Coming soon...

Last year, I reviewed Robert Selby's The Coming-Down Time (Shoestring Press) for Magma. I loved it – it was pretty much my favourite collection of the year – combining as it did the highly personal with the historical and the subtly political by way of close attention to family history.

He has a new collection, The Kentish Rebellion, forthcoming from Shoestring in July, and will be reading poems from it at the Poetry London launch this week – you can find full details here.

Provenance, by David Belbin

I've been reading David Belbin's superb Provenance: New and Collected Short Stories, which pulls together 18 stories dating back as far as the 1980s.

There's a wide variety of subject matter (one which deals with child abuse is particularly effective), but the style is uniformly realistic, economical and exact – David Belbin's particularly good at dialogue. It all means that the stories' impact rather creeps up on you – there's no heavy-handed signposting of significance, or meaning, and you're left, as the reader, with a little work to do yourself (as you should be). Take the time, though, and you'll certainly come away from the book the better for having read it, so precisely does it capture the uncertainties of contemporary life (generally with an East Midlands flavour, too, refreshingly).

It's from the always-excellent Shoestring Press - you can order a copy here.

Jazz and Poetry

Last night I was lucky enough to be one of the invited readers at the first session of the new season of Jazz and Poetry, at The Guitar Bar, Nottingham.

It's a well established night, which combines poetry with superb music from Four In A Bar, a trad jazz quartet that includes poet and publisher John Lucas. It's run by novelist David Belbin (who has also, for many years, been reviewing theatre, comedy and particularly music here with unfailing open-mindedness) and poet Pippa Hennessy, of Nottingham Writers' Studio.

Pippa read in the first section, along with open mic-ers Russell and Tony (whose full names sadly escaped me), and all were excellent. Russell was brave enough to read with backing from the band's guitarist, and it worked well, but all three had me wanting to hear more.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading. It's a really good space, with excellent acoustics and a lot of character, and the audience were more than kind. It was only the second full-length reading I've done from The Elephant Tests, so I'm still sorting out what works and what doesn't, but it's got me looking forward to the other readings I've got coming up in the next two months.

Sarah Jackson's debut collection Pelt, from Bloodaxe, won the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for Poetry, and very deservedly so too. I've read it with great enjoyment, and I suppose I thought I knew it quite well, so it was a surprise to find myself noticing new pleasures as she read. But that, I think, is what a good reading should do, and it will certainly send me back to the book again. Incidentally, her pamphlet Milk, from Pighog, was also excellent, and a really beautifully produced publication too.

There was time to make new acquaintances and catch up with old faces like Alan Baker and Kerry Featherstone, although I unfortunately managed to miss Rory Waterman. But no matter, as Rory's launching his own debut Carcanet collection at the bar on November 27th, when Roy Marshall will also be launching his Shoestring Press debut The Sun Bathers, and before that on November 13th the next Jazz and Poetry will feature Gregory Woods and another guest TBC.

As if all that's not enough, there's a good selection of real ale on tap, plus bottled beers including a particular old favourite of mine, Sierra Nevada (I only noticed it too late, but I'll put that right next time). There you go - even more reasons to be at the next event.

Interviewed by Roy Marshall

There's an interview with me over at the blog of Roy Marshall - you can read it here. It was very enjoyable to do, although I fear I may have wittered on incoherently at times, and repeated myself at others. But anyway, many thanks to Roy for taking so much time and trouble over this.

There are also a few poems from The Elephant Tests there - if you like what you see, it's available through the Nine Arches website.

While you're at the blog, take the time to have a more general browse. Roy, who's from Leicester, is a very fine poet whose Crystal Clear Creators pamphlet Gopagilla was a taste of what he's capable of, and his forthcoming collection from Shoestring Press promises to build on that auspicious start.

The Marshall plan

Lovely to see that Leicester poet Roy Marshall will have a debut collection coming out with Shoestring Press next year - his Crystal Clear Creators chapbook Gopagilla is excellent (I'll be blogging about it and some of the other CCC pamphlets soon). Roy has some interesting things to say about the book and the pamphlet here.

Shoestring, run by John Lucas, is a fine little press, too, with excellent production values and, over the years, a varied line-up of poets. I've just enjoyed Gregory Woods' pamphlet Very Soon I Shall Know, from them, for example.

The plot thickens...

You may know her only as the founder, owner and life-force of the chapbook phenomenon that is HappenStance, but Helena Nelson is also a very, very fine poet.

As she's not doing nearly enough trumpet-blowing of her own (well, none in fact), it's time to point out that her new collection, Plot and Counter-Plot, is out now from Shoestring Press. It's been a long time since the superb Starlight On Water (Rialto, 2003), but I'm guessing it'll have been worth the wait. More on this soon...