It's hard to believe that two months have slipped by since I last posted on this web site, but Christmas has come and gone with its nine weeks of non-stop house guests. Lovely to have them all, as offspring came from interstate and other friends from overseas, and the months went by in a seemingless endless stream of meals cooked and washing and ironing, but oh so exhausting. I can see why my writing life has languished in the morass of living. Maybe a holiday from writing wasn''t a bad idea, no matter how frustrating. But now this other life resumes ...
Flowers & Forebears has had a great response. So many people buying multiple copies to send as small gifts or in lieu of Christmas cards. I had two re-printings done by Ginninderra Press and am once more almost out of stock. What a great idea of Stephen Matthews and Brenda Eldridge to create this series of Pocket Poets, and how good for the poetry world to establish a whole new reading audience through these small non-threatening volumes. Check out the sample poems that I am about to put on this web site, and you'll see why I say that flowers have a wonderful power to evoke memories.
Meanwhile, enough publications of my poetry have reached my mail box during these two months to keep me on track. Poems published in the last two months in magazines like The Mozzie, Tamba, Poetry Matters, InDaily Poets' Corner, Poetry Monash, have all reassured me that there is a writing public out there that I can connect with, and lovely incidents like the lady who came to me in tears after a poetry reading in the Adelaide Hills to say how much she had been moved by my poem. It's moments like these that keep me writing when frustration sets in.
I'm waiting eagerly for the next edition of the journal Studio to arrive - I've seen an advance copy of the two reviews of Passion Play that it will contain, and they are heart-warming. I definitely will post a link to these when they come. Meanwhile I'm working hard on organising for the publication and promotion of my next book, the sixth, to be released by Wakefield for a June 4 launch. More of this in another post on this page.