big in Japan!

I can't read this page. Maybe we're not big. I have a feeling we're still rather small, but if I get offered any inappropriate TV commercial voiceover work I'll let you all know.

...by any other name...

So, we launched the pamphlet Ask for It By Name, from Unfold Press. The poets: Simon Barraclough, Olivia Cole, Isobel Dixon, Luke Heeley, Liane Strauss and Roisin Tierney.

It's "A well-stocked anthology of fresh produce from six prize-winning poets. Behind the bottles and the butter you'll find Mussolini cheating on the tennis court and meet the shark from Jaws in a Yorkshire millpond; glimpse the love of woman for orang-utan and make it across the Spanish-Italian border; spy on the hobbies of cowboys and drink deep of the Molotov cocktail of love..." (from the back cover) £5/€7,00.

It's a beautiful thing, a squarish pamphletty book with a lovely yellow spine, designed by Lynne Stuart, who turns out to be a Hackney resident! I found this out when we spoke last night! Of course she is.

Anyway, the event was like a who's-who of the most thrilling echelons of the London poetry scene, and (though I hadn't realised this beforehand) it was also Burns Night! So the estimable brother-in-law of Simon Barraclough, David Adams, broke the ice well and truly with an extremely rousing recitation of Burns' To a Mouse. This is a poem you just never seem to read all the way through, at least I haven't in ages, and my God it was wonderful. Also wonderful to invoke the man himself into our event. And in the right accent.

The event was attended by five of the six members of The Like Of It anthology, which overlaps with Ask For It By Name by one member, Liane Strauss. (The other common denominator is the word "It": can this be mere coincidence??)

(nb. If you would like to buy a copy of The Like Of It, you can either click on the link above, or you can email me. There have been endless problems with the distribution of this book, for reasons which are far too tedious to go into. However there are several spare copies nestling cosily in a corner of Baroque Mansions, wirth "free postage" written on their happy smiling faces...)

The evening was a success, then! Hurrah! The room was packed, and although Ms B and her companion missed the free bar (like, what are those other people? Hyenas?? We arrived by 7!) and Ms B never got one morsel of the snacks (having distinctly seen an entire platter of pork pies arrive in the room) I think these facts merely testify to the gargantuan appeal of the book, and the gargantuan appetites of the guests. Hungry for poetry. Hungry for life. Hungry for, well, anything. A hunger that can't be named...

reminder: poetry this afternoon

To refresh your memories as you sit planning your Sunday: I will be reading in Maida Vale at 3pm. It's in conjunction with a music event called 60x60; there'll be an hour of poetry and an hour of music ,in a lovely building, on a lovely day, hopefully with some wine (not too much, in my case).

The readers are:
Anne Cammon, more info here
Barbara Marsh, more info here
Liane Strauss, more info here
Heather Holden, more info here
and me, more info here!

Liane, Heather and I are also both in a book together, an anthology of six poets called The Like Of It; copies will be available this afternoon.

To recap, the details:

Time: Sunday June 10, 3pm
Place: The Amadeus Centre, 50 Shirland Rd, W9
Admission: free, I think

not very brooding

Baroque in Hackney doesn't usually publicise, or even directly refer to, anything so prosaic as events - unless there is some issue to discuss, or Ms B is bursting with gossip, of course (and even then there's the painful necessity to be relatively discreet). But in this case we will make an exception, because the event features ME.

Life Lines: Six Poets for Oxfam
Winter reading, November 28 at 7.30pm

Oxfam Bookshop
91 Marylebone High Street
London, W1

Hosted by Todd Swift, Oxfam Poet in Residence
Admission free, suggested donation £6
Please contact the manager Martin Penny to reserve seats
Telephone: 020 7487 3570
email: oxfammarylebone@hotmail.com


The readers are:
Ros Barber (new collection from Anvil due out 2007);

Katy Evans-Bush (widely-published poet featured in The Like Of It, Baring & Rogerson, 2005);

Ruth Fainlight (winner of the Hawthornden and Cholmondeley Awards; author of Moon Wheels, Bloodaxe, 2006);

Tobias Hill (novelist and poet, author of The Cryptographer, Faber, and Nocturne In Chrome & Sunset Yellow, Salt);

Michael Rosen (broadcaster and lecturer; Selected Poems forthcoming from Penguin, February 2007);

Eva Salzman (author of Double Crossing: New & Selected Poems, Bloodaxe).


It's my first reading in months, and it is a little nerve-wracking thinking about standing up in front of a room looking the way I feel I do at the moment. And I've just seen Tobias Hill's publicity picture, & I'm afraid I'll never be able to look anything like so appropriately brooding! One can only try and make up for it with fake pearls and lipstick (and, I suppose, poems).