This morning my brother called to say my father had died in his sleep during the night. It was exactly how he would have wanted it, after a day helping the neighbours to keep their radiators working well. He was the oldest of the neighbours but he never stopped with his DIY and wanting to spend time with others.
When my mother died five years ago he moved up to a place near Edinburgh in Scotland to live next door to his closest friend. So I know he was happy, in company, and was active and enjoying himself right up to the last day. His unusual silence this morning meant he was missed immediately and he was found in his bed as if he had slept without knowing a thing about his passing.
Here's a poem I wrote for him a few years ago, and my thoughts also go out to everybody who has lost a father this year or other years, especially at this time.
MY FATHER’S LANGUAGE
Each night my father –
a one-time sparks
on Greek merchant ships –
sent us off with
Da-dit-dit-dit, dit, da-dit-dit,
or Adi ypnos
which even the dog understood.
When arguments loomed
he de-stressed, a teenager again
on stage at Drury Lane
in bell-boy uniform,
ukulele in hand,
Leaning on a Lampost
or Mr Woo.
He parted his hair in the middle,
crossed his eyes
and found jokes to punctuate
attempts at conversation –
like The only head bigger than mine
is Birkenhead, and Why
do giraffes have such long necks?
But when he spoke of his past
he only said it once.
How, in storms at sea,
he cupped his soup-bowl in one palm,
then swayed it like a hammock
so the spoon never lost a drop –
that the eeriest place on earth
is a hurricane, the silent eye,
where the sea surface is oil smooth
and the only way to safety
is to leave this haven,
hold on tight,
confront the battle raging
through its troubled tail.
Notes:
Sparks - radio operator
Da-dit-dit-dit, dit, da-dit-dit - morse code for B-E-D
Adi ypnos - My father’s Greek for go to sleep
Sunday, 12 December 2010
Saturday, 11 December 2010
A Pageturning Novel About Alzheimers?
Pageturner, alzheimers and novel aren’t three words you’d normally expect to see in the same sentence, and yet they go together to describe Still Alice, the debut from Simon & Schuster by Lisa Genova. When I saw the blurb I was a bit reluctant to start reading, thinking the subject would be depressing and stressful. How wrong I was.
Still Alice is a remarkable novel that will change the way you view alzheimers and the way you respond to people with this condition. It will change the way you think about alzheimers if you are ever diagnosed with it, and will certainly influence the way you relate to people close to you if they become affected. If you are already living with alzheimers, as a patient or as a friend, relative or professional, Still Alice is a novel you should take a look at.
Genova puts us right inside the experience of alzheimers by telling this story through the first person narrative of Alice, a university professor who is just 50 when she gets her diagnosis. She knows exactly what this will mean because, like Genova, she is a neuroscience specialist. The novel opens with Alice at her most capable intellectually – known in academic circles for her amazing ability to remember the detailed facts of her subject, including where precisely to find the quotes to reference research papers.
Alice relaxes by jogging round her town, knowing the map of the area and loving her independence. Admired by her colleagues and loved by her husband and daughters, she’s the type of career woman and successful family organiser many would aspire to emulate. Like us, she puts the first signs of memory loss down to trying to do too many things at once, but the diagnosis comes quite early in the novel. After that, due to her professional expertise, she knows how to recognise and chart her own progress into alzheimers and how she feels she should prepare for what is to come.
This knowledge also lets her find strategies to cope with each stage and to plan for what she wants to do when it goes too far. She knows she won’t be able to remember how or why she will want to end it all at a certain stage, so she leaves instructions for herself that she hopes she will follow regardless. Her Blackberry soon becomes her way of giving herself a To Do list to follow, as memory fails, and it has one important instruction of how to find the means of suicide on the day she can’t remember the answer to a few simple questions.
Once she no longer remembers simple information about her family she feels it will be time to use some items she has prepared to kill herself. Many of us would feel we would want to do the same. But as the story progresses, as we really feel what it is like to be Alice, will we still want her to commit suicide at that key moment or will we see alzheimers in a different way? Will Alice manage to go through with her initial plan right to the end?
I won’t spoil Still Alice by giving you the answers to this. All I can say is that suicide won’t be a plan I’ll be making if I ever get this diagnosis, and I’ll remember Alice if ever those close to me are affected by alzheimers. I will never see this condition in the same way again, and that’s a remarkable achievement by a novelist writing about such an important subject. On a purely stylistic level, Genova never swerves from her course of only seeing this through Alice’s eyes, and once we start this experience with her we can’t stop reading until we see it through.
Still Alice is a remarkable novel that will change the way you view alzheimers and the way you respond to people with this condition. It will change the way you think about alzheimers if you are ever diagnosed with it, and will certainly influence the way you relate to people close to you if they become affected. If you are already living with alzheimers, as a patient or as a friend, relative or professional, Still Alice is a novel you should take a look at.
Genova puts us right inside the experience of alzheimers by telling this story through the first person narrative of Alice, a university professor who is just 50 when she gets her diagnosis. She knows exactly what this will mean because, like Genova, she is a neuroscience specialist. The novel opens with Alice at her most capable intellectually – known in academic circles for her amazing ability to remember the detailed facts of her subject, including where precisely to find the quotes to reference research papers.
Alice relaxes by jogging round her town, knowing the map of the area and loving her independence. Admired by her colleagues and loved by her husband and daughters, she’s the type of career woman and successful family organiser many would aspire to emulate. Like us, she puts the first signs of memory loss down to trying to do too many things at once, but the diagnosis comes quite early in the novel. After that, due to her professional expertise, she knows how to recognise and chart her own progress into alzheimers and how she feels she should prepare for what is to come.
This knowledge also lets her find strategies to cope with each stage and to plan for what she wants to do when it goes too far. She knows she won’t be able to remember how or why she will want to end it all at a certain stage, so she leaves instructions for herself that she hopes she will follow regardless. Her Blackberry soon becomes her way of giving herself a To Do list to follow, as memory fails, and it has one important instruction of how to find the means of suicide on the day she can’t remember the answer to a few simple questions.
Once she no longer remembers simple information about her family she feels it will be time to use some items she has prepared to kill herself. Many of us would feel we would want to do the same. But as the story progresses, as we really feel what it is like to be Alice, will we still want her to commit suicide at that key moment or will we see alzheimers in a different way? Will Alice manage to go through with her initial plan right to the end?
I won’t spoil Still Alice by giving you the answers to this. All I can say is that suicide won’t be a plan I’ll be making if I ever get this diagnosis, and I’ll remember Alice if ever those close to me are affected by alzheimers. I will never see this condition in the same way again, and that’s a remarkable achievement by a novelist writing about such an important subject. On a purely stylistic level, Genova never swerves from her course of only seeing this through Alice’s eyes, and once we start this experience with her we can’t stop reading until we see it through.
Sunday, 14 November 2010
Winner of the Support-A-Bookshop Prize
The winner of the Support-A-Bookshop prize is Wayne Rattle. One of the Ward Wood books will be on its way to Wayne once he selects from our first authors or one of our New Year launches.
Thanks for supporting bookshops by ordering over the counter. High street bookshops have been surprisingly easy to approach and have helped Ward Wood Publishing get started by stocking our books. They also provide some of the best venues for launches and book clubs.
I know many of you can't order through a local bookshop, particularly from overseas, so I'll be announcing another prize soon for those who order online.
Thanks for supporting bookshops by ordering over the counter. High street bookshops have been surprisingly easy to approach and have helped Ward Wood Publishing get started by stocking our books. They also provide some of the best venues for launches and book clubs.
I know many of you can't order through a local bookshop, particularly from overseas, so I'll be announcing another prize soon for those who order online.
Tuesday, 26 October 2010
Support a Bookshop and Win a Book
Ann Alexander’s poetry collection Too Close arrived from the printer today, so it joins Sue Guiney’s novel A Clash of Innocents as the second book from Ward Wood Publishing. With Mike Horwood’s poetry collection Midas Touch due out in a few weeks we’ll have a small but select set of books on offer by Christmas. So, it seems like time for a competition to support local bookshops and give readers a chance of winning one of these books.
If you buy from a local bookshop rather than buying online then send me a message by posting a comment here or by Facebook message. You can also contact me via the wardwoodpublishing.co.uk website. I’ve found local bookshops supportive and you can already buy our books off the shelves in some branches of Waterstones, Daunt Books and from the independent bookshop Sandoes. I know there are copies in stock in the Hampstead Waterstones, and also Daunt Books Marylebone Road.
These might not be close to you, so the best way to support a local bookshop is to go in and order books through them. This helps the bookshop, helps the publisher and author (as online booksellers often ask for a large discount and are sometimes unreliable – especially the main one!) and it helps buyers as there’s no extortionate postage. You also have the pleasure of going into a real bookshop for a browse and to enjoy the look, smell and feel of books!
If you order one of our books through a bookshop then let me know and you can choose one of the other two books to get your name in a prize draw. Let me know which bookshop you ordered from, and also let me know where you see our books on the shelves so we can name and promote local bookshops. If you already bought one of our books from a bookshop you can also tell me that for a chance to go into the draw.
I know this competition might not be possible for everybody – although it would be interesting to try ordering the book through bookshops in other countries. We’re certainly supplying a bookshop in Cambodia so I know it can be done. Not to worry if you can’t do it – I’ll have a different competition for another book next week.
If you buy from a local bookshop rather than buying online then send me a message by posting a comment here or by Facebook message. You can also contact me via the wardwoodpublishing.co.uk website. I’ve found local bookshops supportive and you can already buy our books off the shelves in some branches of Waterstones, Daunt Books and from the independent bookshop Sandoes. I know there are copies in stock in the Hampstead Waterstones, and also Daunt Books Marylebone Road.
These might not be close to you, so the best way to support a local bookshop is to go in and order books through them. This helps the bookshop, helps the publisher and author (as online booksellers often ask for a large discount and are sometimes unreliable – especially the main one!) and it helps buyers as there’s no extortionate postage. You also have the pleasure of going into a real bookshop for a browse and to enjoy the look, smell and feel of books!
If you order one of our books through a bookshop then let me know and you can choose one of the other two books to get your name in a prize draw. Let me know which bookshop you ordered from, and also let me know where you see our books on the shelves so we can name and promote local bookshops. If you already bought one of our books from a bookshop you can also tell me that for a chance to go into the draw.
I know this competition might not be possible for everybody – although it would be interesting to try ordering the book through bookshops in other countries. We’re certainly supplying a bookshop in Cambodia so I know it can be done. Not to worry if you can’t do it – I’ll have a different competition for another book next week.
Thursday, 7 October 2010
Support a Bookshop on National Poetry Day
I'm stuck at home with a cold and cough this year and can only remember how much I enjoyed National Poetry Day in the Southbank Centre last time. My thoughts have drifted to how I can enjoy National Poetry Day at home and also champion poetry.
Here's what I've come up with. Let's go and order the next poetry collection we want from our local bookshop. This not only costs less than paying the exorbitant postage charged by Amazon, it also gets poetry into the bookshops.
I've had a heartening response from bookshops recently, and notice that they often order a few copies of a book rather than just one. This doesn't only support the bookshop, it also results in a higher percentage going to the publisher and consequently also supports the authors. Online booksellers can ask for a discount of up to 60%, which is incredibly hard on publishers and their authors.
Added to that it's a real pleasure going into bookshops. If you want to join me today by going into a bookshop and ordering poetry then I'd love to hear feedback on how it was for you.... Did it feel good? Does your bookshop have a cafe, readings and events? Maybe a book club? I think it's time we got back to the bookshops, those of us who have got used to shopping online.
I have nothing against online booksellers. In fact I often complained about bookshops not stocking poetry and was delighted when Amazon and others appeared to make it easier to get the books I wanted. The internet also lets us order direct from publishers, or find the authors on Facebook to see if they'll send us a signed copy.
A casualty has been the high street bookshop and I find I have a sudden longing to do my shopping there. I've been in touch with bookshops since the first Ward Wood book by Sue Guiney was launched, and this has reminded me of all those enjoyable times browsing among actual shelves rather than webpages.
Waterstones and Daunt Books also surprised me by being so willing to talk and order books, and there were even bookshop managers at Sue Guiney's event. Bookshops also welcome signings and other events and don't charge - publishers and authors just take the wine along! So they're extremely important at a time when it's hard to meet costs for publishers specialising in non-mainstream forms.
If you order poetry (or anything else) from a bookshop, please give some feedback on how it went. And perhaps some tempting descriptions of those bookshops too....
Here's what I've come up with. Let's go and order the next poetry collection we want from our local bookshop. This not only costs less than paying the exorbitant postage charged by Amazon, it also gets poetry into the bookshops.
I've had a heartening response from bookshops recently, and notice that they often order a few copies of a book rather than just one. This doesn't only support the bookshop, it also results in a higher percentage going to the publisher and consequently also supports the authors. Online booksellers can ask for a discount of up to 60%, which is incredibly hard on publishers and their authors.
Added to that it's a real pleasure going into bookshops. If you want to join me today by going into a bookshop and ordering poetry then I'd love to hear feedback on how it was for you.... Did it feel good? Does your bookshop have a cafe, readings and events? Maybe a book club? I think it's time we got back to the bookshops, those of us who have got used to shopping online.
I have nothing against online booksellers. In fact I often complained about bookshops not stocking poetry and was delighted when Amazon and others appeared to make it easier to get the books I wanted. The internet also lets us order direct from publishers, or find the authors on Facebook to see if they'll send us a signed copy.
A casualty has been the high street bookshop and I find I have a sudden longing to do my shopping there. I've been in touch with bookshops since the first Ward Wood book by Sue Guiney was launched, and this has reminded me of all those enjoyable times browsing among actual shelves rather than webpages.
Waterstones and Daunt Books also surprised me by being so willing to talk and order books, and there were even bookshop managers at Sue Guiney's event. Bookshops also welcome signings and other events and don't charge - publishers and authors just take the wine along! So they're extremely important at a time when it's hard to meet costs for publishers specialising in non-mainstream forms.
If you order poetry (or anything else) from a bookshop, please give some feedback on how it went. And perhaps some tempting descriptions of those bookshops too....
Thursday, 26 August 2010
The Birth of a Publishing Company 6: Teamwork with Google Wave
As our first book goes to press – the novel A Clash of Innocents by Sue Guiney – I can reveal that an experiment I have attempted with Google Wave has proved a definite success. Google Wave is collaborative software so I wondered if it could help Ward Wood work as a team, letting the authors take more of a role and helping us all to communicate regularly.
If you haven’t seen Google Wave and ‘collaborative software’ sounds tricky, then don’t be put off. It’s simple to register with Google Wave (I invite authors by email) and after that it’s as easy as using message boards or email for communication. The benefit of Google Wave is that you invite the people you need to communicate with on a specific subject, and all of the messages on that theme will be kept neatly together in that ‘Wave’.
For example, for Sue’s novel I invited her and my colleague Mike Fortune-Wood into a Wave. This Wave is now a string of messages containing everything we need to work on her novel. We’ve passed the Word file to each other throughout the editing stages, and all the versions of the file are there in the Wave so it’s easy to see how it progressed and which is the latest version.
We also passed photographs of the authors and ideas for the cover design. ‘All very easy to do by email’ you might say, but it’s such a nuisance hunting through emails for a bit of information you know you’ve received. Scrolling back up through a Wave of messages is much easier. As Sue, Mike or I had extra ideas we could post them on the Wave, and even if they weren’t ideas that could be acted on for weeks they were still there for later action.
Using Google Wave definitely made my work much easier. As I was editing and needing answers to questions I could put them in the Wave then carry on working. By the time I looked at the Wave again, Sue had usually answered, and if I needed to go out of the office for a few hours I could do that knowing that I could come back and find some responses on the Wave. It did make the editing process more efficient, and I’ve edited a good number of books in the past so I know how different this feels.
Apart from all of this it also keeps authors and publishers more in touch than they have been traditionally. I’ve worked as both editor and author, and I know how frustrating it can be for authors to wonder if a long silence means we’re being neglected, or if it means the publisher is busy on our book. With Google Wave the author could stay well informed and see how the book was progressing throughout the various stages.
At the same time it felt as if we were staying in touch and was more friendly than working on files exchanged by email. Other Waves were set up with information for everybody, so our first three authors were invited to participate in those discussions. One of our authors is in Finland, one is in London, and one is in Penzance, so a way of letting them ‘meet’ and share ideas on book launches and other subjects should help create a sense of getting to know each other.
We often say that writing is a solitary business, and so is editing. With Google Wave this has felt quite different, and once we were working on the cover, book design and production with Mike Fortune-Wood it did feel as close as it could to working in the same office. His final files could be posted in the Wave and viewed using Google Documents.
There are many more features to Google Wave that I haven’t had time to try out yet, but it certainly streamlines the types of communication I need in order to work well. Apart from the message-board look keeping all information on each subject neatly together and the ability to add various files, including text and pictures, it also lets you edit or delete each post in the waves to keep them concise and tidy. It’s also possible to start discussing with the others live if they come online at the same time.
Anyone who works in publishing will know that it’s not just about editing, book design and production. At the same time as all that we need to be thinking about author reading tours, book launches, arranging distribution, and communicating with the press and media. Each of these elements has to be dealt with at exactly the right time so that everything happens at the relevant moment.
Google Wave has a scheduler to help me see what I need to do in order of priority, and it has really been a help feeling that I can unload that from inside my head to let the ‘Google brain’ worry about remembering it all! Submissions waiting to be read are also stored in their own Waves and scheduled for their turn in this priority list. If this all makes me sound extremely organised, then you haven’t seen the usual disorder in my office! Many of us in publishing store much of our ‘to do’ list in our heads and it can get incredibly busy in there. With Google Wave I find I can switch off when I stop working, knowing that nothing will be forgotten.
On top of all this it’s nice to know that even in cases of computer crashes, and wherever we need to travel in the world, we can find all the files and info we need in our virtual office on anybody’s computer. This is how it feels to me on the publishing side and I’d be interested to hear from the authors if it helps them feel better informed and more involved as we go through the process with each of their books.
If you haven’t seen Google Wave and ‘collaborative software’ sounds tricky, then don’t be put off. It’s simple to register with Google Wave (I invite authors by email) and after that it’s as easy as using message boards or email for communication. The benefit of Google Wave is that you invite the people you need to communicate with on a specific subject, and all of the messages on that theme will be kept neatly together in that ‘Wave’.
For example, for Sue’s novel I invited her and my colleague Mike Fortune-Wood into a Wave. This Wave is now a string of messages containing everything we need to work on her novel. We’ve passed the Word file to each other throughout the editing stages, and all the versions of the file are there in the Wave so it’s easy to see how it progressed and which is the latest version.
We also passed photographs of the authors and ideas for the cover design. ‘All very easy to do by email’ you might say, but it’s such a nuisance hunting through emails for a bit of information you know you’ve received. Scrolling back up through a Wave of messages is much easier. As Sue, Mike or I had extra ideas we could post them on the Wave, and even if they weren’t ideas that could be acted on for weeks they were still there for later action.
Using Google Wave definitely made my work much easier. As I was editing and needing answers to questions I could put them in the Wave then carry on working. By the time I looked at the Wave again, Sue had usually answered, and if I needed to go out of the office for a few hours I could do that knowing that I could come back and find some responses on the Wave. It did make the editing process more efficient, and I’ve edited a good number of books in the past so I know how different this feels.
Apart from all of this it also keeps authors and publishers more in touch than they have been traditionally. I’ve worked as both editor and author, and I know how frustrating it can be for authors to wonder if a long silence means we’re being neglected, or if it means the publisher is busy on our book. With Google Wave the author could stay well informed and see how the book was progressing throughout the various stages.
At the same time it felt as if we were staying in touch and was more friendly than working on files exchanged by email. Other Waves were set up with information for everybody, so our first three authors were invited to participate in those discussions. One of our authors is in Finland, one is in London, and one is in Penzance, so a way of letting them ‘meet’ and share ideas on book launches and other subjects should help create a sense of getting to know each other.
We often say that writing is a solitary business, and so is editing. With Google Wave this has felt quite different, and once we were working on the cover, book design and production with Mike Fortune-Wood it did feel as close as it could to working in the same office. His final files could be posted in the Wave and viewed using Google Documents.
There are many more features to Google Wave that I haven’t had time to try out yet, but it certainly streamlines the types of communication I need in order to work well. Apart from the message-board look keeping all information on each subject neatly together and the ability to add various files, including text and pictures, it also lets you edit or delete each post in the waves to keep them concise and tidy. It’s also possible to start discussing with the others live if they come online at the same time.
Anyone who works in publishing will know that it’s not just about editing, book design and production. At the same time as all that we need to be thinking about author reading tours, book launches, arranging distribution, and communicating with the press and media. Each of these elements has to be dealt with at exactly the right time so that everything happens at the relevant moment.
Google Wave has a scheduler to help me see what I need to do in order of priority, and it has really been a help feeling that I can unload that from inside my head to let the ‘Google brain’ worry about remembering it all! Submissions waiting to be read are also stored in their own Waves and scheduled for their turn in this priority list. If this all makes me sound extremely organised, then you haven’t seen the usual disorder in my office! Many of us in publishing store much of our ‘to do’ list in our heads and it can get incredibly busy in there. With Google Wave I find I can switch off when I stop working, knowing that nothing will be forgotten.
On top of all this it’s nice to know that even in cases of computer crashes, and wherever we need to travel in the world, we can find all the files and info we need in our virtual office on anybody’s computer. This is how it feels to me on the publishing side and I’d be interested to hear from the authors if it helps them feel better informed and more involved as we go through the process with each of their books.
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
Carol Ann Duffy Judges International Poetry Pamphlet Competition in Aid of the Homeless
There’s a chance to have your poetry published in a 20-page pamphlet while also supporting the homeless, with the added benefit of being selected by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. The Lumen/Camden Poetry Competition is unusual as the entry fee per poem is just £2.50 to make it possible for everybody to have a try. The winner will also be selected on the basis of just one prizewinning poem (maximum length 40 lines), so you don’t have to submit the whole pamphlet for a chance of being published. If you want to submit more poems there are discounts, with 6 poems costing just £10.
This is the first year for the Lumen/Camden Poetry Competition and it’s the initiative of poet Ruth O’Callaghan, founder and organiser of the Camden and Lumen Poetry Series. This popular project supports the homeless in the Cold Weather Shelters in the Camden and Kings Cross areas of London, and all income from the competition will go to support the same cause. None of the people involved in organising the competition will take any income from it, so it’s set to give a real boost to the amount donated by the project every year.
Poetry is really making a practical difference in helping the homeless thanks to Ruth’s tireless efforts and wonderful new initiatives. The Lumen/Camden Poetry Competition will not just benefit the people in the Cold Weather Shelters, but it will also help a poet to get their pamphlet into print. With entries invited from all over the world there will be poets of all standards joining in to help raise money for charity while competing for the prestigious prize of being selected by Carol Ann Duffy, patron of the Camden and Lumen Poetry Series.
The winner will receive 50 copies of their pamphlet to keep, sell, or give to friends. They will also be invited to read at the regular Lumen and Camden venues, if they can make it and would like to, and their pamphlets will also be offered for sale online and at the twice-monthly events. All money raised from pamphlet sales by the publishers and by the Camden and Lumen project will go to the Cold Weather Shelters.
The closing date is early next year on February 14th, but it’s never too soon to enter. Entry fees received from now on will go towards helping the Cold Weather shelters as winter approaches. The pamphlet will be published by Ward Wood Publishing, and full details on how to enter are on the website http://www.wardwoodpublishing.co.uk
You can enter by post by sending your poems and a cheque to Ruth O’Callaghan, or you can send the poems by post and pay by Paypal if you prefer. For international and other entries it’s possible to enter by using Paypal and then either posting the poems or sending them in an email. Regulars at events can hand their entry to Ruth, who will pass them on to Carol Ann Duffy. Full details are on the Ward Wood website.
Do join in and also post details about this competition on your own blogs and websites as the competition is likely to raise a substantial amount to help the homeless while also giving a poet a highly desirable prize.
This is the first year for the Lumen/Camden Poetry Competition and it’s the initiative of poet Ruth O’Callaghan, founder and organiser of the Camden and Lumen Poetry Series. This popular project supports the homeless in the Cold Weather Shelters in the Camden and Kings Cross areas of London, and all income from the competition will go to support the same cause. None of the people involved in organising the competition will take any income from it, so it’s set to give a real boost to the amount donated by the project every year.
Poetry is really making a practical difference in helping the homeless thanks to Ruth’s tireless efforts and wonderful new initiatives. The Lumen/Camden Poetry Competition will not just benefit the people in the Cold Weather Shelters, but it will also help a poet to get their pamphlet into print. With entries invited from all over the world there will be poets of all standards joining in to help raise money for charity while competing for the prestigious prize of being selected by Carol Ann Duffy, patron of the Camden and Lumen Poetry Series.
The winner will receive 50 copies of their pamphlet to keep, sell, or give to friends. They will also be invited to read at the regular Lumen and Camden venues, if they can make it and would like to, and their pamphlets will also be offered for sale online and at the twice-monthly events. All money raised from pamphlet sales by the publishers and by the Camden and Lumen project will go to the Cold Weather Shelters.
The closing date is early next year on February 14th, but it’s never too soon to enter. Entry fees received from now on will go towards helping the Cold Weather shelters as winter approaches. The pamphlet will be published by Ward Wood Publishing, and full details on how to enter are on the website http://www.wardwoodpublishing.co.uk
You can enter by post by sending your poems and a cheque to Ruth O’Callaghan, or you can send the poems by post and pay by Paypal if you prefer. For international and other entries it’s possible to enter by using Paypal and then either posting the poems or sending them in an email. Regulars at events can hand their entry to Ruth, who will pass them on to Carol Ann Duffy. Full details are on the Ward Wood website.
Do join in and also post details about this competition on your own blogs and websites as the competition is likely to raise a substantial amount to help the homeless while also giving a poet a highly desirable prize.
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