Some news! I have a new book of poems for children coming out in a couple of months – Let Sleeping Cats Lie.
It’s a collection of poems about pets (dogs, cats, goldfish, chinchilla, guinea pigs, snakes, budgies, rabbits, blue whales etc). I say it’s for children but it’s also suitable for grandchildren and, who knows, some grown-ups might enjoy it, too; I don’t like to be too prescriptive.
Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November.
Unless a leap year is its fate,
February hath twenty-eight.
All the rest hath three days more,
excepting January,
which hath six thousand,
one hundred and eighty-four.
Today is set to be agreeably alliterative
across an assortment of areas
although the occasional metaphor
may cause some faces to cloud.
Idioms will be coming down like stair rods
in northern regions, while the south
may experience the odd outbreak of similes,
like an unexpected shower of arrows.
In coastal, littoral, and seaside areas,
synonyms remain likely.
Further inland, sudden gusts of hyperbole
look set to take your breath away
and a series of scattered euphemisms
will have you reaching for your wellies.
If you’re driving, please be aware that tautologies
of frozen ice are still affecting some roads,
after a heavy and prolonged flurry of oxymorons.
And finally – from tomorrow evening –
expect to see the return of some light litotes,
making next week’s outlook hardly the best.
I’m delighted to receive some advance paperback copies of my book ‘Alexa, what is there to know about love?’. It publishes on 3rd Feb and is available to pre-order.
I’ve taken a photo of it next to a plant because that’s what book bloggers sometimes do if a cup of cappuccino is unavailable.
Photo of a book next to a plant
It’s available through all the bookshops, particularly the independent ones. The book may or may not be appropriate for Valentine’s Day or be put to a variety of other sundry uses.
I’ve also attached a few poems from it, what always used to refer to as ‘bonus promotional content’.
It’s December so I suppose I should mention these books in case you might want to incorporate any of them into your Christmas shopping.
‘50 Ways to Score a Goal’ is a collection of poems, perfect for the football obsessive in your life, whether they’re aged eight or eighty (but not thirty-four for some reason).
‘Alexa, what is there to know about love?’ published earlier this year in a splendid-looking hardcover edition. It’s a collection of poems about love (plus a few other things like Brexit and pasta), making it the ideal gift for Sagittarians, vegetarians and Presbyterians.
‘Diary of a Somebody’ is a novel, in the form of a diary, about a complete loser called Brian Bilston (no relation). It also contains over 100 poems and for shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award. Goes well with a tomato and basil sauce.
‘You Took the Last Bus Home’ is, at heart, a book with some words in it. Many of these have been arranged into poems along with punctuation marks and the occasional line break. Appropriate for mums, uncles, nephews and sister-in-laws.
And ‘Refugees’ is my forwardy-backwardy poem in picture book format for children. The poem is accompanied by the beautiful artwork of José Sanabria.
They’re available from a bookshop near you. Unless you’re in North America, where generally you can only get hold of You Took the Last Bus Home and Refugees.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on here. Sorry about that. Or maybe it’s a good thing. Opinions may vary.
Anyhow, I have managed to publish a couple of new books since my last post. Quite how this happened, I don’t know.
In January, my new collection ‘Alexa, what is there to know about love? published. It’s my first proper collection since ‘You Took the Last Bus Home’. It contains a sequence of poems about love in its different varieties, as well as other, more mundane preoccupations. It looks like this …
And then a few weeks ago, I had a book of football poems for children published. It’s called ‘50 Ways to Score a Goal’. It’s bright green and looks like this …
Both are available through a bookshop near you – or indeed any of those online bookshops that you get nowadays.
