Reviews, Readings and Reading Regional

REVIEWS:
I've added a Reviews page to this site, and will add to it as the reviews roll in, as they no doubt will. (He said confidently.) There was a nice long, interesting and interested review by Greg Freeman on Write Out Loud which you can read in full here. I couldn't help but laugh at the way not being in Poetry Review is a good thing, although I'm not sure my poems are as plain as they may appear. They aren't very elusive, I agree, but there are a lot of allusions in them, some deeper down than others. There are two in the football poems Greg quotes, for instance. Anyway, I'm glad he seemed to have enjoyed the book, and knows his football!

I also remembered another short review in July's edition of Culture magazine, and found some really nice comments on Anthony Wilson's 'Poems That Saved My Life' blog. I'm not sure quoting something which calls me 'hugely underrated' falls under bragging or complaining, though, to use a phrase I used in 'If I said I was reading' which was discussed recently on Twitter by Oliver Mantell in his @IrregularMargin guise. (Captured in the picture above.)

READINGS:
I will be performing with Bob Beagrie and Andy Willoughby (feeling like the Des O'Connor to their Morecambe and Wise?) at the exciting sounding Jabberwocky Market festival in Darlington on Sunday 6 October. If you're around Darlington - only 2 and a bit hours from London Village - it'd be good to see you. There are 3 short performance during the afternoon, with theatre scratch schows in between.

I will also be performing on the last day of the Durham Book Festival, at 12.30 at Clayport Library in the centre of Durham, with Cara Brennan and Tara Bergin. There are other writers there during the day, including the fantastic Andrew Crumey after we three poets.

READ REGIONAL:
Cara, Tara and I are the three poets on the list of selected writers/books for the 2013/14 Read Regional campaign, working with libraries and readers across the North East and Yorkshire. The Durham event is a sneak preview for events which will mainly take place next year. All the writers recently did short readings for a roomful of librarians and reader development specialists, some of whom had been up since Daft O'Clock. Fine for me to go last out of 11 then...

Actually, we all enjoyed doing that, and meeting each other, it was the 'having our photos took' bit we all pretended to really not enjoy. Anyway, next year I'm looking forward to getting out and about as part of the project, which is produced by New Writing North with Arts Council support. There's even going to be a 'Readers Group Guide' style thing for the book, which is exciting. More on this soon!