Friday 12 October 2012

Poet browsing, and a birthday


Beverley Bie Brahic in the Broadway Bookshop in Hackney last week; her own White Sheets – reviewed in this week’s TLS (‘Each poem reveals a glowing core underneath the tired formulas …’) lurks unnoticed on the shelf beside her. I hope Beverley doesn’t expect to find the book in every bookshop she might wander into, but this was a nice coincidence, and thank you to the Broadway Bookshop for stocking it.

There is, just about – otherwise they wouldn’t be still be happening – a niche readership for CBe books. I don’t especially like the word niche – it’s on a par with boutique – and readership neither, but, sticking with it for just this sentence, there are niches within niches, ever receding, and they can be hard to find. A few people discover the books while browsing in a flesh-and-blood bookshop, such as the Broadway. Some I can perhaps reach via Facebook, and a precious few through here. The categories don’t often overlap.

A new page on the website offers the three pamphlets – poems, prose, drawings – published this month to mark CBe’s fifth birthday (see below). For the incorrigibly curious, a couple of my own stories can be read online – here and here.



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