought together.

1. The Association of British Naive Artists

The first is particularly valuable because it comes from the art world.

A review from the Association of British Naive Artists' 2016 exhibition describes Roger's colourful works as:

“warm, witty and well worth seeing.”

That is not MAPublisher describing Roger.

It is a historical assessment associated with the Association of British Naive Artists.

And it helps explain something important about Roger's work.

His paintings should not simply be judged by asking whether they look like conventional maritime paintings.

They don't.

That is part of their identity.

Roger's naïve style gives him freedom to interpret his subjects through colour, shape and character.

The boats are recognisable.

But they are unmistakably Roger's boats.

---

2. A maritime historian's response

The second piece of evidence comes from a completely different direction.

Mike Smylie, a maritime historian specialising in the fishing industry and working vessels, has written for numerous maritime publications and is the author of more than 20 published books. He is also associated with several maritime-history organisations.

After receiving a copy of Lowry's Boats, Smylie described it as both a “fun-packed frolic” and a serious study of the craft associated with West Penwith.

That combination is revealing.

Because Roger's work isn't trying to be a dry catalogue.

It has humour.

It has colour.

It has personality.

But underneath that is a very real concentration on boats and maritime heritage.

For somebody with a specialist interest in working vessels and maritime history to respond positively to the book gives Roger's work another dimension.

It tells us that the paintings can be appreciated not only as art, but also as a visual encounter with the vessels of a particular maritime region.

---

3. The response from people who know the boats and the place

The public response to Lowry's Boats contains other revealing comments.

Traditional boat owner Neil Burman described his copy as well worth the money, highlighting its detail, paintings and boat history. Artist Pam Secker wrote:

“AT LAST!! You should have been publishing such a long time ago.”

And maritime-history researcher John McWilliams, associated with the St Ives Archive and Penlee House Museum's photographic research group, described the book as a warm, evocative, colourful and lively reminder of Mount's Bay's story and boats.

McWilliams is particularly relevant because his own work includes research into Cornish maritime history, and he was made a Bard of the Cornish Gorseth for that work.

These are different voices.

An artist.

A traditional boat owner.

A maritime researcher.

A maritime historian.

They are looking at Roger's work from different perspectives.

And they are seeing something in it.

---

4. Roger is part of Penzance's cultural history too

There is another piece of evidence that I think deserves much more attention.

Roger isn't simply connected with Penzance because he paints its boats.

He was also part of the town's wider cultural scene.

In a 2024 interview with It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine, members of the Cornwall-based band The Brainiac 5 recalled the Penzance music scene of the 1970s.

The interview describes the Sail Loft in Penzance as a venue for gigs and mixed-media events.

And Roger is specifically remembered in that history.

The interview states that Roger Lowery was asked to make posters and work the door at the Sail Loft — and then refers readers to his book of “primitive painting of boats”.

That is fascinating.

Because suddenly Roger's story is not just about painting.

It is about Penzance's cultural life.

Music.

Art.

Posters.

Poetry.

Performance.

Boats.

The harbour.

The people who made the town what it was.

Roger was part of that world.

And today, his paintings are helping preserve another part of it.

---

From one book to two

The first book was:

Lowry's Boats

Paintings of Traditional Vessels Associated with Mounts Bay, Cornwall

Published by MAPublisher in December 2022.

79 pages.

Full colour.

ISBN 9781910499962.

Then came:

Lowry's Boats of Penzance

Published by MAPublisher in August 2024.

86 pages.

Full colour.

ISBN 9781915958105.

The second book concentrates even more specifically on Penzance and the surrounding maritime landscape.

Lulu describes its naïve painting style as giving Roger the freedom to use colour in ways conventional artists might not, with every page packed with colour.

So we now have two published volumes.

And that changes the way I look at Roger's work.

One book can be a collection.

Two books begin to demonstrate continuity.

And when you add the fact that Roger has produced more than 400 paintings, the scale becomes much clearer.

---

More than 400 paintings is more than a collection

Imagine having more than 400 paintings connected to one artist, one region and a recurring subject.

That is not simply a pile of artwork.

It is a body of work.

And bodies of work can become historical records.

Roger's paintings include vessels and maritime scenes associated with Mount's Bay, Penzance, Newlyn and the wider Penwith coastline.

Some of the boats he painted have come and gone.

Some are part of local memory.

Some are historically interesting in their own right.

Some may be familiar to people who know the area.

Others may be discovered through Roger for the first time.

The paintings therefore have two lives.

They are artworks.

And they are also records of what one artist saw as worth remembering.

---

This is where I believe the real value lies

I have tried to get Roger's work in front of institutions that I believe should at least consider what he has created.

That has included efforts to get exposure through the maritime museum world around Falmouth.

It hasn't produced the response I had hoped for.

But institutions have their own policies, priorities and criteria.

That is their decision.

What I don't want to do is allow an absence of institutional recognition to become confused with an absence of cultural value.

Those are not the same thing.

Because when I look at Roger's work, I see something that has taken years to accumulate.

More than 400 paintings.

A very specific geographical focus.

A very specific maritime subject.

A distinctive artistic style.

A connection to the cultural life of Penzance.

And now, two published books.

That is why I believe Roger's work deserves to be preserved and promoted.

---

Could Roger Lowry's work become an institution in itself?

This is my personal view as Roger's publisher.

I believe it could.

I don't mean that Roger has been formally designated an institution.

He hasn't.

I mean that the body of work itself has the potential to become a reference point.

Imagine somebody researching Penzance's maritime history years from now.

They could find photographs.

They could find newspaper articles.

They could find official records.

They could find harbour records.

And they could find Roger Lowry.

An artist who kept painting the boats.

Again.

And again.

And again.

That accumulated visual record could become increasingly valuable precisely because Roger was not trying to create an official archive.

He was simply recording what mattered to him.

And sometimes that is how cultural history survives.

---

Why the books matter

This is why I don't see Lowry's Boats and Lowry's Boats of Penzance as simply art books.

They are certainly books of art.

But they are also published records.

A painting can hang in someone's home.

A painting can be sold.

A painting can disappear into a private collection.

A painting can be seen by relatively few people.

A book does something different.

It gathers the work.

It reproduces it.

It gives it an ISBN.

It makes it discoverable.

It allows someone who never met Roger to encounter his work.

And it means that part of this body of work exists in a form that can be passed from one person to another.

That is why publishing matters.

---

Buying the book is investing in the record

I would use the word investment carefully here.

I'm not talking about a promise that the book will become financially valuable.

Nobody can honestly guarantee that.

I'm talking about cultural investment.

When you buy one of Roger's books, you are supporting an artist and acquiring a published piece of a much larger body of work.

You are taking home part of Roger's visual Penzance.

You are acquiring paintings of boats, harbours and places connected with a changing maritime landscape.

And you are helping that record circulate.

That has value.

Perhaps especially because Roger's work is so rooted in a particular time and place.

---

Why Roger's paintings may become more interesting with time

There is an irony here.

The less static Penzance becomes, the more interesting Roger's record may become.

Boats change.

Harbours change.

Buildings change.

Businesses change.

People change.

The working relationship between communities and the sea changes.

What is ordinary today can become historical tomorrow.

A boat that someone sees every week may eventually become a memory.

Roger has painted many of those things.

And he has done it in his own language.

Bright.

Bold.

Naïve.

Colourful.

Witty.

Personal.

That is why the paintings don't need to pretend to be photographs.

They are doing something different.

They tell us:

This is how Roger saw it.

---

MAPublisher's role

This is also why Roger's work fits the reason MAPublisher exists.

We publish writers, poets, artists and people whose work has something to say about place, memory and lived experience.

Sometimes the conventional route to recognition is already open.

Sometimes it isn't.

Our role is not to decide what an artist should become.

It is to help create a route through which the work can be seen, recorded and owned.

With Roger, that has now resulted in two books.

And I hope there will be more.

Because 400 paintings cannot be contained by two books.

These are volumes within a much larger archive.

---

Two books. Hundreds of paintings. One Penzance.

That is perhaps the simplest way of describing Roger Lowry's work.

Two books.

More than 400 paintings.

One artist.

One remarkable connection with boats and maritime West Cornwall.

And behind it all is Penzance.

Not the Penzance of a tourist postcard.

Not simply the Penzance of an official heritage record.

But Penzance as experienced by an artist who has spent years looking at its boats and painting what he saw.

That is why I wanted MAPublisher to publish Roger.

And that is why I believe these books deserve to be discovered.

Because the question is not only:

“Do you like Roger Lowry's paintings?”

The bigger question is:

“What happens when an artist spends years recording a place that is itself changing?”

Roger's answer is sitting in more than 400 paintings.

Two of them are now between the covers of books.

---

Discover Roger Lowry's books

Lowry's Boats

Paintings of Traditional Vessels Associated with Mounts Bay, Cornwall

Published by MAPublisher
Publication date: 5 December 2022
ISBN: 9781910499962
79 pages · Full colour · Paperback
Buy Lowry's Boats from Lulu

Lowry's Boats of Penzance

Published by MAPublisher
Publication date: 12 August 2024
ISBN: 9781915958105
86 pages · Full colour · Paperback
Buy Lowry's Boats of Penzance from Lulu

Two books from a body of work that is much larger than either volume.

Roger Lowry's Penzance. His boats. His colours. His record.

Published by MAPublisher.

 

Chris York: Where Poetry, Art and Imagination Refuse to Behave

Meet the poet, artist and writer whose work doesn't always tell you what to think

There are poets who carefully explain what their poems mean.

And then there is Chris York.

Chris is the kind of creative who seems quite happy to leave the door open, let the reader walk through it, and decide for themselves what they have found.

That is one of the things that makes Chris York such an interesting part of the MAPublisher and Penny Authors family.

He is not simply a poet. Penny Authors describes him as Poet | Writer | Artist | Video — a combination that says rather more about Chris than a conventional author biography ever could.

His work moves between poetry, writing, visual creativity and video, and his approach can be eccentric, playful, unexpected and, at times, deliberately difficult to pin down.

And perhaps that is precisely the point.

A Penny Author from the beginning

Chris York has been part of the Penny Authors journey for several years.

His poetry appeared in the Penny Authors anthologies, including Book Six, Book Seven and Book Eight, where his poems included titles such as Paranoid Hospital Ward, Water Is Bad for Your Wealth, The Meat Draw (Fourth Prize), Shore Thoughts, So This Is Us, The News, Injustice, Pig Ignorant, An Equation, Disaster, Unjust Desserts, Sit in Silence, Elementary, Polystyrene Hairstyle and I Don't Think So.

That list alone gives you a flavour of Chris.

The titles don't necessarily sit politely beside one another.

They provoke curiosity.

They make you wonder what on earth the poem is going to be about.

And then, sometimes, the poem takes you somewhere entirely different.

Chris was also included in the wider Book of Lived anthology project, where his name appears among the writers whose lived experiences and creative voices have been brought together through Penny Authors.

Penny Authors has always been about giving writers a place at the table — not demanding that every voice sound the same.

Chris certainly doesn't.

From poems to books

For MAPublisher, working with Chris has meant more than simply putting a collection of poems between two covers.

It has meant recognising that Chris's creativity doesn't necessarily fit into one conventional box.

His first MAPublisher collection, The Poet's Proof, brings together writing reaching back to 1996 and continuing into the present. The book grew out of friendship, memories, humour and the passing of time, including the memory of Chris's friend Rod. MAPublisher describes the collection as humorous, heartfelt and rooted in everyday life.

There is something wonderfully appropriate about the way the book came into existence.

A poet walks into a pub.

A drink becomes another drink.

Another drink becomes another thought.

And suddenly — why not write a book?

It is not exactly the conventional route into publishing.

But then, this is Chris York.

The Scribblings & Dribblings

And then comes The Scribblings & Dribblings.

Even the title refuses to behave like a conventional poetry collection.

Published by MAPublisher and available through Lulu, the book is a 58-page square-format paperback, published on 28 July 2024. It combines Chris's writing and visual creativity rather than presenting itself simply as a conventional poetry book.

But what makes the book particularly interesting is Chris's invitation to the reader.

The book deliberately doesn't insist that there is one correct interpretation.

Instead, the reader is invited to consider what a title suggests to them — whether they encounter a drawing, painting, poem, essay, short story or even a blank space.

That makes The Scribblings & Dribblings rather more than something to read.

It becomes something to experience.

And perhaps even something to scribble in.

Or dribble in.

Or completely misunderstand.

And Chris might be perfectly happy with that.

"What does it mean?"

That is probably the wrong question to ask Chris's work.

A better question might be:

"What does it mean to me?"

Because Chris has created something where the reader is allowed to bring their own imagination into the room.

A painting might trigger a memory.

A strange title might create a story.

A poem might make perfect sense one day and absolutely no sense the next.

A few words might remind you of something that happened twenty years ago.

That freedom is part of the attraction.

Chris doesn't appear to be trying to produce poetry that behaves itself.

He is exploring what happens when words, images, ideas and imagination are allowed to collide.

And then there is the video...

Chris is also part of the video side of the Penny Authors project.

Penny Authors' own author directory identifies him as a video contributor alongside his roles as poet, writer and artist.

That matters because poetry doesn't always have to remain on the printed page.

Hearing a poet perform their own work changes the experience.

The pauses matter.

The voice matters.

The expression matters.

Sometimes the person behind the poem tells you something the printed words don't.

Penny Authors has supported Chris in bringing his poetry into that visual and spoken space, giving his work another way of reaching an audience.

Why MAPublisher?

At MAPublisher, we don't believe every writer needs to fit a publishing template.

Some writers arrive with neatly organised manuscripts.

Others arrive with poems.

Others arrive with paintings.

Others arrive with an idea that doesn't quite have a name yet.

Chris York is somewhere in that wonderfully unpredictable territory.

His work is a reminder of why independent publishing matters.

A publisher can provide the structure needed to create a book without taking away the character of the person who created it.

And with Chris, character is very much part of the package.

Two books. One very individual voice.

If you are discovering Chris York for the first time, there are two MAPublisher books that provide a good introduction:

The Poet's Proof

A humorous and heartfelt collection reaching across nearly three decades of Chris's writing, with friendship, memory, everyday observations and loss woven through the poems.

The Scribblings & Dribblings

A much more experimental proposition — part poetry, part writing, part visual creativity and part invitation for the reader to make their own connections. Lulu's description makes that reader participation central to the concept.

Together, the two books show two sides of Chris York.

One looks back.

The other opens the door and says:

Come in. See what you make of it.

Chris York — definitely not one to put in a box

There are plenty of books in the world that tell you exactly what they are.

Chris York's work is more likely to ask you a question.

And that is why we are pleased at MAPublisher to continue championing his work.

From his early Penny Authors appearances to his poetry recitals, from anthology pages to his own published collections, Chris has developed a creative identity that is unmistakably his own.

Poet. Writer. Artist. Video.

And, perhaps most importantly:

Chris York.

You can explore Chris's work through the Penny Authors archive and discover his published books through MAPublisher.

Discover Chris York's books

The Scribblings & Dribblings on Lulu

The Poet's Proof at MAPublisher

Chris York's Penny Authors profile

MAPublisher — championing writers, poets, artists and the creative voices that don't always fit neatly into a box.