It's been a busy month or so with poetry events, kids birthday parties and now the trip of a lifetime to Israel in two weeks time to plan for. When I was talking to Donald S Murray, he said that there are two ways he approaches writing a book: (1) ask a question and then the book aims to answer that question (ie for The Guga Hunters he asked himself why do men from the small community of Ness continue the centuries-old tradition of hunting baby gannets). (2) Use a metaphor or image and keep it in mind whilst writing the book, so for Donald's book about the building of the Italian chapel in Orkney he had in mind the image of Pinocchio, the wooden puppet coming to life.
I thought this was all very interesting.

 I've been reading through my collected Ingeborg Bachmann and she has some gorgeous turns of phrase, though because I'm reading in translation I guess I'll never know how much of my translation is Bachmann or the translator. Either way, it's very good reading, very Celan-like which is to be expected but much more nature-orientated or grounded in which is definitely up my street. Here's a wee taster from 'Borrowed Time':

For the entrails of fish
have grown cold in the wind.
Dimly burns the light of lupines.
Your gaze makes out in fog:
the loan of borrowed time
will be due on the horizon.

There your loved one sinks in sand;
it rises up to her windblowh hair,
it cuts her short,
it commands her to be silent,
it discovers she's mortal
and willing to leave you
after every embrace.