Guardianistas and Five Leaves

Three in a week over at The Guardian. Firstly Five Leaves writer Seth Freedman blows his whistle on the Libor-like wholesale gas price fixing. Front page, inside page, big scandal. Seth has written two books for us (one published in association with the Guardian) - the first was Can I Bring My Own Gun? an account of his time as a volunteer, and ultimately dissident, Israeli soldier. The second book, written with his cousin Josh Berthoud Freedman, was a journey through the Israeli settlements on the West Bank, Forty Years in the Wilderness. There is no truth in the rumour that a book on wholesale gas pricing is to become the third part of a trilogy.
Secondly, Saskia Baron wrote a wonderful piece about her family's history with autism as her father Michael Baron (editor of On a Bat's Wing, poetry about bats, and joint editor of The Night Shift, poetry of the night) was involved in setting up the first specialist school for autistic children and the organisation that became the National Autistic Society. His group has grown from ten people to 20,000 members. Michael is still active on autism, in poetry and in campaigning for peace in the Middle East, steadily compiling an Israeli Jewish and Palestinian poetry book.
Finally, our new book by the late Colin Ward, Talking Green, is Nicholas Lezard's choice of the week. The article is online now and will appear in Saturdays print edition. An excellent and well written review: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/20/talking-green-colin-ward-review.

The Baron and the Bats

Michael Baron is living proof that as you get older you (can) get better, or at least a lot more artistically productive. Michael edited two books for Five Leaves, On a Bat's Wing and, with Andy Croft and Jenny Swann, The Night Shift - two poetry anthologies about bats, and about the world of night, Michael contributing the section on the world of nature by night. Since then he's brought out a small collection of his own, put up poetry posters all over Cockermouth as part of the campaign to reinvigorate the town after its flood last year, and edited a big collection of poems by writers - more than you would think - associated with the place. He is currently also working on a long term project bringing poetry by Israeli and Palestinian poets together. All this, and more, come well into his retirement after 40 years in the law. All power to him. More details here: http://www.listenupnorth.com/writer-profile/253.
Michael and I launched the bat book some time ago at the AGM of the Bat Conservation Trust. I live in the world of literature and politics so was expecting to be met by badly-dressed obsessives, something like the worlds I know. Far from it, the majority attending were much younger than me, more female, worked in architecture, planning and science and certainly the females happily chatted at the break about what they were going to wear at the social that night. Then they went into their workshops to discuss bat "commuter routes" and what you can learn from studying the contents of bat poo. Hurrah! They were eccentrics after all. Michael donated his royalties for the book to the BCT. Good for him. You can order it here: http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/on_a_bats_wing_poems_about_bats_baron_michael_editor_i019207.aspx

The Cockermouth Poems

Sometime Five Leaves' book editor (The Night Shift, On a Bat's Wing) Michael Baron is endlessly energetic, despite, or possibly because he lives so far from metropolitan poetry circles and despite, or possibly because he is not exactly a young man. He crops up in all sorts of poetry projects up in Cumbria but I think he has excelled himself with his project "The Cockermouth Poems". Michael, who lives in Cockermouth, has set up a poetry trail round the town as part of the positive ways it is responding to last year's disastrous floods. He has persuaded a great range of poets with strong or loose Cockermouth connections to contribute to the trail - a great line up. Here's the story at greater length in the Guardian books blog.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/nov/29/poets-disaster-relief-wordsworth-country
ps I should also mention his own collection of poetry - More Than a Man in a Boat, which is very good. I can't find it on Amazon but its ISBN is 978 0 9565134 0 3 so bookshops can order it. Retail is a fiver.

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.