What's going on?

At the risk of shameless self-publicity, here are a couple of things that have been happening lately that I wanted to mention. Firstly, in terms of publications, I have a poem in the very interesting anthology Other Countries, featuring poems that re-interpret particular moments in history. My poem is about the Cuban missile crisis as viewed from Lincolnshire. Claire Trevien and Gareth Prior have done a great job editing the anthology and I've already taken part in one of the launch readings. There will be another reading at the forthcoming Cheltenham Poetry Festival.



In other news, Tears in the Fence has published my sequence of five acrostic sonnets based on the early films of Udo Kier. If you asked me what it was really all about, I couldn't tell you, but it was great fun to write, and it is a pleasure to be in this magazine, which remains one of the most interesting small literary magazines in the UK. Apart from the variety and quality of work, I value this magazine because it has introduced me to so many poets beyond the mainstream of British verse who I would otherwise have never encountered.


Finally, my anticipation grows for the launch of my first full collection of poems, Arc, with Nine Arches Press in the autumn. We are at the stage of choosing covers and author photographs, so it all seems very real now. One of the poems from the book, along with something written more recently, has just been published over at Abegail Morley's Poetry Shed blog.