Pilgrim Station

I am entirely delighted to confirm Pilgrim Station will be printed this week to come and available from various sources, including: http://www.spmpublications.com/ Nnorom has come up trumps, reviews are underway or volunteered, and I am clinging to a career milestone, waving my scarf in the breeze and singing, as the man put it, my favourite Spanish Revolutionary song.   

 

Every dog has his day!  Love Light and happiness,
Dom.

Peter at Hungerford

 

 

Bright Scarf Poet Peter Pegnall on the last night of the Hungerford Literary Festival,   23 October 2016. The right man for the job. He puts me in mind of his old mentor, and that ancient yardman poet from further up the east coast.  A case of Whitby sur Moyola, though it strikes me Peter starts with clearer intentions even than Caedmon. 

Soller Station

the bright scarf contingent gathers at Hungerford on the weekend. We're going to see that Jenni Murray on Saturday, then probably paint the town red.  At a literary festival all doors are open and all wines flow. Isn't that so?  Meanwhile, anxious delays on my collection, this is no picture of me loaded down with paperbacks, in any case, wrong station...

                         

When I stepped out into the rain today
with head bowed down and collar turned
against the wind set lightly at my door,
an Autumn wind, I saw you standing,
waiting on your platform without end,
waiting for a North bound train.

Hungerford Literary Festival, Sunday 23 October

Rounding off the festival’s exciting programme of authors and events an evening with the Bright Scarf Poets, which includes an open mic element.  “This will be a really fun, welcoming event for anyone interested in the spoken word. There will be a stage, a microphone, tables set-up cafe style and the all important bar to help calm any nerves. What a fantastic way to spend a Sunday night”

Tickets available, with reduction for speaking poets.

Eρεβος

Here's a shadowy coincidence.  Next week on holiday in Majorca, we will be going to Deya, Robert Graves' old haunt and now I hear, beside the naked mud pools, an artistic colony for the monied.  Graves' star is waning in my firmament, but his index of the Greek Myths and the White Goddess are on the shelf beside me.

The coincidences:  I am writing up a poem based in Brompton Cemetery that reflects on the Port of Erebus (entry to the underworld) and have just read Norman Cameron's collected poems, John Norman spent time with Graves & Co in Deya, he wrote it up in passing "A Visit to the Dead." The first stanzas quoted below.  Now looking out the poem I find Cameron was buried in the Brompton Cemetery. Occasionally the coincidences mount up.

I bought  (I was too wealthy for my age)
A passage to the dead ones' habitat,
And learnt, under their tutelage,
To twitter like a bat

In imitation of their dialect.
Crudely I aped their subtle practices;
By instinct knew how to respect
Their strict observances.

Pilgrim Station, soft proof

We have a running order for production with Sentinel and printers, figuring an on sale date of 17 October.  I hope to have copies to cart along to the Hungerford Literary Festival on 23 October, see below, and above, soon [if not already].  Meanwhile I am reminded of Dylan Thomas after a good lunch:  my ears are full of peas and my smiles are all gravy. 

Cover design to be confirmed, meanwhile draft includes an Arizona hand carving, a tourist piece I am sure, which a Stratford evacuee bought his young daughter in later years, that is, a household charm.

Hungerford Literary Festival, 23 October 2016

Bright Scarves will be unfurling nicely at 7pm, Sunday 23 October, The Croft Hall, Hungerford. The top venue for a top show at this year's Literary Festival.
More details to follow, meanwhile:
Reach for those diaries!