Launch Reflections

I'm still coming back down to earth after the launch of Where the Air is Rarefied, my new collection of poetry, with prints by Pat Gregory, last Wednesday evening. It really couldn't have gone better.

In spite of my usual pre-event frets that there would only be a handful of people in the audience, the Norwegian Church Arts Centre was packed to its newly-refurbished rafters. Well over a hundred people came along (in fact, we ran out of chairs!), and I much enjoyed chatting to friends old and new once Pat and I had finished doing our performance/presentation.

As I said at the time, so many thanks are due - to Jan Fortune of Cinnamon Press (pictured below) for publishing the collection (in these financially challenging times, it's a huge undertaking to publish any book, let alone one containing full colour prints), to Philip Gross for his pre-publication endorsement and for being an enthusiastic audience member on the night, to Tony at the Norwegian Church for helping the event to run smoothly, and to Ruth Bradshaw for some lovely atmospheric soprano saxophone music before and after the poetry part of the evening.

Finally, for those of you who weren't able to make the launch and who may be interested in buying a copy of the book, I now have a Paypal button on the Where the Air is Rarefied page on my website.