Book Review - Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21

Lovely review from New Zealand poet and author Tim Jones, whose work (Men Briefly Explained) I admire, so it makes the review doubly valuable.  Cheered me up on a grey morning. Thanks Tim!    Review at 'Books in the Trees' 

Night Before Nerves

Just getting myself together for the northern launch of 'Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21' at the Wordsworth Trust tomorrow.  Trying to decide what poems to read .......    trying to decide what to wear ........   Taking along a few bottles of wine for the patient supporters who are (reportedly) coming (and a bit of dutch courage for myself!).   Have a repeated nightmare where I go along to a reading and I've come to the wrong place and there's no one there - another one is not being able to find the pages I'm supposed to be reading from.    Some writers really enjoy performing, but I've begun to realise I'm not one of them  -   I'm the hide-in-the-closet and write kind of writer!

Oh - and just discovered that Wendy Robertson has done a lovely review of the poems on her blog at http://www.wendyrobertson.com/not-saying-goodbye-at-gate-21/#comment-633
Thank you Wendy!

Book available from www.templarpoetry.com

It's finally launched!

It’s finally going to be out!!!   So forgive the outbreak of exclamation marks!   This weekend is the launch of my new collection from Templar Poetry at the Derwent Poetry Festival.    The books aren’t on the Templar bookshop website yet, but we’re assured that the web update is on its way and any books ordered online (£8.99) will be delivered asap, just  e-mail    info@templarpoetry.co.uk    Should also be on Amazon.co.uk sometime next week.  I’m reading with several other Templar poets as well as my co-award winners, Martin Malone and Suzanne Ehrhardt at the Arkwright Suite, Masson Mills, Matlock Bath if anyone's in the Derby area over the weekend.  Mimi Kalvati is the guest poet reading on Saturday night and there are lots of others.  It sounds good fun and I’m really looking forward to it.  Won’t be able to blog from there, as the B&B I’m staying in doesn’t have wi-fi.   And no, I don’t have a smart phone, or a Blackberry.   But I’ll take lots of pictures and hope to do an update once I’m back home on Monday.

I write poetry very slowly - so much of the creative energy gets used up by writing prose in order to pay the bills.  It’s ten years since I last had a collection out - an exhibition of poetry and photographs (called Secret Eden)  to celebrate Visual Arts Year.  Before that it was a small pamphlet called ‘Unwritten Lives’.   So this collection has been a long time coming.  But whatever I write in order to make a living, poetry is where I start from, where I feel most comfortable, my natural voice,  and I can’t tell you what it feels like to have the poems out there to share with others. 

It may seem odd, but it means more to have one small poetry collection published than all the biographies put together.   This really is the blood on the page, rather than simply describing someone else’s blood on the page.  This is my chance to show that I can do what the people in my other books do.  Does this make sense?   I’d argue with anyone that biography is an art form, a found novel, a creative act, but deep in my bones, there’s a car sticker slogan or two lurking in the back window - ‘Biographers do it second hand’.  ‘If you can’t write, write about people who can’.

Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21 is about journeys - departures and arrivals.  I seem to have been waving goodbye to people at airports and train stations all my life - I once counted up that I’d had 27 addresses in three different countries by the time I was 25.   The poems are also about different kinds of goodbye - the failure of relationships, the deaths of close relatives.   It contains a few of the most popular poems in the earlier pamphlets  (what the Pri-mate calls ‘Kathy’s greatest hits’!).   But there are a lot of new ones gathered together from little magazines that have published individual poems over the last few years, some that are too new to have been published anywhere, and a few more from E-zines such as the Tuesday Poem blog site.

I have a few review copies to give away - if anyone would like one please leave a comment or email me on kathyferber@yahoo.co.uk

Not Saying Goodbye - First Glimpse

Just had the advance copy of the new poetry collection Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21 put into my hands yesterday by Alex McMillen, the editor of Templar Poetry in the coffee shop at Manchester Art Gallery.  There's no feeling like seeing your book in print for the first time - however many you've published.  Smiled all the way back on the train! 

Templar Poetry are known for their unusual covers, so I was really interested to see what they'd do with the title and for a few moments couldn't work the image out, but then realised - Suitcase!

It's not out officially until the first week in November - launched at the Derwent Poetry Festival, Matlock Bath, Derbyshire, 11th, 12th, 13th November. 

Lovely event at Manchester Literature Festival, good audience and very well organised event  - introduced by a very enthusiastic librarian - Libby.  It gives you hope when you find someone who really, really,  loves books.  Interested to discover that the libraries in Manchester operate an E-book lending system.  

I'm now in the archives at the John Rylands Library investigating a New Project!  Very exciting.