J. David Simons joins Five Leaves

We are pleased to announce that J. David Simons will be joining Five Leaves in 2011. His second novel The Liberation of Celia Kahn will be published in February, together with his first novel, The Credit Draper, which will move over from Two Ravens and into a new edition. David Simons got in touch after I'd reviewed The Credit Draper somewhere, which led to my attending a reading of his in London. The Credit Draper was set among the Jewish immigrant community in Glasgow, the main character become a credit draper (a tally man, or pakn treger, as they were sometimes known) in the Highlands. In the way you do we had a grown up conversation about utterly fictional people, in particular about one character, Celia Kahn, who was becoming interested in ideas outside her community, ideas of feminism and socialism getting on for a hundred years back. What happened to her? There was only one way to find out for sure, and the novel was written, and Five Leaves seemed an obvious choice of publisher. We've just finished the editing, which led to the poor writer having to give his publisher a detailed description of how a Dutch cap works to ensure one passage (no pun intended) was correct. Every day is an education.

Edwin Morgan

The first post in the Five Leaves' blog, on 27/10/09, had a long piece about Edwin Morgan and Scotland. Feel free to look it up. Most people reading this will know by now that Edwin Morgan died recently. I never met him, though he did teach my partner at Glasgow University, but his presence is around. The new Eland "Poetry of Place" Highlands and Islands, sitting in the bathroom, includes three poems by Morgan, including his witty and fairly exact "Midge", the world as seen by a Highland midgie. On the bookshelf opposite this work station (no poetic phrase that) sit cards with two of his poems. The first, "Strawberries" (There were never strawberries / like the ones we had / that sultry afternoon....), I regularly used when working with a group of older people, touring readings of poetry about love and sex. A couple of us would pretend to be in love, reading alternate lines. By the end we sometimes were. The second, my favourite poem by Edwin Morgan is "At Eighty" (Push the boat out, companeros / Push the boat out, whatever the sea...), always moving. In the next room nestling on a shelf is his "Siesta of a Hungarian Snake" (s sz sz SZ sz Sz sz ZS zs ZS zs zs z), with apologies to Carcanet for printing the poem in its entirety, it is hard to lift just an extract. Push the boat out then, companeros.

Magnolia Street

We usually sell a handful of copies of Magnolia Street by Louis Golding each month to bookshop, and a handful every second month to Manchester Jewish Museum. We're happy, and Louis is not complaining (though he's been pretty poor at returning calls the last few decades anyway) as we sold the book pretty well when we republished it a few years ago. In the last few days though we've had orders for 75 copies, mostly via the internet. The power of Radio 4 then, as he was featured with two other important Manc writers from the past, Walter Greenwood and Howard Spring. Here's more on http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tbck6. Anyone got a copy of the recording? The orders have cleaned us out, so a quick digital reprint is on its way.

Cover versions

Well, we published the third of these, the cover being a subtle mock up of a non-existent magazine with Grahame Greene on the front. The book is about literary forgery. It is now in three foreign language editions... German, Hebrew and Italian. The Hebrew one is, um, interesting.

The Smug Bridgroom

Back in the mists of time, 2002 to be precise, Five Leaves published a book with this title by the poet Robert Hamberger, then living in the East Midlands. He moved, with his partner Keith to Brighton and we now only seem to keep in touch by email. Well, poetry books eight years old tend to - sadly - drift from memory so it was a great boost to read the long review below. At the time I particularly liked the second half of the book, a set of 21 sonnets called "The Rule of Earth" which were some of the best love poems I knew. Around the time I was reading a lot of poetry to and with older people and often used some of them, particularly "The Thought", extracted in the blog

http://popsublime.blogspot.com/2010/08/robert-hamberger-smug-bridegroom-five.html.

By chance I've also just caught up with Brokeback Mountain, also mentioned in the review. Thanks then to Jason Roush at popsublime, not least for reminding me of such a good book on the Five Leaves' backlist.

Happy campers

Dennis Hardy, one of the authors of our new edition of Goodnight Campers! was interviewed for Happy Campers - the story of Britain's holiday camps, coming out on BBC Radio 2 at 10.00pm on Tuesday 31 August. If he makes the cut he'll be joining Johnny Ball, Russell Grant, Alvin Stardust and Status Quo. Our book goes back to the socialist and trade union pioneer camps, some of which directly segued into the world of Billy Butlin, Pontins and Warners. Goodnight Campers! is not officially out until later in the year, but we have copies already and they can be ordered via http://www.fiveleaves.co.uk/. Hi-de-hi's all round.

Looking ahead to Cable Street

October 4 2011 will see the 75th anniversary of The Battle of Cable Street. Three Five Leaves writers took part in the battle, Bill Fishman, Bernard Kops and the late Harold Rosen. I spoke to Bernard a few days ago and he is - as always - looking forward to the next stage of his writing career with three sessions at Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. Bill's health has not been great but he is hoping to return to giving talks at U3A on East End history. A couple of weeks ago he was telling me about meeting Gandhi when he was stationed in India. Bill was a supporter of the Indian independence movement. He sometimes surprises local Indians by starting chatting to them in Hindi.

Five Leaves is looking ahead to the five books we are publishing for the anniversary. We are republishing Alan Gibbons' children's book Street of Tall People; the forgotten novel October Day by Frank Griffin; the Cable Street Group's booklet on the Battle; an as yet un-named book on Jewish responses to fascism by David Rosenberg; and Everything Happens on Cable Street, about everything else that happened there. The latter will include everything from the Maltese gangs, the modern day S & M club through to the famous film, To Sir, With Love. Roger Mills, a local resident will be putting that together. Meantime, here's The Men They Could Not Hang with The Ghosts of Cable Street: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzKv5gjOzTA