Free Verse, book launch & readings

The book is well and truly launched. A month or so ago at Free Verse, the poetry book fair in London, I was helping out Jeremy Page on the Frogmore Press table while at the same time handing out promotional postcards – a bit cheeky, but Jeremy was OK with it. It was a shame not to have the actual book to sell but hey ho.

Free Verse was fun. The publisher tables were so closely packed we were virtually on each other’s laps. We were sandwiched between Caroline Davies of  Green Bottle Press and Liz Kendall of The Edge of the Woods. The nature of the event means you do a lot of waving and not-quite-conversations with people, nevertheless it’s very nice to see old acquaintances and meet new ones. I crossed paths briefly with Claire Booker, Paul Stephenson, Julia Bird, Caroline Clark, Tammy Yoseloff, Isabelle Baafi (after interviewing her recently for the podcast) and Kate Noakes…and met for the first time a number of small publishers including Kym Deyn of The Braag and Carmen et Error and Julie Hogg of Blueprint Press. I liked the fact that magazines were represented alongside book publishers.

A few people came up to me and said how much they enjoyed Planet Poetry, including one of our regular supporters Richard Chadburn, who promptly got his local bookshop to order my book! It’s always gratifying to know we have listeners, and fans even – tee hee.

So The Mayday Diaries – yep, we had a lovely launch event in Lewes with both poet and non-poet friends and family. I say ‘we’, because I had alongside me my ol’ poet pal Peter Kenny and also my mentor and Telltale Press Associate Editor Catherine Smith, who emceed. Peter read some poems, including those in his recent pamphlet Snow (Hedgehog Press). Snow is a collaboration with artist Palo Almond, who came to the launch with two of her paintings and spoke about how the pamphlet illustrations came about, which really added something special to the evening.

A few days later I was reading at Eastbourne Poetry Cafe and encountered Andy Breckenridge, who I’m ashamed to say I couldn’t place at first but he gently reminded me that we’d met right there at that event a year or two ago, when I bought his excellent book The Fish Inside (Flight of the Dragonfly). I put it down to momentary brain fog as I pondered how my first set went down and how to wow them with the second.

The second load of books has arrived and now I’m gearing up for more readings. The next is at Arundel where I’m reading at the Victoria Institute Arts Junction on Monday 9th June. A couple of weeks later I’ll be joining Peter Kenny and Sarah Barnsley for a Telltale Poets reading at the wonderful In-Words at Greenwich Library We’ll be chatting about the genesis of Telltale Press and reading from our books, and it’s free – this is my only London gig at the moment and I’m excited that it’s on my old stomping ground. Please come to either Arundel or Greenwich if you’re in that neck of the woods!

By the way, I’ll be writing a second blog post with a bit more about The Mayday Diaries and That Cover Image….