Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Now that the final manuscript of The Birth Garden is emailed off I'm starting to get excited about the new book!

In December I received an email from Colin Waters whom I had met through his work at the Scottish Poetry Library and subsequently through the beautifully produced anthology of Scottish poetry he edited - Be The First To Like This. He had mentioned previously that in his new role as poetry editor for Glasgow publisher Vagabond Voices he was planning to put together a series of three-poet anthology collections and asked me if I happened to have a themed selection of poems and would be willing to be the third poet in the first produced anthology.
I was delighted to be asked and had just written a series of birth poems - a theme which kept creeping into my garden poems over the last year and when I put all the like-minded poems together I knew I had a mini-collection to contribute.

The anthology is going to be called Our Real, Red Selves which is taken from a line in my Poem for a Garden. My birth garden collection will be flanked by two collections of war poems - I won't mention the poets until it's been made public!  

Other good news - Colin has managed to get us a reading slot at Glasgow's Aye Write Book Festival in April - to publicise both the Be The First To Like This Anthology and the upcoming Our Real, Red Selves which will probably be published around the end of May.

Because I didn't expect to book-publish the poems so soon I've not got managed to magazine-publish many of them - it's been especially painful to withdraw accepted poems because the book comes out before the mag would publish them!

So here's a Wordle of The Birth Garden instead!


5 comments:

Jim Murdoch said...

If the word ‘blood’ is in that Wordle I can’t find it. Maybe your sanguinary phase is over. Looks like a decent new publisher. Nice to see someone interested in promoting literary fiction. It’s the kind of place I would’ve submitted to in the past. You’re doing well.

Marion McCready said...

Thanks Jim, I've avoided using 'blood' but there is still quite a few bloody poems in the collection! My experience so far with Vagabond Voices has been really positive and their books are beautifully produced plus I like the fact they publish political stuff too. It came at the right time for the poems I was doing and I was so pleased to be asked!

The Wee Pencil (aka A P Pullan) said...

Will see you in Ayr then Mazza...great stuff pet...going from strength to strength ;)

The Wee Pencil (aka A P Pullan) said...

Sorry Marion - saw Aye read it as Ayr - losing the plot here!

Marion McCready said...

you had me confused there :) thanks Jack!