I've not had time to read or write since coming back from Amsterdam last Friday but been busy one way or another and keeping a north eye on what's going on.
The Booker Prize shortlist was announced and David Mitchell fell off again, with The Bone Clocks. Seems Amazon had expected it to be on there as the price of the hardback had fallen to £8 from £20 which will be cheaper than the paperback when it comes out. I try and buy hardbacks of new fiction if I can, so that was good. I look forward to reading it when I get the chance. The shortlist looks interesting, and it has to be a good thing that that usual Booker staple, the historical novel, is for once absent. Its not that historical novels are intrinsically bad - but its got to be good that there's a contemporary list for once.
It was also the Mercury Prize announcement and amongst the other obscure bands was Kate Tempest, the performance poet. Quite a week for her, as she was also mentioned amongst the Poetry Book Society's 20 Next Generation Poets. There's a nice website you can read them and hear them reading, which is good. There are 2 Salt Poets on the list, including Luke Kennard, (he surely had to be there), and one can only think there would have been a few more had they not stopped publishing single poetry collections recently. Its quite an international list - Mark Waldron, Jane Yeh, Emma Jones, Kei Miller - which indicates that the British poetry scene remains amenable to incomers. There are obvious names missing, and some names here I don't really know, but with Melissa Lee Houghton, Emily Berry, Luke Kennard, Heather Phillipson and others there are plenty I like and read. It seems a wider breadth than the list from ten years ago, reflecting that increased plurality in British poetry. The somewhat odd rules for inclusion mean that some poets have been published too late or too early, others haven't made it past pamphlets yet, and its a "generation" in name only, as the age range crosses five decades.
Yesterday I went to a design workshop for a new digital app being developed by Manchester's ever inventive short story publisher Comma Press. Building on their existing expertise in the area, they've got funding to create a new self publishing platform called the MacGuffin and it will be interesting to see how it develops. Writers, literary professionals and digital types did an intensive morning, before retiring to the pub. Good to meet some new people, and like a new magazine or a new night, the MacGuffin might in itself inspire some particular submissions.
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