Finally made it to The Night Shift

"I have no idea of the statistics, but most poets who choose to write about the night seem to find their inspiration in town rather than country: the “starless and bible-black” town of Dylan Thomas; the Night Waitress of Lynda Hull “bitter with sleeplessness”; God speaking to Vernon Scannell “beyond the dark sky and its white rash of stars on a frosty night on Ealing Broadway”. But I have had another (almost) night job: milking cows on a farm in west Wales. There is real beauty in the wintry pre-dawn hour of a farm: the cows’ breath and sweat mingling in misty patches; the frost fringing trees and grass and the silence before the dogs wake and the work begins.

One day, when Today is a memory, I shall write about it. But there’s enough in this delightful anthology to last until then."

So writes John Humphrys in the introduction to our poetry collection The Night Shift which has finally made it to the printer after an age tracking down permissions. Lynda Hull, Dylan Thomas and Vernon Scannell were easy, but some stumped us. One we gave up on was a Middle English poem that had come out in a number of translations, over different editions, over different publishers. We were never quite able to work out who to ask for version we had found. Another American publisher had a long queue of people passing us on, from publisher to agent, from agent to publisher. Still, The Night Shift is in press. Thanks to all those writers who gave permission a long time back, and thanks to our patient editors Michael Baron, Andy Croft and Jenny Swann. And to anyone who has ordered the book... we get it back on Feb 12th. It has moved into a hardback, at the same price of £9.99.