Well, some of you may have noticed the following announcement on Beattie's Book Blog yesterday:

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

New poetry release by Jack Ross, Auckland

A Clearer View of the Hinterland: 

Poems & Sequences 1981-2014

Author: Jack Ross

ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7

Price: $30.00

Extent: 192 pages

Format: paperback

Publisher: HeadworX

Cover image: Painting by Graham Fletcher

A Clearer View of the Hinterland

The first of the 33 poems and sequences reprinted here was written in 1981, the latest in 2014 – a time-lapse of thirty-three years. As Paula Green put it in 99 Ways into NZ Poetry: “Jack Ross writes poetry like an inquisitive magpie, a scholar, a linguist and a hot-air balloonist … The end result, in contrast to some experimental work, promotes heart as much as it does cerebral talk.”

A Clearer View of the Hinterland is Jack Ross’s fifth full-length poetry collection, and his most substantial to date. It reprints four complete poetry chapbooks, as well as including extracts from numerous others. The poems on offer here include love lyrics, experimental texts, and translations from a variety of languages.

Critical comments:

Thought-provoking and challenging, a tantalizing maze, clashing ideas and images, mixing old and new forms, with wit, candour and self-mockery. – Harvey McQueen, JAAM

It’s hard to imagine a writer better equipped to give context through paratext than Ross, for whom form and format are always expressive. – Jen Crawford, brief

About the Author:

Jack Ross’s publications include four full-length collections of poetry, three novels, and three volumes of short fiction. He has also edited numerous books and literary magazines, including – with Jan Kemp – the trilogy of audio / text anthologies Classic, Contemporary and New NZ Poets in Performance (AUP, 2006-8).

If you'd like to know more about the book, I can hardly do better than point you towards Mark Pirie's HeadworX website, where there are a couple of sample poems, as well as a link to the online annotations for the collection (it seemed better than loading up the book itself with a lot of fairly specialised source details).

More to the point, you could order a copy right now from Mark Pirie's site (should you wish to). If you'd prefer to wait and have a look through it first, we're planning a launch sometime in late November / early December, together with Tracey Slaughter's novella The Longest Drink in Town, which is being published by Pania Press.

And in the meantime, here's a clearer view of that cover image of Graham Fletcher's:

cover image: Graham Fletcher / cover design: Ellen Portch & Brett Cross

I love chapbooks

The Return of the Vanishing New Zealander.
Dunedin: Kilmog Press, 2009. 20 pp.

There's something distinctly satisfying about a chapbook. They're so bite-sized, so approachable. I think a lot of people who feel daunted by a full-length, buttoned-up slim volume of verse (let along a Collected - or even Selected - Poems) feel somehow reassured by the lack of fanfare accompanying a self-confessed poetry pamphlet.

Design, too. There's more of a sense of genuine collaboration about chapbooks - book-designers choosing a text more for their own purposes than to serve some author's plan for world domination.

Dean Havard at Kilmog Press has been making a name for himself for his robust sense of design and unflagging industry. I'm not sure just how many books he's brought out to date, but it must be quite a few. He's published poetry books by Jeanne Bernhardt, Peter Olds, Bob Orr, Mark Pirie, Michael Steven - in some cases more than one by the same author - but his list also includes art catalogues and even an edition of the (so-called) Lost Journal of Edward Jerningham Wakefield!

A website is coming soon, apparently, so we'll soon be able to see a list of all his publications to date (though I gather that many of them have sold out already, so you'll have to be in fast). In the meantime, there's also a blog that you can visit.

In the meantime, the books are available from Parsons in Wellesley Street, or directly from the publisher (Kilmog Press, PO Box 1562, Dunedin). They retail for $35.

Here's the sample poem from my own book which Dean put up on Facebook (which enables me to claim a lack of egotism in reproducing it). It comes from the poem "Journey to the West":

III – Countdown

Is it high?
It touches heaven.
Deep?
It reaches hell.

White clouds surround the mountain
black mists swim
red-blushing plums / jade bamboo
dark-green cypresses / blue pines
_____________________________

Ten-mile pavilion: no travellers leave
nine-faced heaven: stars have set
on eight harbours: boats are docked
in seven thousand cities: gates shut
six palaces: officials gone
five departments: ledgers closed
four seas: fishing lines sink
three rivers: waves subside
two towers: bells resound
one moon lights earth and sky

A Town Like Parataxis

Back in 2000, Gabriel White and I collaborated on a book of poems and photographs called:

A TOWN LIKE PARATAXIS

I guess the idea of the title was to elide Nevil Shute's A Town Like Alice (1950) with Wim Wender's Paris Texas (1984), but the real subject matter of the book was Auckland: the "parataxis" of its monotonously repetitive vistas and locales.

It was subtitled "a colouring-in book" because, I suppose, it was up to the reader to bring some colour to it.

We had a big launch at Gabriel's flat in Westmere, and promptly sold out of all the copies we'd laboriously assembled out of crudely-copied xeroxed pages (Gabriel had a very art-brut aesthetic at the time, which meant no frills and no smoothing out of the results of the raw democracy of the photocopy machine).

I too was keen on the idea of a kind of samizdat A4-sized poetry chapbook. Readers seemed to grasp the point of it at once ("Some of them have even said they liked the poems," as Gabriel remarked to me a couple of weeks later).

The main problem is that the book has been pretty much unavailable ever since. I'm not sure we could quite reproduce the spirit in which we made that first collaborative text, so I've decided to compromise by putting the whole text up here online, with all of the images included. You'll have to click on them if you want to see them at anything resembling their proper size, though.

And here we both are in 2000, photographed by one of those odd photo-booths (beloved of adolescent schoolgirls) which add hearts and flowers and comic characters to your strips of passport photos. Don't we look sweet?

Contents:

1. FRONT COVER
   
   
2. TITLE-PAGE
   
   
3. CONTENTS
   
   
4. Swallows and Amazons
   
   
5. Cheating Heart
   
   
6. A Town Like Parataxis
   
   
7. At the Warhol Look Exhibition
   
   
8. Stories We Tell Ourselves: At the Richard Killeen Retrospective
   
   
9. DICTIONARY DEFINITION
   
   
10. BACK COVER & LAUNCH ADVERTISEMENT

© Text: Jack Ross (2000) / Images: Gabriel White (2000)

Oh, and if you're curious to see more in the same vein, I've also posted the entire text of a proposed book version of The Britney Suite which Gabriel and I put together a couple of years later, in 2003, but which never actually ended up seeing the light of day until now.

A Town Like Parataxis (1)

A TOWN LIKE
PARATAXIS

A COLOURING-IN BOOK


Text by Jack Ross

Images by Gabriel White

A TOWN LIKE PARATAXIS

A Town Like Parataxis (2)

A TOWN LIKE
PARATAXIS

A COLOURING-IN BOOK


Text by Jack Ross

Images by Gabriel White


Took a walk around the old neighbourhood
– Margaret Urlich


Auckland: Perdrix Press
2000

A Town Like Parataxis (3)

Contents


Swallows and Amazons

Cheating Heart

A Town Like Parataxis:
1 – Winter’s Tale
2 – Walking Home on a Clear Evening
3 – Wysiwyg

At the Warhol Look Exhibition

Stories We Tell Ourselves:
At the Richard Killeen Retrospective

A Town Like Parataxis (4)

Swallows and Amazons

Man is a printing animal
born of opposableto study collagen
typecull phrases – cerebralGreen-backdon’t drop those
excesseggs (I’ve used that phrase
before
That was your truest voice
you never saw yourselfA Hitchcock hero
in ermine – TsarWar is badStop biting them
of all the rushesWar is bad becauseadminister a
swimming Nor’-nor’-westWar is bad because itslapStop touching it
kills the innocentadminister a
totStop
Forget
sequencesis
rememberasratfaced
nothingnothingcloud
doesabove
the
motorboat

A Town Like Parataxis (5)

Cheating Heart
(Between Greymouth and Westport, February ’99)


BUS-DRIVERGIRLRADIO

D’you remember the Kobe earthquake?
…Your cheatin’ heart …
You must sleep soundly
You must have been really tired
…will make you weep …
D’you wave to each other in Japan?
…You’ll cry and cry …
D’you drink green tea?
…and try to sleep …
Does the gold-mine sign say “Open”?
…but sleep won’t come …
If they want a day off, they take it
…the whole night through …
You can go in there and watch them
If you want to
…Your cheatin’ heart …
I’ve been to Australia six times
…will tell on you …
We keep them in a cage up there
in Auckland

A Town Like Parataxis (6)

MIRACLE OF LIFE

A Town Like Parataxis

ChristI – WINTER’S
perfumeTALE
headturn
hurry to the escalator
stop

I don’t have much
have much of a sense
of a sense of direction

Blue scarf
side glance
umbrella
point back
necklace

go home & come back
yeah
have something to eat
go home & come back
yeah



A creaking signII – WALKING
& wind-chimesHOME
& OrionON A
CLEAR
shoes impactstaccatoEVENING

I remember they drove us
crazy, summer nights

got them … fifteen years ago?

what’s with them?
never used to
twinkle

kept now for tango

wood, with dates of
services, the daily vigil
no wonder neighbours curse
every light



Louise SwarbrickIII – WYSIWYG
the senior
flight attendant

LIFE VEST UNDER
YOUR SEAT
It’s grey outside

a pearl-grey day
Who ordered
dates for lunch?

Time for a change

A Town Like Parataxis (7)

At the Warhol Look Exhibition

According to … legend, Andy’s first words were
‘Look at the sunlight! Look at the sun! Look at the light!’
– Victor Bockris, Warhol (1989)

Does it interest me? Does anything
interest anyone, in the
abstract? Meeting Vanessa there (turning
to finish her conversation), and to Chantal:
“Will you give me a mustardy
kiss?” “Not
in front of people.”


Around me images of thirty years:
Marilyn pouting, Liz, Yves
Saint-Laurent – garish flocks of
red (something rather sad
in aping such profusion),
the ‘compilator’
– finally, who’s fooled?


Not ‘fooled,’ exactly … fiddled?
“His great, great flower paintings
of the seventies”“Controversial
popCelebrated decade’s
glamour, style and fashion
ability
It includes 500”
icon out of time

A Town Like Parataxis (8)

Stories we tell ourselves:
At the Richard Killeen Retrospective

I didn’t think ‘triangle good, rabbit bad’
– Richard Killeen, New Gallery (2/10/99)

Im AxaduUdax am I
Life begins with qualitybuying up earlier works to burn them
Max a dudI’ve got a terrible tongue on meThe bus-driver’s fearDud ax am
C shows me negatives(jet-stream overhead)I M A X A D Uof the open road. Stop,chairs – and Ben, her ex – in bed
Ax a dudapissing in the – Armitage Shanks –M A X A D U Dscrabble in the cashbox,Adu Daxa
I can’t forget they’re everywherewind, behind a briar hedgeA X A D U D Ascratch your balding headpeur contre peur
Xadu daxX A D U D A XXadu dax
I’d rather unknow than not knowWill it stay there till the end of theA D U D A X AIf I could say thatI don’t really care if you get it or not
Adu Daxaworld – that spearmint lifesaverD U D A X A M I could say anything:Ax a duda
Converting the light to pixelsI dropped behind the signal boxU D A X A M Ithat look, glance, glimpse, stare,digitally enhanced
Dud ax amon Hobson Street?œillade, scrutiny …Max a dud
Anything is good“boat” = drowning / sailing
Udax am IIm Axadu

A Town Like Parataxis (9)

păratăx’ĭs, n. (gram.). Placing of clauses
etc. one after another, without words to
indicate co-ordination or subordination.
So păratăc’tIC a., păratăc’tICALLY adv.
[f.Gk PARA (taxis arrangement f. tassō)]
– Concise Oxford Dictionary, ed. H. W. & F. G. Fowler (1911)

A Town Like Parataxis (10)

Perdrix Press
6a Hastings Rd
Mairangi Bay
Auckland 1310
Phone: (+64-9) 479-2870
Fax: (+64-9) 478-5828
E-mail: jack.ross@xtra.co.nz

© Jack Ross & Gabriel White, 2000
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 0-473-07104-5

WHAT WOULD YOU PAY
FOR THIS VIEW?

You are cordially invited to a Garden Party
at 23 Maxwell Ave, Westmere,
on Sunday, October 1st, from 2 pm onwards
to celebrate the publication of

A TOWN LIKE PARATAXIS
A COLOURING-IN BOOK

Text by Jack RossPhotos by Gabriel White

A Town Like Parataxis
Poems by Jack Ross
Photos by Gabriel White

păratăx’ĭs, n. (gram.). Placing of clauses
etc. one after another, without words to
indicate co-ordination or subordination.
So păratăc’tIC a., păratăc’tICALLY adv.
[f.Gk PARA (taxis arrangement f. tassō)]

Took a walk around the old neighbourhood
- Margaret Urlich

Maybe you too live in a town like Parataxis - it's just around the corner, in the texture of a brick wall, a goal post against the sky. No coordination, no subordination: the sacred sites in your memory theatre.

is
rememberas
nothingnothing
does

A Town Like Parataxis combines image and poetry to articulate this sense of places somehow exempt from "our monotonous sublime."

_________________________________________________

I would like to ordercopies of Jack Ross & Gabriel White's A Town Like Parataxis
at $NZ 10 each.Your address & contact details:

Publisher:Perdrix PressPhn: (+64-9) 479-2870
6a Hastings RdFax: (+64-9) 478-5828
Mairangi Bay
Auckland 1310, NZ

Orange Roughy Sold Out!

Yes, that's right - in under two weeks we've managed to sell nearly 150 books (not counting contributors' copies, National Libary copies, and a few other sundries). Only one shop stocks it (as far as we know) - Parson's Bookshop in Wellesley Street - but I suspect that their copies have already been sold on to libraries and special collections by now.

So I'm sorry if any of you particularly wanted a copy and were just waiting for payday. That is the way the cookie crumbles, though. I mean, how often do you get a line-up of authors like that, with a hand-screenprinted, individually coloured dustjacket, all for the bargain price of $25?

Never, that's when.

You can find further details about the launch on the Pania website here.

We're very happy - and very grateful to everyone who's helped with the project: our contributors (of course), my parents for volunteering their garden for the launch, Bronwyn's parents for selling so many copies, and all the rest of our intrepid sales-team (Greg, Sheryl and Fiona, I mean you ...)

This is Culture-Power at its best, I think.

[Michele Leggott launching Orange Roughy]


[Bronwyn reading out a message from Therese]


[Bronwyn & me outside the bach]


[A few of the "Orange Roughians"(l-r):
Emma Smith, Greg Lloyd, Anna Tozer, Mike & Margot Lloyd ...]


[Michael Steven in festive mood - Raewyn Alexander & June Ross behind him ...]

[photographs 1, 3 & 4 by June Ross / 2 & 5 by Greg Lloyd]

Booklaunch on Sunday 9th March!

[Thérèse Lloyd - photograph by Greg Lloyd (July 2007)]

You are all most cordially invited to Pania Press's very first

BOOKLAUNCH

in the spacious back garden of

No. 6 Hastings Rd,
Mairangi Bay
North Shore City
Auckland

from 2 to 4 pm
on Sunday 9th March

All of you, that is, who wish to buy one or more copies of a sumptuous anthology of poems, pageworks & stories at the bargain price of $25, and (in the process) make a substantial donation to a very good cause.

The book is called:

Orange Roughy: Poems & Stories for Tazey

& includes contributions by the following writers and artists:

Martin Edmond
Graham Fletcher
Bernadette Hall
Michele Leggott
Bronwyn Lloyd
Thérèse Lloyd
Bill Manhire
Emma Neale
Susannah Poole
Tessa Rain
Richard Reeve
Jack Ross
Tracey Slaughter
Michael Steven
Damien Wilkins

I should stress that nobody involved in this project has taken a cent from it - all the proceeds, not just all the profits - are going to Thérèse in Iowa, so that's why we're anxious to sell as many of these fine books as possible.

If you can't make it to the launch, send money or a cheque to Pania HQ and we'll be happy to dispatch as many copies as you like of the book, post-free within NZ, for exactly the same price.

Orders can be made through the Pania website, either as a comment left on the site, or directly via our email address:

paniapress@hotmail.com

For further information, please follow the links above. Hope to see you on Sunday!

Papyri

I have an announcement, and I have a question.

The announcement is that Michael Steven at Soapbox Press has just published my sequence of versions from Sappho in a limited edition of seventy signed chapbooks. It's called Papyri, and it's the second in a series which already includes his own first book of poems, Homage to Robert Creeley.

Further titles are promised later in the year ...



If you'd like to buy a copy, they're available in Parsons, Jason Books and Moa-hunter books, but they can also be ordered directly from the publisher at:

soapboxpress@gmail.com

The question is, what's your opinion of single-author collections of essays?

Bronwyn says she thinks essays are better off jostling with other kinds of writing in a magazine or anthology.

Scott Hamilton, on the other hand, claims that unless our critical statements, manifestoes, reviews etc. are collected in some kind of permanent form, then literary discourse remains entirely in the hands - or between the covers - of the establishment.

I'd like to agree with him. I 've read plenty of interesting books of that sort by the likes of Leslie Fiedler (No! In Thunder) and George Steiner (Bluebeard's Castle), not to mention collections of tarted-up reviews by writers I admired for their poetry or fiction.

However, I do wonder how many essays can really survive transplantation from their original contexts? This especially applies to reviews, of course, but also to pieces written for a particular magazine at a particular time, to combat some particular injustice or misapprehension.

Anyway, what do you think? Do you think it would be useful if more essay collections came out in New Zealand? At the moment it's mainly Victoria University Press that issues them, and their list is generally reserved for big guns such as Wedde, Manhire and O'Brien ...

To Terezin

Well, thanks again to everyone who managed to come along to the booklaunch on Wednesday - to Scott Hamilton for launching the book with such panache and style (check out his launch speech here); to Peter Lineham for MC'ing, to Leanne Menzies for the superb catering, to Leonie at Bennetts Books for agreeing to host the event in the first place, to Julee Browning for being such a good sport when the printers didn't get her book there in time (so we were confined to taking orders on slips of paper ...), to my parents for coming along and buying a copy, to the brief crew for same, and - above all - to the lovely Bronwyn for being so supportive throughout.

If you'd really like to do me a favour (for whatever reason), it would be absolutely super if we could get a few more orders for the book. It'll cost around $20 in the shops, but you can still obtain it for the bargain price of $15 (+ $2 postage and packing) from Leanne Menzies at the School of Social & Cultural Studies. not a bad price for a slim (90-page) volume of verse with colour pictures and an afterword by Martin Edmond, I reckon ...

Launch Invitation!

You are all most cordially invited to a booklaunch, on

WEDNESDAY 13TH JUNE
4.15 pm
Bennetts Book Shop
Massey Albany

(Come off the northern motorway at the Albany turnoff, heading straight up the hill towards the main Massey campus, then drive in through Entrance One. Extensive parking is available. Bennetts bookshop is at the front of the large building to the left of this one, up a sweeping set of stone stairs.)

The two books being launched are new titles in the Massey Social and Cultural Studies monograph series:

#7 - Blood Ties with Strangers: Navigating the Course of Adoption Reunion over the Long Term
by Julee Browning

Drawing on in-depth interviews, this study expands on previous research to suggest that, both emotionally and practically, reunited relationships have no predictable pathways.

&

#8 - To Terezín
by Jack Ross

An account, in poetry and prose, of a visit to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in the Czech Republic, with an afterword by Montana-award-winning author Martin Edmond.

The books can either be bought either at the launch, or else ordered from the School of Social and Cultural Studies. Copies of Julee's book are $12 each; copies of mine are $15 each (+ $2 postage and packing).

Order enquiries to Leanne Menzies
L.Menzies@massey.ac.nz
Ph: (09) 441-8163
Fax: (09) 441-8162

Dr Graeme Macrae will launch Julee's book, and maverick poet and unrepentant Leftie Scott Hamilton has agreed to launch mine. Thanks again, guys!

You really owe it to yourself to check out this fascinating event. (Drinks and nibbles will be provided courtesy of the School of Social and Cultural Studies.)

Here are two sample poems from my book:

The Resistance


The trouble started
early in my stay
What would you like to see

in Prague?
The castle
The Charles bridge

the Jewish quarter
Theresienstadt
(Terezín

in Czech)
Why would you want
to go there?

I tried some explanations
heard so much about it
seen the films

read books
some friends had
mentioned it

before I left


*


Voyeur


Why would you want
to go there?
I think

sometimes
you’ve got to see
the nightmare

for yourself


If the survivors
told me
not to go

I’d stay away

Titus Strikes Again

[Will Joy Christie at the Titus Launch]

Titus Books appears to have a thing for trilogies (following in the footsteps of their illustrious namesake, Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan, perhaps?). This is the second launch [in the Alleluya Cafe, Karangahape Rd, this time -- Thursday 12th April] at which they've presented three books of poetry simultaneously: Will Christie's Luce Cannon, Scott Hamilton's To the Moon, in Seven Easy Steps, and Richard Taylor's Conversation with a Stone.

[Cover illustration by Ellen Portch]

Both Richard and Will have published chapbooks at various times before, but this is the first full-length book of poems for all three of them. And long overdue, I think we'd all agree.

I'd like to say more about all of the books, and I will, but for the moment I just want to direct you to the accounts here and here of the launch on Scott's blog. (Unfortunately I was otherwise detained, enjoying a blissful mid-semester break down in Wellington, but that sure won't stop me trying to publicise these fascinating collections).

All three of the authors are, again, old brief contributors, so it's extra gratifying to see them busting out into the staid New Zealand poetry mainstream.

[Richard Taylor at the Titus Launch]

Oh, and for the curious:
In early 2005 Titus launched a triad of novellas: Bill Direen's Coma, Jack Ross's Trouble in Mind & Olwyn Stewart's Curriculum Vitae.
In late 2005 they launched their first hat-trick of poetry books: Bill Direen's New Sea Land, Olivia Macassey's exquisite Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction & Stephen Oliver's Either Side the Horizon.
In early 2006 they launched a duo of novels (soon to be expanded to three with the addition of David Lyndon Brown's Marked Men): Bill Direen's Song of the Brakeman & Jack Ross's The Imaginary Museum of Atlantis.

Pania Press and the quality known as "wu"

... Here is a piece of metal which has been melted until it has become shapeless. It represents nothing. Nor does it have design, of any intentional sort. It is merely amorphous. One might say, it is mere content, deprived of form.’

Childan nodded.

‘Yet,’ Paul said, ‘I have for several days now inspected it, and for no logical reason I feel a certain emotional fondness. Why is that? I may ask. I do not even now project into this blob, as in psychological German tests, my own psyche. I still see no shapes or forms. But it somehow partakes of Tao. You see?’ He motioned Childan over. ‘It is balanced. The forces within this piece are stabilized. At rest. So to speak, this object has made its peace with the universe. It has separated from it and hence has managed to come to homeostasis.’

Childan nodded, studied the piece. But Paul had lost him.

‘It does not have wabi,’ Paul said, ‘nor could it ever. But—’ He touched the pin with his nail. ‘Robert, this object has wu.’

‘I believe you are right,’ Childan said, trying to recall what wu was; it was not a Japanese word — it was Chinese. Wisdom, he decided. Or comprehension. Anyhow, it was highly good.

‘The hands of the artificer,’ Paul said, ‘had wu, and allowed that wu to flow into this piece. Possibly he himself knows only that this piece satisfies. It is complete, Robert. By contemplating it, we gain more wu ourselves. We experience the tranquillity associated not with art but with holy things. I recall a shrine in Hiroshima wherein a shinbone of medieval saint could be examined. However, this is an artifact and that was a relic. This is alive in the now, whereas that merely remained. By this meditation, conducted by myself at great length since you were last here, I have come to identify the value which this has in opposition to historicity. I. am deeply moved, as you may see.’

‘Yes,’ Childan said ...

[Philip K. Dick. The Man in the High Castle. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965. 161-62.]

The quality known as wu. Pania Press books partake of that feeling also, I believe. They, too, are handcrafted from what might otherwise seem insignificant materials – a few pieces of thread, some sheets of paper – and yet each one is unique, with a unique and individual cover design.

Philip K. Dick’s Japanese businessman goes on to explain to the American Childan that ‘it is a fact that wu is customarily found in least imposing places, as in the Christian aphorism, “stones rejected by the builder.’” (The context gives this dialogue particular poignancy, but if you haven’t yet read his 1962 classic, where he imagines a world where German and Japan won the second World War, I’ll have to leave that up to your imagination).

Anyway, this post is just to signal that Pania Press’s first two commercial publications are now available for purchase. You can read more about them, and read sample poems, at the Pania Press blogsite, but I’ll just say here that:

many things happened, by Thérèse Lloyd, is a delightful and moving first collection of ten lyrics by a poet who will soon be jetting off to Iowa on a scholarship set up by Bill Manhire’s International Institute of Modern Letters.



Love in Wartime, by yours truly, is -- for me –- an unusually direct sequence of poems about love and loss. It seems a rather timely subject for meditation just now. Enjoy.