About

The87press welcomes you to The Hythe Review, launched as part of our commitment to widening critical conversations in literature, with a focus on poetry. The Hythe Review provides a space for literary conversations to take shape, coalescing around our shared inheritance of modernism, marxism(s), anti-colonialism, anti-racism, environmentalism, and a commitment to building literary political community around publications—as has always been the case with the work of the87press. The journal publishes interviews between critics, editors, and authors/artists alongside essays and new works of poetry, working through commissioned work and, ​from our second issue onwards, open submissions which we will extend warmly to racialised/global majority authors and authors who are neurodiverse, LGBTQ+, and/or working-class. 
 
We prioritise experimental poetry and poetics that engage language and cultural identity, the transgression of colonial bordering, the role of aesthetic education in fostering cosmopolitanism-from-below and the possibilities of poetic form. We also give space to interesting and well-styled cultural essays that explore contemporary works of fiction, non-fiction, or poetry released by independent publishers only.  
 
The Hythe Review is produced in partnership with the Open Library of the Humanities (OLH) and other funding bodies such as Arts Council England. It provides a fee of £100 per commissioned/accepted piece of criticism or poetry (with the view to expand the remit to incorporate short fiction in the future). The journal also benefits from the formation of a new group of Associate Editors (Alycia Pirmohamed, Victoria Adukwei Bulley, and Abeera Khan) who will work closely with co-founders of the87press Azad Ashim Sharma and Kashif Sharma-Patel, who take up the roles of Commissioning and Managing Editors respectively for this new publication. 
 
The Hythe Review, released biannually, streamlines our digital platform and builds upon previous achievements. The Hythe and The Hythe+ will be combined into The Hythe Archive and housed on the87press website. The Hythe Review is available for free online, hosted on OLH's servers, and through libraries globally.

Focus and Scope 

The Hythe Review prioritises innovative and experimental poetry and poetics that engage language and cultural identity, the transgression of colonial bordering, the role of aesthetic education in fostering creolization-from-below and the possibilities of poetic form. We also give space to interesting and well-styled cultural essays that explore contemporary works of fiction, non-fiction, or poetry released by independent publishers only. 
 
We are interested in work conventionally conceived of as on the periphery or margin and yet proves, through its existence, readership, and prescience, to destabilise the arbitrariness of those categories.

Journal History 

The Hythe Review (est. 2026) is a journal of poetry, poetics, and cultural criticism curated by the87press in partnership with the Open Library of Humanities. The Hythe Review formed as an outgrowth of theHythe, a blog-journal run by the87press to give space to critical discourse and new works of poetry. Re-formed and officiated as a review, the journal continues the87press mission to provide a space for literary conversations to take shape, coalescing around our shared inheritance of modernism, marxism(s), anti-colonialism, anti-racism, environmentalism, and a commitment to building literary political community around publications as has always been the case with the work of the87press. We will publish interviews between critics, editors, and authors/artists alongside essays and new works of poetry, working through commissioned pieces and, from our second issue onwards, open submissions extended warmly to racialised/global majority authors and authors who are neurodiverse, LGBTQ+, and/or working-class. 
 
The Hythe Review, as an integral part of the87press, will participate in PACBI and maintain a commitment to Palestinian Liberation as part of a wider commitment to anticolonial and global south struggle. Part of our solidarity work will seek to publish new writing from Palestinian writers and, especially, reviews of existing collections of poetry or works of fiction which redress the gaps in current critical discourse when it comes to Palestinian literature produced in Historic Palestine or in Diaspora. 
 
Additionally, The Hythe Review will serve as a centre of literary criticism, poetry and poetics, that is rooted in Black thought, and prioritises cross-cultural dialogue as has been historically pioneered by Black, Asian, and other racialised communities in the UK. Here we seek to encourage a new generation of racialised poets who have often been pigeonholed through diversity initiatives and/or excluded from more conventional locations of cultural discourse to actively contribute to the production of knowledge and representation of our own literature with all the complexity these works make manifest. As such, The Hythe Review serves as one location amongst many where the spatial concept ‘diaspora’ is being rethought, redefined, and re-energised, in this case, as a space for literary politics to emerge and as a place for literary culture to make home anew.

Publication Frequency 

The journal publishes biannual issues, with the Spring-Summer Issue and the Autumn-Winter Issue. 

Publication Fees 

There are no publication fees. This journal is published by the Open Library of Humanities (OLH). Unlike many open-access publishers, the OLH does not charge any author fees. This does not mean that we do not have costs. Instead, our costs are paid by an international library consortium. 

Voluntary Author Contributions 

Authors who have access to institutional funds or grant funding earmarked for Open Access publication (via a research grant or through their institution's department or library)—and only those authors—are kindly asked to use those funds to cover the publication costs for their article in The Hythe Review through a Voluntary Author Contribution (VAC). The VAC is genuinely voluntary. Whether or not the author is able to contribute makes absolutely no difference to editorial decision-making on the submission. For further information please see the publisher's policy on VACs. 

Archiving, Indexing and Citation Metrics 

The Hythe Review is archived and indexed according to the publisher's policy.