Chapter Five of The HappenStance Story is written and at the printer. It is all very well being super-efficient and so on, but think what happened to the Roman Empire.
There are more subscribers than ever before. So this time the mailshot really will extend to nearly 200 people: at least £160.00 in stamps alone. And if we allow five minutes per parcel to update and print the labels, collect the flyers and inserts, put in the packet and stick the stamp on, that’s 1000 minutes which is about 17 hours non-stop, which is nearly a week of spending three hours a day doing just this.
Have I made a monster? I hope not. It is an entertaining chapter, I think, and it took me a long time to write. However, sometimes I regret living with myself and my complicated plans.
The schedule for 2011 is done. Altogether there will be 13 pamphlets and one book. The full collection will be by Gerry Cambridge and it will be terrific. The pamphlets are a marvellous set too, but then I would say that, wouldn’t I? You’ll have to make up your own mind — hopefully after buying some of them. Please buy some of them, she added weakly.
Jackie Kay, in the Guardian yesterday, said there’s definitely a poetry renaissance happening. It is a very exhausting renaissance from the point of view of a minor, and aging, midwife. (if you follow that Guardian link, do look at the URL at the top of your webpage. I love the end: poetry-poets-stage-roar-renaissance.)
The schedule for 2012 is also pencilled in, though I’m not sharing it yet because some of the poets are ‘maybes’: it depends what they send in July.
But today (hurray-poetry-poets-stage-roar-renaissance) I am proud to announce Jennifer Copley’s Living Daylights has been delivered. It was a painless birth and the bairn is about to go into the online shop. It is a beautiful sequence about the dead, all of whom arrive one day and move back into the author’s house. It is surreal, funny and sad, and close to my heart.
Cliff Forshaw’s Tiger is still waiting for its footprints, but they will arrive later today. It is another in the sequence series and it will be born by Valentine’s Day, footprints and all, without an anaesthetic. More of that next week.