Today's London launch of Imagined Sons

A London launch upsets the nerves in so many ways. What other poetry events are going on the same night? Who will I lose to those other events? What if there's a tube strike--as there was on the night of the launch of my first collection? WHAT IF NO ONE COMES? I start counting on my fingers those who've said they're attending, then check my email and see one has the lurgy and another has car trouble. 

I've tried to pre-empt as many concerns as possible. It's in central London, walkable from the Holborn, Chancery Lane and Farringdon tube stations. Tick. They serve food, including a few good vegetarian options. Tick. The room is large enough to hold a good crowd, but hopefully not so large that it'll dwarf us if there aren't that many people. Tick. I reminded friends online the day before. Tick. Did I post something on my blog? I'm doing that now. Tick.

Why is a launch important? So many years, so many tears have gone into this book, that I want to do my best by it. I want to sell sufficient copies that my publisher doesn't lose money on my account. I want people to like the best thing I've ever made. 

So, if you don't know already, it all kicks off at 6 p.m. tonight in the upstairs function room of The Yorkshire Grey pub, 2 Theobald's Road, London WC1X 8PN. Click on the name, and the link will take you to their website with fuller information about directions &c. I'll read at 7 p.m., then the revels will continue. Fingers crossed.

My collaboration with Roddy Lumsden for Camarade 4

As videos of me go, I find this one on the more tolerable side. This one shows the results of my collaboration with Roddy Lumsden for Steven Fowler's Camarade 4, performed last night at The Rich Mix Foundation in London.

The Camarade Project, London, 11 February 2012

Come one, come all!

Reading at the University of Notre Dame London Centre, 14 June 2011

An edited video (with the most unflattering camera angle) of my reading last week at the University of Notre Dame's London Centre is now on YouTube. You can skip the introduction to the evening by starting at the 1:30 mark. The editing removed a number of introductions and explanations, including mention of the poet who read the two "poems for two voices" with me, Rachel McCarthy.

If you like what you hear, the collection I read from, Divining for Starters, is available at The Book Depository with free international delivery.

Divining for Starters, third bite

Today it's a prose poem written for my father, on events that occurred four years ago this month. I hope to see some of you at tonight's launch!

Paternal

A parent a plinth. The first week he regarded hospital as hotel. So the variables include the kind of stone, its consistency, the velocity of prevailing winds. What’s purer than an infidel’s prayer? How strangely, in the second week, the swollen limbs stiffened. And the effects of climate change: milder winters, more precipitation, two, three heat waves each summer. All American, non-Jewish whites are Christian by default. Incredulous, I realise his bicycle may rust and walk it to the shed. Such an ordinary act of reverence. The pulmonologist, the neurologist, the family physician. A bed is a bed is the smallest of bedsores. Blood doesn’t come into it. Ritual, of course, is another matter. A Midwestern town of that size exhibits limited types of architecture. I’ve yet to mention the distance. Come now, to the pivot, the abscess, another end of innocence. In every shop, the woman at the till sings, “Merry Christmas,” a red turtleneck under her green jumper. I thought jumper rather than sweater, a basic equation of space and time. Midnight shuffles the cards. Translated thus, the matter became surgical, a place on the spine. Each night the bicycle breaks out to complete its usual course. A loyalty of ritual or habit. “ICU” means I see you connected to life by wire and tube. A geologist can explain the complexities of erosion. The third week comes with liner notes already becoming apocryphal. Look at this old map, where my fingers once stretched across the sea.

The book is available with free worldwide shipping from The Book Depository.

Divining for Starters, second taste

So tomorrow's the launch, and here's the second sample, from the new issue of Free Verse. These "poems for two voices" may, however, be easier to read on the page than on a computer screen.

The book is available with free worldwide shipping from The Book Depository.

Divining for Starters, first taste

My second collection, Divining for Starters, is now out, and in the three days running up to the London launch, I thought I'd post links to online work from the book. First up is "The Occupation of Iraq," first published in Shearsman and later part of Delirious Hem's 2008 advent calendar, to which this link leads.

The book is available with free worldwide shipping from The Book Depository.