But it also applies to poetry on the day I found I'd missed a new recent David Harsent, which will stand in for the delayed Roddy Lumsden, and Colette Bryce arrived. Those, and Poetry Day, and most spectacularly of all, a speedily appearing Collected Rosemary Tonks of which the blurb says,
there is possibly no other poet who has caught with such
haughty, self-ironising contempt, the loucheness of the period, or the anger it
could touch off in brooding bystanders
which makes it essential. I hoped it meant me and I wish it did but it was never going to.
Because there's still so many dreary things being said that a chance to get Rosemary in a new edition not priced as a collector's item is to be jumped at.
For example, here, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/11/next-generation-20-poets-poetry-book-society-kate-tempest, of the 'Next Generation' poets, it says,
Judge and poet Clare Pollard said she had been looking for poets “who were doing something new: tackling fresh subject matter, taking both emotional and literary risks”,
I do so wish they wouldn't. If only we could say, 'I like these poets because none of them are doing anything particularly new, they just do it particularly well'
And, here, http://toddswift.blogspot.co.uk/ (Sept 8th), some 'fund-raising',
For £500 you get dinner with one of our authors in London.
That is a monkey. I'd be expecting a lot of curry and chips for that even at London prices.
So, let's have a great Autumn now that we have Rosemary Tonks in a sensibly-priced edition. For me, she doesn't even have to be that good. She only needs to be who she was.
Meanwhile, the kindle edition of Re-Read, Selected Poems is in preparation at DG Books. Keep a wary eye out for the few days it will be free to download from Amazon. And then we will perhaps try to get The Last of the Great Dancers out for Christmas and that will be the in-print back catalogue all available on kindles and won't that be a fine thing.
