Spark Update and Some Thoughts on Poetry

Hello all,

The final manuscript for the Spark paperback is almost finished so I’m hoping to have it out there either late June or right at the beginning of July. The Morning Star will be reviewing it in due course and I’ll be sending a handful of copies to people as promised. Unfortunately I can’t give as many away as I did The Rebel’s Sketchbook because I’m more broke than Zac Goldsmith’s ego at the moment. I would like to say, however, that if you have already read Spark and are waiting for something new then rest assured that you won’t be waiting too long for my second novel. It’s called Broke and I’m now over the halfway line. I’ll be putting it out just as soon as it’s ready.

I have also added Pyongyang Selfie to my Goodreads profile with a link which allows you to read the story for free (or click here if you want to read it). If you haven’t already then please add it, read it when you get a spare half an hour and tell me what you think. If you have already done this or have star rated it then massive thanks! Please recommend it to your Goodreads buddies and see if we can make it go viral so that Kim Jong-un reads it in the not to distant future while sitting on a North Korean crapper. Hopefully it’ll give him a heart attack thus allowing the North Koreans to overthrow the regime and get their lives back. That’s the plan anyway…

For those who have been following me for a while you’ll already be familiar with my thoughts on self-publishing and small press publishing, and how positive I am about its future. There are many reasons for this, but the key reason is that self-publishing has taken storytelling out of the hands of the privileged few. Nobody owns writing and yet until the self-publishing boom came along we’ve had to swallow the unsavoury fact that a handful of industry heads have decided what the rest of us get to read. This is no longer the case and it doesn’t just benefit mouthy upstarts like me; it benefits all of us who care for diversity and free expression in the creative arts.

What reinforces my positive outlook for the future is that it’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve discovered poetry and all of them have come from the DIY route or the small press route. Because of school ramming a handful of Romantic poems down my throat I got the impression that poetry could only ever be terrible. But this isn’t true; it can actually be fantastic. I’ve just finished a collection called Cameron Fucks Dead Pigs and I get Called a Scrounger by Andy Carrington. It’s a politically charged collection which echoes many of my own sentiments but in poetry form. You can read my full review here . I encourage anyone who enjoys what I do to grab a copy and show Andy some support because, like me, he relies on all the good people out there to get on board and help to spread the word. What’s particularly admirable is that Andy gives money raised by this collection to worthwhile charities and antifascist causes so that’s always worth supporting.

While I’m praising the DIY poets I’d like mention some others who I will continue to support for as long as they’re putting collections out there and hope that people reading this will also check them out. First is my good friend Harry Whitewolf who also writes politically charged poetry. Whitewolf’s style is a mash up of conscious hip hop, the Beat poets and the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Here is my review of Two Beat Newbie which you should grab a copy of ASAP. The next poet I want to bring attention to is M.J. Black who writes a blend of the personal and the political. Being a northerner myself his references are all too familiar and his politics also resonate so you should check him out. Here is my review of Going Nowhere; a bleak yet moving collection of working class poetry. Nico Reznick also manages to strike a balance between the personal and political with stark language and stunning concepts such as that found in Goldfish Smile. It’s hard to choose a favourite of the collections I’ve read so far but I particularly enjoyed Over Glassy Horizons: Poetry From The Margins. You can read my review here .

What I think unites all of these poets is that they have helped to turn ignoramuses like me onto poetry by showing a side of the craft that I never knew existed. Prior to the self-publishing boom perhaps a handful of people would have discovered them, but now they can reach more and more people through the internet. In the years to come I hope they will all continue to expand on their readership because these times demand such poets; poets who use their craft to connect with others and document some of the crazy things which are happening in the here and now. I, for one, look forward to what they have to say in the future and I hope that an ever expanding number of you will too.