It’s complicated. In 2005 I bought ten ISB numbers. To my surprise I’d used them all up within two years and I bought another hundred.
Three years later I’m over half way through that hundred. The idea at the birthday party, Saturday June 12th, is to do a kind of ‘This is your life’, recalling all that’s been and indicating a bit of what’s to come. But there’s a lot of it.
I think about twenty of the poets should be there, all reading little bits or in one case quite a lot. Some is happy, some is sad, some is performancey, some is music, some is cake. It will be grrrrrrrreat.
In preparation I am making lists and lists of lists. Up to now I have been making electronic lists upstairs, and sending out more invitations to people I think I might have forgotten or whose reply I think I have managed to lose. Soon I am going downstairs to make more lists on pieces of normal paper.
Meanwhile, the Ruth Pitter Selected came home this week and so did David Ford’s Punch. The former is cheering and consolatory: Pitter has that effect. She is a magical poet. Punch, on the other hand, is one of the darkest collections I have done. Many of the poems have stunning impact: they are also often sinister and somewhat scary. Neither David nor Ruth can be at the party (though for somewhat different reasons) but Gina Wilson and Gill Andrews (the next two pamphlets) should be there.
Also expecting a whean of others – a plethora of poets including, Andrew Philip, Rob A Mackenzie, Clare Best, Jeremy Page, Alison Brackenbury, Janet Loverseed, D A Prince, Sally Festing, Jon Stone, Robin Vaughan-Williams, Ross Kightly, Paula Jennings, Jennifer Copley, Stewart Conn, Christine de Luca, Margaret Christie — and MORE! Honestly this is THE poetry event of the year.
Do join us, (Scottish Poetry Library, Edinburgh, 3.00 for 3.30) but let me know because numbers are swelling (and swell). nell@happenstancepress.com
- Ruth Pitter cover
