partying with the pen pushers

Oh, la! After two days of feeling worse than ever, yesterday the light at the end of the tunnel (that's life after gall stones, not a near-death experience) shone just that bit brighter. Thank God for that.

And thank God again, because I had a magazine launch to go to last night! I didn't want to miss it. Pen Pusher is a new literary magazine - very much, at this stage, what you'd call a 'little magazine', as it's even free for the time being - just coming out in its sixth issue. Yours truly here has a poem in it, and the editors (Anna Goodall and Felicity Cloake) are friends of the estimable Tim Wells, who was the person who put me onto it in the first place, so naturally I went along. (I also picked up a couple of copies of Tim's free mag, Rising, while I was there ("tough on poetry, tough on the causes of poetry"): the new issue has also got one of mine in it. Two poems, two magazines, one evening! Not bad.)

So, as a party correspondent I'm utter crap, because I sat on a bench all night at the edge of this very pretty pub garden* (packed with drunk City types, I'm very sorry to say) in this outrageously overpriced pub in Spitalfields called - appropriately - The Water Poet, talking to the same three people all night, unless someone came over to say hi (which several did, so that was fine - at least I got to meet the two editors and the wonderful designer (Hape Mueller) who does such a great job with the single-colour format... ).

I couldn't have been in better company, anyway: on one side of me sat Mr Wells (fresh from what sounds like a triumphant set at the Latitude festival), on the other side the equally impressive Andy Ching, who runs Donut Press, and on the other side of Andy the novelist Ray Robinson, whose first book Electricity (Picador) has just been shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, ad his next one is coming out next summer... I didn't realise who he was until Andy showed me the novel (American edition) and I recognised its fabulous cover - I'd only just been reading a big interview Ray gave Scott Pack last week!

Clearly I should get this book (but from an independent bookshop, not Amazon) and read it.

Talk was of many thing, as they say - cabbages, kings, the Forward shortlists, novelising, publishing, poetry friends, my wonderful manuscript, the City drunks, the bar prices, the fabulousness of Pen Pusher, gall stones, haemmorhoids, gout, and the free champagne (well, free to us, anyway - and who's complaining!).

Not bad for a girl who had to sit down and give up the mingling...

I think Pen Pusher is one to watch. The content's great - varied, interesting and high quality - and, as I say, the magazine looks beautiful. It's available free (for the time being - talk was also of funding) from good independent bookshops in London - or if you went to their website and asked for one I'm sure they'd send it.

* There was a tall brick wall with vines growing up it in vast profusion, and the vines were full of little blue lights... beyond the Stella Artois umbrella we could see the clouds turning a strange orange colour in front of a darkening sky. Felicity wore a lovely skirt that reminded me of beach huts, and I wore my silver satin smock top. As it is England in July, we both wore jumpers; hers was even wool.