It’s mega parcel time again – sending stuff all over the place, little packets of this that and the other. Another hundred quid to the local post office this morning. Stamp, stamp, stamp!
Laurna Robertson’s Sampler is done, and very nice it looks too. And Deborah Trayhurn’s Embracing Water, a sequence quite unlike anything I’ve ever published before. Little packets of them are fleeing hither and thither, to copyright libraries, authors, friends, family and early orderers.
And that Unread Squirrel is also home and dry. The card smells a bit funny, but it’ll wear off. I hope it doesn’t come as a disappointment to people who read and enjoyed the first Unsuitable Poems. This one is different: far more long poems, for a start. I’m aware that many of them are well-geared to poets rather than normal people. It’s because these verses spring out of real life: they’re reactions to stuff, and so much of my real life these days concerns poetry stuff that it’s practically impossible not to get unsuitable about it from time to time.
Today I had to buy more plastic boxes, big expensive ones. The problem of clean dry storage is expanding. And I must do some stock-taking. The accounts are up to December. The submissions box from August has finally been dealt with.
Tomorrow Clare Best’s Treasure Ground should be completed. It is a simply lovely collection of poems. That and the STORY competition anthology 3 are the last publications before Christmas. Watch out for the gorgeous Celestine Recipe.
Over Christmas I’ll be writing Love’s Labour’s Lost. Oops. Shakespeare already did that. I mean I’ll be doing the HappenStance Story Chapter 4, which will have a bit of Love’s Labour in it.
Next weekend is the Christmas postout to subscribers. Should have had that Chapter 4 in it, but at least it’ll be something to brighten the January gloom.
Ron King sent me a gorgeous photo of a red squirrel, so it’s going in here. This is a READ squirrel, as opposed to my Unread. It can also serve as a hurray for Red Squirrel Press, doing such good work.
