Guest posts and summer reading

As I did last year, I will be taking a break from uploading new posts to this blog over August.

Things will tick over with old blog posts appearing every two days.

One of my personal highlights of this year has been to invite, read and share the contributions of some wonderful writers (more are on their way in the autumn!).

In May Beverly Rycroft got the ball rolling with her heartbreaking rendering of homesickness, followed by acute readings of Walcott and Dickinson.

More recently we have enjoyed the work of Josephine Corcoran, who took us inside her writing process, specifically how she uses her diary as an act of witness.

Next we had Robin Houghton’s fearless tackling of the elephant in the room of literary envy. This is essential reading, even if you are not a writer or poet. It reminded me of what John Candy says in Cool Runnings (and quoted by Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird): ‘If you’re not enough without the gold medal, how can you ever be with it?’

This week it was my honour to publish the work of Kate Bowles. Her depiction of returning to work after cancer is one of the best things about the subject that I have read. It reminded me again to the meaning of ‘remission’, literally ‘sending back’, and to feel again the toughness of its double-edged sword.

And on Wednesday we saw the process of putting a poetry collection together laid bare by Kim Moore, a post I would like to describe as ‘fearless’ were that not too sentimental.

Please read them, share them and spread the word. Each of them has given everything and I thank them from my heart.

Wishing you all a peaceful, relaxing and fruitful summer.

Anthony