Eighteen Hours: Celebrating Tom Rigby’s Debut Collection at Hart’s Books

On Monday evening, we had a wonderful time gathering at Hart’s Books in Saffron Walden, part of Daunt Books, to celebrate the launch of Eighteen Hours, the debut poetry collection by eighteen-year-old poet Tom Rigby.

For Tiny Fruit Press, it felt like much more than just a book launch and more like a dream we’ve had for a long time come true.

Tom first discovered poetry through his Year 9 English teacher, Emily Thomas, and eventually Vino and Verses, our monthly poetry night at Chater’s in Saffron Walden. This is where he really started to find his voice in the community.

Vino and Verses was created to be a place where poetry didn’t have to feel intimidating. A room where someone could read for the first time alongside someone who had been writing for years; a place to try something, get it wrong, try again, and realise there are people there to catch you.

Tom became one of our most beloved regulars, appearing each month to read, listen and experiment, and eventually that led him to Eighteen Hours.

That journey is one of the reasons we are so proud to have published this book. It is exactly the kind of journey Tiny Fruit Press lives to make possible.

A Day in a Book

Eighteen Hours follows the course of a day. Beginning at sunrise and moving through to midnight, each chapter takes its name from different parts of a day, allowing the collection to move naturally through conversations around love, growth, acceptance, relationships and the domestic.

Tom’s writing is grounded in the everyday. Big questions about what it means to be alive also leave room for the wonderfully ordinary.

Making the Book His

One of our favourite parts of making Eighteen Hours was finding a way for the physical book to carry something of Tom himself, so we took Tom’s handwriting and turned it into a bespoke typeface specifically for the collection. His handwriting appears throughout the whole book, creating another voice alongside the poems themselves.

It’s a small detail but one that really matters to us because we really want our books to be physical objects worth keeping. We want the experience of holding a collection to feel connected to the person who made it.

A Very Full Room

The launch itself was held at Hart’s Books in Saffron Walden, and the room was full, and celebrating in the town where so much of Tom’s journey began made it extra special.

Friends, family, poets; Vino and Verses regulars; readers; and supporters gathered together to hear Tom read from the collection and celebrate his enormous little milestone.

We even had a full-circle moment with a pre-planned surprise.

As mentioned, Tom’s love of poetry began with Miss Thomas (Emily), the teacher who introduced him to poetry and helped spark the fascination which eventually began a very important part of his life. We couldn’t be happier than when we heard that she wanted to travel all the way from Wales to surprise Tom at his launch.

He had no idea she was coming, and suddenly, the story of Eighteen Hours had a beginning and an ending sitting in the same room.

For us, it was a beautiful reminder of just how much the people around a writer can matter, and if you’re lucky, those very people are still there when you finally get to hold up your life’s work.

(Thank you again, Emily, for travelling from Wales to be there; we’re pretty sure it’s a moment that Tom will remember for a very long time).

The Future

Alongside his book, Tom has also recently received a place at Cambridge University, where he will begin the next part of his life and, we hope, the next part of his poetry journey.

He has already begun making connections with the Cambridge poetry community, and we’re extremely excited to see what happens when the poet who grew up in little Saffron Walden arrives in a city with a rich literary history.

Tom’s book is our second publication, and our first book by a signed author other than Bethany, making this a pretty significant moment for us!

Tiny Fruit Press began because we wanted to create something beyond our own individual writing practices and create a space for new and emerging voices. Publishing is competitive, and it can be intimidating, and sometimes the distance between writing your first poems and seeing them become a book can feel enormous. We want to make that distance smaller and build the community around those books.

Welcome to the world Eighteen Hours, and congratulations to Tom.

We are enormously proud to have been trusted with this collection, and even more excited that this is only the beginning.

It’s officially out in the world, and you order a copy here.

And if you’re a poet, writer, or artist who has ever wondered whether there might be a place in the world, we hope Tom’s story reminds you of something: sometimes the first step is finding a room where someone is willing to listen.

Love from,

Tiny Fruit Press 🍅
small press. big feelings. lots of fruit.