New Book!
One big thing can now be taken off my bucket list: I have a full poetry collection coming out on Isobar Press soon (exact date TBC but with events in March).
Isobar Press is a poetry publisher based in Tokyo and run by Paul Rossiter. He publishes Japanese poems in translation and poetry by writers based in or connected to Japan. My shelf is heaving with their books and Paul has very high standards so to be accepted onto the list is a huge honour. I’ve tried and failed before, so I know exactly how hard it is!
Mountain Retreats is, as the name very strongly suggests, a collection of poems about mountains, nature, hiking, and camping. I knew for years I wanted to do something like this and had collected various short poems and haiku in a folder with this in mind. It only began to become a reality during the plague times when I spent a lot of time in the Japanese hills losing weight, getting fit, and generally decluttering my head. The first sequence, Where the sky begins, comes from this period and is a narrative in short, linked poems. If you’ve read my poetry before this is in the same style.
The second sequence, all of this has happened before, is a bit more of a departure for me. Firstly, they are long poems, something I haven’t really done for decades. I began my writing life as a poet before embracing prose, and over the years my poetry has got more and more minimalist, occasionally coming in at nothing more than a few words. As a result, the eight poems that make up all of this has happened before feel epic to me! The idea was a sequence of poems echoing the weathering and erosion process that turn rocks into sand but as always evolved into something far beyond the initial spark. It was inspired in part by Larissa Reid, whose geology-based poems are wonderful, and she helped to edit the poems and checked my amateur science.
While Paul was considering whether to publish Where the sky begins, I was working on this second sequence thinking it would make a separate chapbook. I posted on Facebook that I’d finished this sequence and Paul suggested I send it through as well. As I said, I thought they’d be two separate things but Paul felt they complimented each other and would work well as a longer, “proper” poetry collection rather than two shorter chapbooks. I wasn’t about to argue with that, and so here we are.
The cover comes from a photo taken by Kristen Huber. I first met Kristen at the Japanese Writers Conference in 2022 where she, Taylor Mignon, and I wrote a filthy poem based on the Mister Donuts’ menu. I also first met Paul at a JWC (in 2018, I think, maybe 2019, it’s all a blur these days) meaning this entire publication owes its existence to the conference. Kristen posted this photo on her Instagram just as Paul and I were thinking about covers and it immediately struck me as perfect. We got her permission, Paul did the design, and the end result is the gorgeous thing at the top of this page.
The book will be available directly from various outlets in Britain and Japan later this month. As sad as it makes me to say it, if you aren’t in Tokyo or London then Amazon is by far the easiest way to get hold of it: small publishers simply can’t afford global distribution. There’ll be an event in Nagoya for sure, probably something in Tokyo in the spring, and definitely something at the Japan Writers Conference in Fukushima this October. More news as and when.