Coastalblog

I've been saddened and aggravated this week to read about the closure of Wenlock Books . Saddened because, as a life-long lover of books and bookshops, it always hurts me a little bit to see one go under, aggravated because, as is so often the case, the story is accompanied by people blaming Amazon for its closure. Bookshops are, of course, wonderful resources, and even the chains hold a kind of magic (my avowedly digital-generation children still love a trip to Waterstone's). At their best, local independents can advise , inform and guide a life-time of discovery through books. But they, like so much else of the High St, finds itself under relentless assault from the online competitors, with their low overheads and cheerful willingness to employ people in conditions which border on serfdom. When even as lively and well-loved a community resource as Wenlock books seems to be goes under it's hard not to feel a bit helpless. It's impossible not to assume that this is j...

I am fairly woeful at self-promotion, having long tended to the view that I don't particularly wish to impose myself unsolicited upon people (as it's something I find aggravating when done to me)and so my books, when they infrequently appear, tend to sidle apologetically into existence with little to no fanfare. It's amazing that I'm not better known, I know. That said, I suppose that in these days of social media saturation, the cacophony is so great that it doesn't really add that much to the general cacophonous boosterism if I stick my hand up too and say Oi! I've got a sodding book out! Well, pamphlet, to be precise. And here it is. A sequence of 99 short poems inspired by Georges Perec's "Two hundred and forty three postcards in Real Colour". I've long been a fan of Perec's attention to the minutiae of daily life, and his ability to organise the quotidian, observing day to day life on its own terms. This, however, is not exactly wha...