Launcherama

Johnny Marsh, The Art Workers' Guild

The launch of Ovid's Echo, at the Art Workers' Guild, was great fun.  I caught up with lots of old friends, made a couple of new ones and read from my papery bairn, while Rebecca and Jo kindly took photographs:
 

I don't have any pictures of Janet El-Rayess reading from Summer Visitors, but Jo and Rebecca took some of me with Barbara Hardy, poet, novelist, academic, memoirist and poetry god-mother:

and Matt McKenzie, the power and brains behind the Paekakariki machine:

At some point in the evening, Johnny nipped outside to draw the Guild from Queen Square.  You can see his miniature at the top of the page.

Summer Visitors, Ovid's Echo and other Paekakariki editions are available either direct from the Press or from Waterstones. 

Poetry Wales

One for the forebears: my poem 'Fading House' appears in the current issue of Poetry Wales.  It's another excellent magazine and I'm overjoyed to be in it.

Launch

In the evening of 18th July, Janet El-Rayess and I will be launching our pamphlets at the Art Workers' Guild, Bloomsbury, WC1N 3AT.  Please join us if you can.

Ovid's Echo

Many months have passed again.  I've been busy, writing and fretting about writing, and I've made a website, which has liberated me from having to keep my blog up to date.  As I've mentioned before I'm no journalist: writing quickly and turning words out in the space of one day is something that reduces me to a hot-cheeked panic.  It takes months, sometimes years to make anything interesting of my work.  I'm just a slow developer: my childhood, teens and twenties were all painful, scary years, mostly spent wandering down the wrong paths or simply sitting by the roadside wondering how anyone managed to walk at all.  It's only in the last ten years that I feel I've accomplished anything significant; so I guess it's not surprising that I write slowly too.

Anyway, I'm here today because I have something merry to report: the publication of my first pamphlet, Ovid's Echo.  It comes out next month and you can pre-order it through Waterstones.   It's published by the Paekakariki Press, with illustrations by Johnny Marsh.  The picture above is more or less the cover, except that in the final version the text is an elegant burgundy, but you get the idea. 

The Rialto

For those of you who don't already know The Rialto, it's a brilliant and beautiful magazine, edited by Michael Mackmin.  I have a poem in the latest issue and am pleased as punch about it.

Day 15

I'm not doing very well at posting every day.  The truth is that whenever I think of spring, I'm drawn into the garden, where before I know it I'm clutching a fork or a pair of secateurs and am clipping or tidying or re-potting something, or else I'm just smiling idiotically at the emerging plants and birdsong.  It turns out that blogging's not one of my spring activites and I think this will have to be, therefore, an early-spring tree of a project.  I'll add more once I've given my thoughts time to grow.

For today, here are a few photographs of the odd-shaped patch of land that takes up so much of my attention.

This is how it looked at 7 o'clock this morning:

And here it is this afternoon:

The daffodils always  come out late here: we're almost at the bottom of a west-facing valley.  It's noticeably colder, even in summer you can feel the temperature drop as you come down the hill, but it's a magical, hidden place, loud with birds, much to the cats' delight.  Here they are with their new obsession, the blue tits' nest on the ash tree:

I caught Hellebore shimmying around the tree towards the nest earlier, clinging to the trunk.  So far, she's been unable to reach the bird box, which is firmly attached to the tree, but the poor parent birds were obviously worried and were flying around the tree in an attempt to distract her. 

And here are the hens, back in their run for the evening:

Day 7

 Vanessa Bell's cover design for To the Lighthouse

 A day of writing, talking, listening and laughing with Sandy and Steph.  Early Downland daffodils bloom in Sandy's village.  The sun's warm.  We sit in the study, surrounded by books and bird bones; eating hot cross buns; being visited by cats; passing ideas, confessions, impressions, between one another; catching thoughts, nodding in agreement; adding link by link to the chain of conversation.  Again, I remember the importance of collaboration to my work, of friendship.  We warm one another, bring spring to our wintry solitude.