My ickle pamph has almost sold out! Yep, only 3 copies of the 50 remain.

Which is great, of course, but – one of the reasons I made it was to sell it at readings, so now (after much deliberation) I’m going to make another 50, but it will be the ‘Bounce-Back 2nd Edition’, with a few differences to the first edition, so those who’ve bought the first fifty will still have The Original.

It’s a real labour of love creating these mini pamphlets, but when I got the covers from the printer I was so excited to get going. Although I describe them as ‘coffee break’ items, I think a pattern is emerging. They tend to be vehicles for what on the face of it are quite light poems but the themes are (for me) life-affecting. Foot Wear took on my not-so-brilliant marketing career. In the case of Yo-Yo it’s the psychological effect of being judged for over fifty years by the NHS as fat and unhealthy, due to a method of measurement Body Mass Index (BMI) taken to be authoritative and propagated by media of all kinds. And yet BMI never had anything to do with health. We’ve been fed a big fat lie. At least inYo-Yo I try to serve up the grief with a spoonful of sugar!

Readings coming up: next Sunday 16th November I’ll be at The Brunswick in Hove from 3pm reading alongside Jeremy Page at the prizegiving for the Brighton & Hove Arts Council Poetry Competition. Ooh! I wonder who’s won? Then on Wednesday 26th November I’m reading at Chichester Poetry, and on Friday 12th December I’m at the Poets Cafe in Reading. Exciting! Maybe see you at one of them?