Monday, December 10, 2007

Gotta do more. gotta be more

I am a terrible correspondent, I know. The reading at Manchester was a success - although I don’t think anybody knew who I was, I received a fantastic introduction from Vona Groarke, and Anna Smaill and Bill Manhire read exceptionally well - two new poems were particularly powerful. A ruptured eardrum and sowsed up to here with antibiotics meant I was less than charming and urbane at post-reading dinner and drinks with Bill, Anna, John McAuliffe and Ian McGuire of the Centre for New Writing and Cathy Bolton, director of the Manc. Literary Festival, but Amis/Eagleton antics blowing up at the time made for good conversation. (Check out the eminent Philip Hensher for a choice rebuttal of Eagleton’s ejaculations on Kingsley here at the Independent.) Reminds me of the Morrissey/NME fracas this last week.

I have been busy working fulltime at a job type job, getting ready to fly to New Zealand for Christmas in summer and oysters and wine on Waiheke beaches, and working on a screenplay for an independent feature film of THE LAZY BOYS. This is getting round so I may as well out it here. Check the Author page for some new collages I made, and current recommendations are the brilliant 30 DAYS OF NIGHT (starring “The Girl” as in “This is the girl” from Mulholland Drive, Melissa George), Zach Leader’s beautifully-put-together LIFE OF KINGSLEY AMIS, Jane Bowles’ Collected (a birthday gift from poet and academic Sandeep Parmar and The Wolf [plus check out the John Kinsella inteview on mp3 on the Wolf’s site - I was at the reading at Foyle’s and Kinsella is a brilliant, fiery, inspiring reader and environmental activist, though I can’t abide hemp boots]), and the huge indictment on the settlement project and the messianic drive to expansion in Judea and Samaria, Idith Zertal’s LORDS OF THE LAND, who I met and was wonderful, humble, self-effacing and brilliant (after Jacqueline Rose’s introduction she said, “Erm, thank you very much for your wholly exaggerated introduction. I think I should get up and leave now and leave you with that impression") and who signed my copy at the LRB Bookshop, and I was so tired and frazzled and a little starstruck I barely said anything, and Idith said to me, a propos of pretty much nothing, “A good writer is a good reader. You have to be a good reader.” Happy Christmas.

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