"RISE" is Out!!

My second collection is now out. Available from Cinnamon Press, and from Amazon, "Rise" contains poems that depict some aspects of the journey through cancer (done with very light brush strokes), and then focus on the triumphal celebration of coming through. In short it is a collection that positively celebrates being alive! I am very, very glad to be "above ground" still, and I hope that in reading these poems you, my reader, will also be uplifted by the joy of living.

Fings aint what they used to be?

Everything I own is old: my dog is 17; my car is twenty years old. They both work just fine! Until I had a new battery put in 2 months ago (into the car, that is!) and already it has failed.Yet the original battery had been in the car prior to that and it had never once let me down. Makes you think....

RESILIENCE

There is nothing so remarkable as an ancient yew. The book cover of my new collection "Rise" could easily have featured one, as not only do you need a good dose of resilience to survive ovarian cancer, but the chemotherapy treatment Taxol used to combat O.C is a poison extracted from yew tree leaves. But my book cover will be of something else, and I'll post a picture of it soon. Meanwhile here is a fine example of an enduring yew, photographed in Farndon Churchyard, Cheshire.

LONGEST TITLE?

Matt Merritt, who blogs at polyolbion, has a poetry collection with the extraordinary title HYDRODAKTULOPSYCHICHARMONICA. Does it take the biscuit for the longest title ever? Makes my new book's title "Rise" look shrunk ( or pithy, for preference).

GOING GLOBAL?

2013 has begun with two unexpected requests: the first from "Poems in the Waiting Room", New Zealand, for permission to use one of my poems, Cellist, in their poem card series distributed to hospital/ medical waiting rooms and retirement homes. The second from the University of Buffalo, NY, asking for a copy of my first pamphlet "Uncertain Days" for the Poetry and Rare Books section of the university's library. Happenstance Press, who published it in 2006, had none left - it had sold out quite quickly - and I had only my own (clean) copy plus one rather stained copy. The clean copy will soon be winging its way overseas. I wonder if anyone will ever read it once it's neatly filed away?

NEW BOOK

I have a new book due out next year: "Rise". It will be published by Cinnamon Press in May 2013. It deals with the fact that so far I have survived ovarian cancer, a cancer that was thought at first to be about to finish me off. But having had a run-in with this horrible disease you can never be confident of your luck continuing; it has a nasty habit of popping back to say hello. Anyway the book deals truthfully with some of the things I experienced and in my usual way I have tried to make it dispassionate and also bear a little wry humour. I am thinking about this because it is nearly Christmas and I am so lucky to be celebrating another Christmas during which I hope to see all of my family. Some of the friends I made during that awful time have not been so lucky. To all of you out there who are still, as the Irish say, "above ground", I would like to wish a very happy Christmas and good health in 2013.