Isabel Rogers's Blog, page 3

Countdown to publication

My novel Life, Death and Cellos will be published in less than two weeks. *breathes into paper bag* I can recommend a looming event like this to take your mind off things like Brexit. You can (and frankly are enthusiastically encouraged to) order it now.

[image error]

I’ve been organising two launch events (in London and Winchester), sending out proofs and answering final queries from my wonderful and tireless editor Abbie Headon at Farrago. One last-minute change we’ve made is to call the books The Stockwell Park Orchestra Series rather than mysteries. Frankly it was always a bit of a shoehorn to get my first plot to be a mystery, and early feedback has confirmed that. So that leaves it WIDE open for me to do what I like in later books, which I’m finding terrifically exciting. Oh, and if I ever run out of things to do before publication, my deadline for the second book in the series is at the end of January.

There is (limited) space at both launch events so, if you would like to come along, please drop me a line via the Contact page on this site. I do need to keep track of numbers to make sure there are enough of essential things like copies of my book and drinks.

Tuesday 22 January, 2019: London launch – LRB Bookshop, Bloomsbury, London.
Thursday 24 January 2019: Winchester launch – P&G Wells Bookshop, College Street, Winchester.

[image error]

As you see, I’m lucky enough to have friends willing to say they liked it: Claire King writes wonderful novels (The Night Rainbow and Everything Love Is). Lev Parikian is a conductor and writer (Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? andWaving, Not Drowning). I’m very grateful to them both.

Finally, a request. One thing I didn’t know about before I started talking to people in the publishing business is how important it is to have book reviews. I don’t pretend to understand how these things work, but once a book has a number of reviews on Amazon, it affects the algorithms which brings it to the attention of buyers of similar books. I recommend buying books from local bookshops or Hive, but you don’t have to buy a book from Amazon to leave a review for it there. Honestly, if you’d like to make me obscenely grateful, I’d love you to do that for me. A one-liner will do!

Thank you. I’ll stop now. Perhaps see you at a launch party?

[image error]

Reading without trousers

It has been a funny old week on Twitter. I saw an article about reading: I forget what it said, because I was distracted by the ludicrous picture that had been put at the top. A woman sat with bare legs at such odd angles I feared for her joints. And that got me thinking, all the while fingering the toffee hammer I keep ready in my pocket at all times in case today’s the day we can finally smash the patriarchy.

I wondered if this picture was a one-off weirdo. Then I googled ‘woman reading’. And, well, I found these, said what I thought, and went a bit viral:

[image error]

Sometimes, I can only feel comfortable reading if I forget my trousers and dislocate my knees. I am nervous about losing the page, even if it’s the page I’m on. I own no bookmarks, however, so have deconstructed a Christmas wreath.

 

[image error]

If it’s mild, I venture into nature. I continue to eschew trousers, but that doesn’t put me off sitting on a stump.

 

[image error]

It’s something about the air round the back of the knees, I think. Helps to absorb tricky vocab.

 

[image error]

If you must wear trousers but have to look at a book immediately, this can be done safely if you insert ventilation holes. Dislocate your knees first for full efficacy.

 

[image error]

I like to unwind after a hard day with the last few pages of a chapter, in front of a roaring blaze of recently removed trousers.

 

[image error]

Sometimes, if I’ve read too much that day, or worn too many trousers, I can get a migraine.

Leaving aside the enormous fun a lot of us had with this (and some of the conversations this thread started were outstanding – even gaining its own hashtag of #ReadingWithoutTrousers), I was disturbed. Women here are portrayed as passive, expressionless, partially clothed, and often with their head and face entirely absent. Any of this starting to sound familiar?

I looked for the equivalent pictures of men (will I never learn?). I googled ‘man reading’. Same rules: different gender. And oh boy, different results.

[image error]

I like to think of myself as Basic Reading Guy. Fully clothed. Cardigan buttoned over my emotions, gripping the chair a bit too hard – but maybe it’s a fight scene. The hero’s ok though. Phew. Manspreading index: 4.

 

[image error]

Sometimes I see a word that perplexes me, like pashmina or vicissitude. What is that doing in my book? I gesture to set it free, and crack on with the next chapter.

 

[image error]

If there is a really difficult bit, I must stare at it until my beard is grown, massaging the words into my head.

 

[image error]

Once the hard words are in my head, a gentle shaping of the skull rearranges them into strata according to subject, ready to leap out instantly when they are called by a ‘well, actually …’

 

[image error]

I get into the minds of different characters by assuming a separate posture for each voice. This is also a good core workout. Remember to replace your electrolytes afterwards. And maybe a protein shake.

 

[image error]

When I read my favourite bit, I need to tell someone. Immediately.

 

[image error]

Even if it’s only a throwaway quip.

 

[image error]

I like funny books. This one’s probably written by a man. Oh yeah, that line. That’s a classic.

 

[image error]

It is important to remain fully clothed throughout the reading experience. If you see any women reading without trousers, you may strip down to your vest but only until you finish the chapter.

 

[image error]

You know, at the end of the day, it’s not what you read, it’s how big your pile is. Look at this stack.

In every one of these pictures of men, we see his face and expression. Often, he is communicating something, to us or others. We see him being affected by what he reads, whether it’s funny, challenging or something worthy of passing on. The last man looks straight at the camera. These men have agency. And, naturally, they are fully clothed. The important thing is what they are doing, not what they look like. Plus ça bloody change.

I didn’t google ‘semi-naked women reading’ and ‘fully-clothed men reading’. The search terms were identical. Of course I chose from the results to fit some jokes. But, honestly, I didn’t have to manipulate them that much.

So yes, I made a lot of people laugh this week, and I celebrate that. Patriarchy stinks though, doesn’t it? I find the most effective way to smash it isn’t always a toffee hammer, but ripping the merciless piss out of it. Like only a humourless feminist can.

September

I’ve been neglecting this blog: sorry. We’ve all been doing other things over the summer and I bet you didn’t notice. I’m throwing this one in here because – while I’m busy writing Novel 2 before Life, Death and Cellos (Novel 1) comes out next January – there have been a couple of recent poetry news items.

Firstly, in the wake of the very public Eyewear shenanigans, fellow Eyewear poet Ricky Ray has stepped up to support us all. He runs the journal Rascal from his home in New York, and his most recent edition includes a number of Eyewear poets. He has been tireless on social media, bringing attention to the work of some fine poets as the meltdown went on around us over the summer. [My thoughts on that are another post entirely, which may or may not ever get written.] In short: I was honoured to be asked by Ricky to contribute work to Rascal, and you can read my poem Alphabetic order in the latest edition along with some cracking work from others, together with some breathtaking photography. Rascal is multimedia and accessible, so there are also audio files of every poem, read by the poet. If that’s your bag, do check it out.

Secondly, I was chuffed to hear my poem Liminal had been longlisted in Live Canon’s competition, and will therefore be included in their 2018 anthology. Looking down the list, I am in stellar company! I’ve been lucky enough in the past to be shortlisted in this competition, which is brilliant as then you get to hear your work performed on stage by professional actors: always surprising and gratifying to me to hear an interpretation that isn’t my own. Not for me this year, but if you fancy going along to Greenwich Theatre on 23rd September you can hear the 20 shortlisted poems performed and see who wins. Liz Berry judged, and will be announcing the winner.

So, I’ll get back to my Stockwell Park Orchestra world and write some more jokes. Zig is waiting patiently for me to finish so we can go for a walk.

[image error]

Life, Death and Cellos

I’ve been sitting on some news. It’s wriggly and excited news, and I keep needing to jump up and twirl before sitting on it again, uncomfortably.

And my news is this:

*clears throat in manner of Miss Anne Elk*

I have signed a two-book deal with Farrago Books!

(Go on – click play. You know you want to.)

The deal comprises one comic novel I’ve already written and a sequel I haven’t yet, set in the world of amateur orchestras and choirs – a world I am terrifyingly familiar with. More terrifying to my friends, apparently, who sidled up when they suspected what I was writing to enquire (rather too shrilly for their élan) ‘I’m not in it, am I?’ My standard response was ‘of course not!’ Some of them didn’t look convinced, and if this makes a few readers nervous I can only apologise. My lawyer is now gesticulating. I think I should state that I’ve made everybody up, completely. There. Hush.

The first book is called Life, Death and Cellos. I was warned my original working title of Sex, Death and Cellos is too risqué for some markets, plus the trading standards thing of there not actually being any sex written down in plain sight (thank GOD – I am British after all), so this is a perfect solution. I was giddy for a while and fired off some over-caffeinated title ideas like Celli Con Karma, but luckily Abbie Headon – Commissioning Editor at Farrago and all-round brilliant person – is good at reining me in when I need it.

Farrago specialises in funny series. They publish different genres (humorous mystery and crime, romantic comedy, science fiction and fantasy etc). Given my title, it’s not a spoiler to hint that somebody dies. I have named my fictional orchestra ‘Stockwell Park Orchestra’. Other elements [NO SPOILERS] let us happily bung it into the subcategory of ‘mystery’, and therefore each book in the series will be A Stockwell Park Orchestra Mystery. Abbie has announced the whole exciting business over on Farrago.

Life, Death and Cellos will be published on 14th February 2019. I recommend you buy a copy to take on that romantic dinner, in case of embarrassing lulls in conversation.

If anyone needs me between now and next year, I’ll be busy writing the next book. And drinking the odd celebratory martini.

[image error]

Clematis and Ayckbourn

[image error]

For anyone interested, these are what I chose.

Yesterday I planted clematis in the front garden to cover a stretch of the most boring fence in the world. I finally stopped wishing for an instant 20-year-old wisteria, got off my arse and did something about it, which involved digging a hole through my gravel drive. Last time I did this (climbing rose, front of house), I wished for a pickaxe before I’d managed three inches down. But I don’t learn, so my trusty spade and I started excavations next to Boring Fence.

The rule of front garden work is simple. Neighbours pass, they comment on how hard you’re working, you cheerfully agree and mention the weather, they nod and we all carry on happily with our lives. I’ve only had to amend this rule slightly for one neighbour with a small yappy bitey dog: two bleeding ankles later I’ve learned to stand well back and hope she’s got her extendable lead on lock.

This time a different neighbour (with gorgeous labradors – you can always judge a person by the character of their dog) offered me a spare ticket to that evening’s show in the village hall: Alan Ayckbourn’s Communicating Doors. This neighbour wasn’t acting, but heavily involved in lighting/sound/tickets/interval drinks. It was the last night. Of course I went.

[image error]My way into the village crosses the Itchen. Despite enthusiastic encouragement by some of my twitter friends (they know who they are), I drank only one glass of chilled rosé as clematis celebration before I set off. If I’d had the recommended four, my evening could have ended significantly wetter.

Being brought up on Lynda Snell’s Ambridge productions, I had high hopes of village hall amateur dramatics. I was entirely ambushed by the stunningly professional experience. Even before I’d been shown to my seat, my interval drink order had been taken and marked on a grid for someone to BRING IT TO ME LATER. I knew then I was in for a splendid evening.

The communicating doors in question were brilliantly designed on set: two doors on a revolving mechanism that worked perfectly every time. The stage was tiny, but so cleverly laid out even when one character had to fall from a sixth floor window and dangle from a bedspread, we were willing to go along with it. We managed to ignore the stormpocalypse that hurled itself onto the roof halfway through. It kindly paused for us all to walk home, then started itself up again. That’s what I call generous weather.

So today my newly planted clematis has been well thunderstormed and is thriving, boring fence’s monotonous days are numbered, and I can quote Ayckbourn like a theatre buff. Village life at its finest. Hang on: “Clematis and Ayckbourn” sound like a crack detective duo just waiting to be written …

[image error]

Happiness

It’s Friday. I’m over-caffeinated after a coffee AND coffee & walnut cake, and the sun is shining. I’ve already been told off about this.

[image error]

Spring may finally be coming. Feels like it’s been a long old winter, so I thought I’d splat some ridiculously happy thoughts here before existential dread takes over again, as we know it must.

It’s National Puppy Day, apparently. Zig celebrated this by eating half a pack of fig rolls earlier this week, and being a bit sorry.

A Twitter friend said yesterday he was feeling down, which sparked a load of people telling him how much they loved him. As a fishing-for-compliments ruse, it worked well. It did remind me how many friends I have made there, and continue to make. It’s full of people. People are, mostly, brilliant (not to get too Arthur Shappy about things). And the ones who aren’t – well, we can laugh at those.

[image error]Cake. Did I mention I’d just had some? It was a piece of THIS magnificent creation. I make a lot of cake, because I like to eat it and there’s nothing quite so comforting with a cuppa. Except maybe a fig roll, but owing to the earlier situation I didn’t have any. There are some misguided people who claim fig rolls are of the devil. Do not listen to them, no matter how agitated they may get in the comments.

I recently did some proper cello practice because a pianist friend was visiting and we thought it would be great to play something together. I am VERY out of practice, but we played The Swan and some Bach and even though I’m worse than I was as a teenager it was fun and worth doing. I’m still practising, mainly because she was far better than I was and it was embarrassing. It’s never too late.

I have [too] many books to read, piled beside my bed. Instead of feeling guilty about not reading quickly enough, I’m going to relish knowing there are stories waiting for me. They’re not going anywhere. You can rely on a book.

Going to stop here before this gets all ‘every day in every way I’m getting better and better’ and I turn into some sort of lifestyle guru. The only advice I can give usually involves jokes, hugs and cake. But it’s not a bad philosophy.

Southern Shores: art and ekphrastic poems

After having officially retired as Hampshire Poet 2016 for most of last year, I was offered an unexpected final commission in November. Would I like to look at some paintings of coastal scenes and see if any poems came to mind?

Wow. I would. I love the sea. I’m not sure if it’s because I grew up on a lot of folk music, where sad people are usually either missing their lovers who have gone to the sea/war/possibly both, or have drowned, or are wishing they were sailing away from inconstant lovers/war/death/cruel mothers. It was a complicated adolescence, and left me with a chunk of anachronistic vocabulary that doesn’t get out much.

A few seconds after gazing at some of these paintings (all save one by men, but that one was possibly the most interesting), I slipped easily into the old words of those songs I love. They were contemporary pop music when a lot of these pictures were being painted. If I were the kind of person to fling the phrase cultural DNA into a conversation, now would be the time. When Angela Hicken of Hampshire Cultural Trust read the poems I came up with, she thought I had been immersing myself in stringent nautical research. Truth is, I carry these words with me all the time, like a trapped time-travel capsule, and they emerged of their own accord. (Yes, I used fain in one poem. I’m still not sorry.)

Reading these poems in isolation probably won’t make much sense: they are embedded in the picture they respond to. I even kept the same titles to tether them. I knew they were going to be shown together, with the art and poem interacting, and was excited to step into five different worlds and see what happened. I can’t defend the direction my disturbed imagination took after that.

The Southern Shores exhibition is at The Gallery in Gosport Discovery Centre from 13 January to 17 March 2018, showing marine-themed works from the Southampton City Art Gallery collection. Five pictures have one of my ekphrastic poems next to them. Do go along if you can.

Here are the five pictures I chose, together with my responses:

[image error]

Girl Seated by Shore – George Elgar Hicks, 1878

No wind can fill the sail a lonely heart can rig.

No swell will loose a mooring roped to sunken dreams.

As salt preserves the pain inside a wound it cleans

a life may float on death: a ship adrift in fog.

While seasons turned she fixed herself on shore. Her hair

blew wild. It grew to meet the kelp-strewn rock and fused

her living frame to mineral. Her limbs first bruised

then slowed her sluggish blood to ice. She transformed there.

When winter gripped and stilled the land, the restless sea

reached up for her. She thrilled as brine swam in her veins

and rolled ecstatic to the surf, then heard the chimes

of old bells shipwrecked sailors hear before they’re free.

They called her on from fathoms down, to where her love

drowned twice to lure the one he could not bear to lose.

 

[image error]

Pulling Rowboat Ashore – Rose Douglas, C19th

Hauling their men in from another country

these women know they pull something foreign ashore.

Waves are no place for skirts

that wick a drowning faster than it takes to shout.

Once replanted solid, those salt-stained men

will ask for nothing, but fold away talk

in a quiet nod.

But here, with every inch of boat out of water

turning wood to lead,

where the sea clutches and sucks

to reclaim its own, they gladly strain

on a brine-soaked rope to deny the surf

this time.

It will take payment

in exchange for bounty

but not this time.

Borders have ever been lawless –

this is an elemental crossing

alive with mutability and cunning.

The line is treacherous.

They haul, calloused and raw,

and their men are home again.

 

[image error]

The Wreckers – George Morland, 1791

Who’s to say when a captain knows?

When the lamp is snuffed? When the cove

enfolds his ship, or at the first crack in a hull?

Useless, then, to fight wind and wave.

There is but one way and it will end

under that dark broiling –

pray God for a sharp snap on a rock

not rolling and choking and breaking until a hand

holds your limp rag body under a final time.

Life is witness and witness is death

and the owlers will choose:

no time for doubt or God,

they must haul before excisemen’s muskets

bristle over the cliffs

and spit fireflies into the night.

Load the crop, boys.

Whip white flecks in your horse’s back

for you must stow this and melt away

into dark places before the storm

breaks the last of the boat for dawn to find.

owlers – wool smugglers

crop – smuggled cargo

 

[image error]

Unseaworthy – Bertram Priestman

She settles her keel in mud at low tide

like an old sailor into an armchair

stretching his boots to the fire

to tell stories through pipesmoke.

Twice a day she feels the salt call – once

she would have strained her moorings

to be out there again

leaning on a westerly

with the last smudge of land astern

and a whole world ahead:

the whale-road of our ancestors.

Her fluid dreams cloud and thicken;

taut rigging weathers slack

as silt smokes around her rudder

luring it into unhurried entropy.

She knows what will come: rot fingers her hull

prising her boards apart.

She itches with small creatures and fungi,

careful to list away from children

who play when the sun warps her deck

and swallows chase sandflies through her ropes.

She hears small human escape plans,

to cross oceans and fight wild tentacled monsters

that ooze from their nightmares.

Another tide makes her tiller flinch.

Slack water turns to flood –

she waits for news to stream to her

from the open horizon.

 

[image error]

View of Portsmouth from Portsdown Hill – Thomas Jones

Give me wings or a ship:

I would fain leave these clod boots

on shore and fly to where sky and sea

no longer care

for our fussy definition,

but roll over the southern curve

with the ease of old time.

I stretch my thin arms

like winter twigs

and wish for billowing canvas

or flight feathers braced for incline and bank,

feel envy course through me –

too dense, too heavy, too solid –

as spiderlings throw silk to heaven

and ride the wind to a new tomorrow.

What use is static dependability

to an unquiet ocean?

I would break my bonds in a moment

and fly:

an arrow from land’s bow

aquiver to learn what is beyond

my eye’s compass.

Filed under: Uncategorized, Writing Tagged: art, ekphrastic poems, Gosport Gallery, Southern Shores [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error]

Yodelling Brahms

Sometimes I try to explain what I’ve been up to. Last weekend was the final rehearsal and concert of the Brahms Requiem (and Schicksalslied). For the requirements of anonymity, let’s just say the group I’ve been singing with comprises a school choral society, local singers, some trebles and assorted parents who want to join in. Well, ‘want’ is quite a strong verb, but let’s not split hairs. I was there, and it’s not fair I keep the experience to myself.

[image error]I regret none of my similes, or the length of this post. Continue at your own risk.

Usually in rehearsals I sit next to my son, so we can have a companionable hour once a week. As concert day approached, the conductor’s administrative grip tightened. Seats were named. There was to be NO swapping except in extreme height circumstances. And so I was not next to my lovely son, but another boy about the same age (maybe the conductor thinks HE is my son?). Let us call him ‘Slim Whitman’.

Choirs are usually organised into their separate parts: the sopranos sitting with the sopranos, the altos with the altos and so on. I am a soprano (who can actually get Brahms’ top As, unlike some who are sopranos ‘because it’s easier to sing the tune’, but that’s another rant altogether). When I first heard Slim speak, with his fine manly broken voice, I assumed he was singing alto while on the way down to something deeper and I had been put on the soprano/alto cusp.

How wrong can a girl be? First of all, while the orchestra was tuning and there was general faff, he rummaged round in his ears with already dirty fingernails and wiped the resulting goo on his trousers. After several excavations, even I was reluctantly impressed with the volume he produced. All the better for hearing with, I thought, too brightly, trying to combat rising panic.

He sang soprano with the gusto of a chap confident of his pitching and wanting to let the rest of the section know we could rely on him for a lead. Oh Slim. The hubris of youth. And, frankly, you might want to reconsider your vibrato. During the afternoon rehearsal he sang alto when they had an entry before us, but when the time came to switch up he was so involved with alto twiddling it took him at least half a bar to join the rest of us again.

[image error]When the tenors had a particularly lovely line he felt compelled to bolster their gloriously operatic exuberance with a slightly flat bass drone A FULL OCTAVE BELOW THEM. Loudly. When our entry arrived, he had spent so long in the gravelly depths of his lower regions, it took him a few attempts to pole vault himself up to our pitch. If he ever put his mind to it, the lad will have an excellent career as a professional yodeller.

Oh well, I thought. It’s only the rehearsal, with a semi-professional orchestra. I won’t say anything, because I don’t know him and didn’t want to embarrass my son by being That Mother. He won’t do it in the concert, I thought. *insert hollow laugh*

The concert excited him even more. He was incapable of standing still: kept wandering into my personal space and flapping his copy over mine like an exuberant sapling in a Force 9. He conducted enthusiastically with one hand. Even after the metric tonnage of ear wax removed, he didn’t appear to be able to hear the beat, and since he never lifted his eyes out of his copy to glance at the conductor, his sense of timing inexorably drifted away from the rest of us like an abandoned rail carriage cut loose on a branch line. Sometimes he stamped his foot to chivvy himself along, but I’m sorry to report that his lower limbs had no better sense of rhythm than his upper. They were, however, considerably louder, and sent tremors along the platform we shared. If you’ve ever had to try to sing in time while being distracted by a demented cross-rhythm, you’ll understand what I was up against.

Have I mentioned he sang in falsetto, because his voice had broken? Countertenors are fine men, and all can attest to long years of study to achieve the breath control and production technique required to sustain a high melodic line. Slim is just starting out on his journey as a singer, probably not helped by his insistence on joining in with all the parts. He is a boy in a sweet shop and nobody has told him no. Ever. Perhaps they should. His young lungs and diaphragm are simply not up to the task of getting him through a phrase longer than two notes. It would probably help if he could restrict his volume, but he is of the rather binary opinion that singing should be either ON or OFF. Consequently, when the rest of us had a sustained pianissimo top G, young Slim heaved himself in and out of the note like a pair of bellows that smoked sixty a day, giving the whole ensemble a rather seasick, lurching sensation.

He missed the last few notes of the piece altogether because he was busily reading the background information at the back of his score. He did try to join in with our last chord, eventually parachuting in and settling on a note of his very own.

I needed a large glass of wine later that evening. I was cheered to learn this kind of fantastic character fishing wasn’t confined to the soprano section: chatting with a bass I found out there was an alto near him who had first confessed to her neighbour (in the FINAL REHEARSAL) that her problem was that she simply couldn’t read music, and then ten minutes later decided she had to turn up her hearing aid.

And that, friends, is how I spent most of last Saturday. We made it through. Praise be to Brahms.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Brahms Requiem, choirs, singing

Book giveaway

[image error]As it’s National Poetry Day next Thursday 28th September, I’m going to celebrate by giving away five copies of my collection, Don’t Ask. It’s the first NPD that has come around since it was published, and I thought – why not?

If you would like a signed copy, dedicated either to you or someone else (who mentioned Christmas?), leave a comment or tweet me by 9pm on Sunday 24th Sept, so I can send them out in time for you to receive it by National Poetry Day. If more than five people want one, I’ll draw them out of a hat.

If you miss out, I’d be very happy to sell you a signed and dedicated copy anyway. Books are really easy presents to wrap. [Was that subliminal enough?]

Now I’m off to write a poem about how awkward I find selling my own book, but how I got over it eventually.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Don’t Ask – reprint

A small post blowing my own trumpet. As the great Prince once wrote:

[image error] It’s your time (time)

You got the horn so why don’t you blow it

Let’s not allow the details of brass instrument specifics to come between us. Or indeed filthy double ententres.

While I’ve been off doing other things since Don’t Ask was published a couple of months ago, people have apparently been buying it. Some have even been reading it, and tweeting lovely things. Thank you if you have. If you haven’t, there is still time.

My head is now firmly in my new comedy script and novel, so when I got an email this morning from Eyewear saying it has nearly sold out and they were about to reprint I was surprised, delighted and quite sweary. I’ve apologised to my dog.

So congratulations if you own one of the soon-to-be rare first editions. Feel free to recommend it to anyone else. If you’d like a signed copy, drop me a line and we can sort it out:

[contact-form]

otherwise it’s available from Eyewear or Amazon or anywhere you usually buy/order your books from.

Already starting to write things for the Difficult Second One.

Filed under: Uncategorized, Writing Tagged: Don't Ask, poetry, reprint