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Please visit our Book Bulletin 2019 crowdfunding project at CrowdPatch to buy recommendations for our Winter 2019 catalogue and to volunteer your skills, experience and contacts. All funds raised will support not-for-profit Jolabokaflod CIC’s forthcoming programme of events.

Anecdotal Evidence
Wendy Cope
(UK: Faber & Faber, @FaberBooks, 2018)

In her first collection of new poetry since 2011’s acclaimed Family Values, Wendy Cope celebrates ‘the half-forgotten stories of our lives’ with compassion, wisdom and wit. Cope continues to be the most generous of authors, sharing her experience of childhood and marriage and writing poignantly about the passing of time. In several of the poems she reimagines Shakespeare in unorthodox fashion; in others she offers heartfelt tributes to friends and to public figures including Eric Morecambe and John Cage.

Recommended by:
Faber & Faber: at The Book Marketing Society

Founded in 1929 in London, Faber & Faber is one of the world’s great publishing houses. The company’s list of authors includes thirteen Nobel Laureates and six Booker Prize-winners. Faber is proud to publish the foremost voices in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and drama, with writers including: TS Eliot, Ted Hughes, Harold Pinter, Sylvia Plath, William Golding, Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney and Kazuo Ishiguro.

A Gift of Rivers
Kate Foley
(UK: Arachne Press, @ArachnePress, 2018)

Kate Foley is a much published and respected poet with many awards to her name. This, her 8th collection is made from meeting, migration and marriage: poems reflecting the journey of one poet and her wife, across linguistic and geographical boundaries – and with Brexit in the offing, it’s far from over yet.

Recommended by:
Cherry Potts, Director and Publisher, Arachne Press, and Visiting Lecturer: Creative Writing, City, University of London | Author website: Cherry Potts; Course website: An Approach to Creative Writing (short course)
Cherry says: ‘A poetic journey through meetings., negotiations and marriage.’

Cherry is Author, Publisher-Editor, Coach and Mentor at Arachne Press (short stories, novels, poetry, childrens books and selected non fiction). Arachne Press also runs live literary events: The Story Sessions is a regular evening in South London of spoken-word readings with the feel of a folk club; and the annual Solstice Shorts festival, a celebration of National Short Story Day, of the Winter Solstice, and of the narrative power of folk music. Cherry also teaches a creative writing short course at City University. Cherry is a published author of a novel and two collections of short stories; she also is a contributor to and editor of multiple anthologies (bibliography).

Introducing George the Poet: Search Party, A Collection of Poems
George the Poet
(UK: Virgin Books, @virginbooks, 2015)

‘The title is Search Party – the idea being that we’re all out here looking for something, and my poems are my way of finding myself.’ A young black poet blending spoken word and rap; an inner city upbringing with a Cambridge education; a social consciousness with a satirical wit and infectious rhythm – George The Poet is the voice of a new generation.

Recommended by:
Leena Normington, Digital Content Producer | Social Media Producer, Vintage Books; YouTube: Creator for Change Fellow 2017, and Vlogger: Leena Norms (also known as ‘Just Kiss My Frog’)

Leena is an experienced producer of podcasts and online video, media presenter, social media consultant, copywriter and workshop leader. She is one of five winners of the Trailblazer Award in 2019, which celebrates young talent under the age of 30 in publishing. Leena creates content that suits the Vintage PRH imprint’s social platforms. On any given day she’ll be editing a podcast, creating a YouTube video, plotting a thread of tweets or building a fun reading list for the Vintage website. Leena also manages the imprint’s social channels so that it has a constant stream of content being uploaded on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, iTunes, YouTube and more. She makes sure everything is scheduled and looking good; and that Vintage responds to readers’ questions and suggestions.

I’m Just No Good at Rhyming and Other Nonsense for Mischevous Kids and Immature Grown-Ups
Chris Harris
(UK: Two Hoots, @TwoHootsBooks, 2018; USA: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, @LittleBrownYR, 2018)

Meet Chris Harris, the 21st-century Shel Silverstein! Already lauded by critics as a worthy heir to such greats as Silverstein, Seuss, Nash and Lear, Harris’s hilarious debut molds wit and wordplay, nonsense and oxymoron, and visual and verbal sleight-of-hand in masterful ways that make you look at the world in a whole new wonderfully upside-down way. With enthusiastic endorsements from bestselling luminaries such as Lemony Snicket, Judith Viorst, Andrea Beaty, and many others, this entirely unique collection offers a surprise around every corner: from the ongoing rivalry between the author and illustrator, to the mysteriously misnumbered pages that can only be deciphered by a certain code-cracking poem, to the rhyming fact-checker in the footnotes who points out when ‘poetic licence’ gets out of hand.

Recommended by:
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (LBYR): at BookExpo America

LBYR began publishing books for children in 1926. The unit publishes a diverse, carefully curated list of the finest books for young readers of all ages and backgrounds. LBYR has the distinct honour of being the first and only publishing division to have won the Caldecott Medal three years in a row. The unit has four imprints: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers publishes a core list of literary and commercial books; LB Kids produces novelty and licensed titles; Poppy is comprised of commercial titles for teens; and NOVL spans original digital content for teens. LBYR’s mission is to inspire a lifelong love of reading.

The Knotsman
Math Jones
(UK: Arachne Press, @ArachnePress, 2019)

The Knotsman does not exist, you will not find him in history books or collections of ‘bygone’ skills. But Math Jones has created him, and his fellows, in a time very like the English Civil War … There he is, going from house to house, village to village, poem to poem, battlefield to gallows, unravelling knots and problems, physical, emotional and psychological; a new kind of cunning man, not always welcome, not always quite as clever as his fingers and picks would have him believe.

Recommended by:
Cherry Potts, Director and Publisher, Arachne Press, and Visiting Lecturer: Creative Writing, City, University of London | Author website: Cherry Potts; Course website: An Approach to Creative Writing (short course)
Cherry says: ‘Narrative poetry and new folktale in one. Math Jones unravels the true historie of a 17th-century “cunning man” who isn’t quite as clever as he thinks.’

Widening Income Inequality
Frederick Seidel
(UK: Faber & Faber, @FaberBooks, 2017; USA: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, @fsgbooks, 2017)

Seidel is the great controversialist of American poetry. Dubbed a ‘transgressive adventurer,’ a ‘demonic gentleman,’ a ‘triumphant outsider,’ a ‘great poet of innocence,’ and ‘an example of the dangerous Male of the Species’, his sly, witty and wide-eyed poems seem earnest one moment and flippant the next, and will see him rotating his caustic fire from high-society cocktail parties to street-level poverty, genocide to Obamacare, New York to Syria. He’s never more than a turn-line from humour, and it is often when he is at his funniest that he is also at his most shocking.

Recommended by:
Faber & Faber: at The Book Marketing Society

	Christopher Norris on Secret Santa 2022
	Bronwyn on Secret Santa 2022
	Richard on Let’s get the Icelanders…

Please visit our Book Bulletin 2019 crowdfunding project at CrowdPatch to buy recommendations for our Winter 2019 catalogue and to volunteer your skills, experience and contacts. All funds raised will support not-for-profit Jolabokaflod CIC’s forthcoming programme of events.

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