LICK THE QUIET SMOKE
Today is a good day. A box of chapbooks arrived from Blackheath Books with my new collection Cigarettes In Bed wrapped inside. They look fantastic. It’s a strange sensation when you’ve laboured over a new set of poems, then finally let them go onto the printed page. They turn up like a little bundle of joy. Then you get post natal depression, wonder if they are any good after all, push them aside for a few months and let them rest until you can revisit them again.
Geraint Hughes has made a superb job of them. They are embossed, letterpressed, and his kids burned holes through the front with a magnifying glass. Lisa Cradduck made an etching to go on the back called Ghost Moth. With stamps, seals, signatures and black ink they are made from 100% recycled paper. Collectable as hell. And only £5. What a bargain.
Blackheath’s last edition, Billy Childish’s Unknowable But Certain sold out straight away. Alongside Tangerine Press Blackheath are one of the best publishers of underground poetry in the UK. I feel honoured to be in the stable.
Here’s a picture I took of my package this afternoon in the boudoir…
Cigarettes In Bed, Out Now on Blackheath Books
Congratulations on new book Cigarettes In Bed; classic and dangerous behaviour. Weird how many Superking chainsmokers consider it disguting to smoke in the bedroom. Or is that just yokel dullmind essex?
Did I see something on fakebook about you being student of the year?
Congrats again.
Netwise consolidation seems a wise move.
You carrying on with Straight from The Fridge?
Anyway, just saying Hi . . .
Swing Loose Blue Chariot.
FD