Monday 18 March 2013

States of Independence - the best yet?

Saturday's States of Independence event at De Montfort University was arguably the best yet - certainly it seemed busier than ever.

I was only able to be there for part of the afternoon, but I did catch readings by Simon Perril and Julia Gaze, promoting their Open House chapbooks. I bought both, and very good they are too - I'll have more to say about them in a later post.

I caught up with plenty of familiar faces from Leicester, Nottingham, Birmingham and further afield - Roy Marshall, Mal Dewhirst, Alan Baker, CJ Allen, DA Prince, Mark Goodwin and Jane Commane among them - and it was nice to meet Ian Parks for the first time.

Oh, and I bought a few more books. A chapbook of translations of TH Parry-Williams from Shoestring Press is excellent, and I also picked up Shoestring's Commons, Nadia Kingsley and David Calcutt's Road Kill, from Fair Acre Press*, and a book of local history, Getting The Coal, which I've been enjoying immensely. Congratulations to all concerned on another superb event.

* Fair Acre also had a gorgeous-looking book, Shropshire's Butterflies, which ought to appeal to the natural historian every bit as much as the poetry reader. Definitely one to add to the must-buy list.

3 comments:

Lindsay Waller-Wilkinson said...

It was indeed an excellent day and I too came home struggling with a bag delightfully heavy with the weight of words.

Matt Merritt said...

Glad to hear it, Lindsay! I wish I'd been able to get to more of the events earlier in the day, but it was still a lot of fun.

Matt Merritt said...

Glad to hear it, Lindsay! I wish I'd been able to get to more of the events earlier in the day, but it was still a lot of fun.