Sunday 11 January 2009

Crab & Winkle

In the post: an advance copy of my new book, Crab & Winkle, from Tony Fraser at Shearsman. It's my first 'English' book: the product of writings over a year from August 2006. Murray Edmond, who had viewed the manuscript, made a wonderful comment which I ended up using on the back cover: "Crab and Winkle is fine, a whole range of especially English connotations - the Dickensian law firm, the seaside pub, the ancient board game, the wheedling ingratiation (as in 'crab and winkle one's way into someone's good books'), some early industrial tool dedicated to a single task (removing stones from wheat?), as well as the ghost of another phrase = grab and wrinkle." The cover photograph depicts part of a row of figures on a ledge above a window at Birchington-on-Sea, along the coast from here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Laurie

Congratulations on the new book! Hope you get a big readership over there and here - now that you are an "expat". I have been following your posts on the new anthology. I was workshopping with some poets here recently and we noted that the bag on the cover was one of those "beach bags". Denotes a "mixed bag" perhaps? ;=) I look forward to more discussion on the book (partly because a poem of mine is in it).

Regards
Adam