It occurs to me that ...

... I haven't posted much about poetry of late. Rest assured, gentil reader, I am still smitten by The Muse & all her outpourings. If the challenge has been of late not simply the writing of then the living of (if that makes sense).

Today I dropped into my favourite secondhand bookshop in Brussels off Place St Catherine - site of that once in a lifetime most glorious find some years ago. (You remember ... those Raworths ...). And there snuggling between two far duller companions was this Sun & Moon Press volume:

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From the cover alone I knew I'd like it - a Trevor Winkfield design being a guarantee of quality within. & so it has proved to be - sitting outside on the terrace in temperatures more becoming summer than early spring. Admittedly, I don't get Lineups (the price one pays for not growing up with baseball) but there's plenty of good things besides.

Yes, I'd been aware of the name - why my eye alighted on the title - but never knowingly read a line. So it's great to discover another voice - like finding a new friend - who says things in ways that enlarge the day.

Now that I am seeing myself as a totally different person

whose interests are like a street covered with slush

and whose every word rings like the ear of a spaniel

...

('Poem', from Elizabethan & Nova Scotian Music)

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Back soon with updates on Belbury Poly (The Owl's Map) and Trygve Seim (Oslo-based saxphonist).

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& if anyone knows how to speed up this iMac - page loading is bloody slow these days - let me know. (& there's nothing wrong with the internet connection).

Just a sign of age & impending obsolescence? (Had to check the spelling on that one). & I mean the computer - not me.

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