A New Book to Ruin Your Sunday

Hello spaniels,

I hope you enjoyed the new video, or didn't hate it anyway. As promised to Patreon folks months ago, you'll find the new book of poems attached to this message – please don't even think about buying it. It's a bit counter-intuitive, but editing seems to get harder the smaller the book is...? The last few weeks have just been me sitting on the sofa in a bathrobe screaming at typos and poor phrasing. Well, here it is in any case. (Alongside the print version, you should also find an epub file if that's more your speed.)

Last year I hit a wall with sci-fi and decided other genres might be the way to go. I spent a month or so trying to write a sort of comedy brochure (???) called Mean Nothing and Be Happy Anyway, a tongue in cheek introduction to absurdism. It got to page 3 of daft quips and trying to convince the reader we don't need ultimate truth to be content, and I realised the thing was making me hate myself. Not great for motivational literature. I've always thought writing should be play, and if it doesn't feel like play you've gone wrong somewhere. As a last ditch attempt at keeping it alive I tried the thing as a poem instead. That was a lot more fun. I haven't taken writing poetry seriously since I was about sixteen, so you can imagine what a surprise it was to find the thing wasn't just fun but compulsive. There's one in there called The Good Ship Lightship Ikkarad which I think I've been trying to write for about 15 years now. Felt rather nice to get it out finally.

The real joy of poetry – maybe you know this already – is that a certain feeling will hit you while you're on the train or reminiscing in the shower, and instead of having to spend days trying to eke it out in a short story or a monologue or whatever, instead of trying to set up foreshadowing and bait for the reader, if you can find the right rhythm a poem will do it in thirty words or less, no narrative trickery needed. It's unconstrained in a sort of 4am-let's-see-if-any-bars-are-still-open way – the most fun I've had in a while.

There was a bunch that didn't make it into the finished book, either from being too pretentious for a book of poetry (yeah, apparently it's possible) or a poem that seemed like a terribly fun idea but just wouldn't end up anywhere that felt like a proper finish. If you like, I'll collect up all the orphaned and discarded stuff in a few days when my brain is back online and post it here. Then again that feels a bit like trying to cook a nice meal for someone, then serving pop tarts as dessert. I'll leave that ball in your court.

As ever, a huge cheers for sticking around on here, and if you get around to giving the book a read, thank you ever so much.

Massive love and hope you're doing well,

Ex