At the moment I'm running around trying to get things finalised for the launch of The Summer King. Lots and lots of promo things. I've just had a group of poems from the collection selected to appear on an Italian poetry site, Fiera Lingue, run by Anny Ballardini. It's well worth a look – poets from …
Duffy Furiosa
I'm behind the times again. (Being sick for a week will do that to you.) Carol Ann Duffy has offered her first official poem as UK Poet Laureate, called "Politics", and it's a cracker – read it here. (In case you're wondering where the title of this post comes from, it's from Prof. John Sutherland's commentary …
Book Awards – do they make a difference?
I posted earlier about Saving Poetry Publishers and also the 2009 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. If you've been following the comments, you'll be aware of a good point raised by Tim Jones: that the fees for entering a book in the Awards may be prohibitive for small publishers. This is the current fee structure: …
more awards for Thornspell
Huge congratulations to Christchurch poet and author Helen Lowe – her first novel, the fabulous Thornspell, has just picked up not one but TWO Sir Julius Vogel awards at Conscription, the 2009 New Zealand Science Fiction convention! She took out Best New Talent and Best Young Adult Novel – the latter is all the more impressive when …
A Dark Feathered Art 