announcement | Marie Marshall

November 26, 2012

Good interviews are like Gold Dust…

… and when the chance comes I take it. A couple of months back I was interviewed for Gold Dust, the twice-yearly magazine of literature and the arts. The interview came out in their Winter 2012 issue. It has been overtaken by events a little, inasmuch as The Everywhen Angels is currently being considered by a UK publisher, and the new collection of poetry, I am not a fish, will be published early in 2013 (I know, I know, I keep telling you this).

If you happen to want to order a copy of the original imprint of Naked in the Sea from your local Waterstones, they should be able to get it for you. Just give them the ISBN 978-0-9566041-0-1. It’s certainly on Waterstones’ on-line ordering system, and is still available direct from Masque Publishing. Meanwhile the second imprint, courtesy of P’Kaboo Publishing, is available as in Kindle format from Amazon UK, or Amazon USA, or as an eBook direct from P’Kaboo.

More news about Lupa when I have it.

November 5, 2012

Poetry Book Society Choice

My collection, I am not a fish, is due to be published by Easter 2013. It will be entered for the Poetry Book Society Choice in the competition for the 2013 T S Eliot Prize. The Managing Editor of my publisher is eager to do this because she has faith in the work. Competition for the Prize is fierce, so there is absolutely no guarantee that the collection will even make the shortlist, but it is heartening to know that my publisher wants to hurry things along in order to meet the deadline for entries.

The Poetry Book Society was founded in 1923 by T S Eliot, hence the image above, in case you were wondering…

6 Comments

November 1, 2012

‘I am not a fish’

My collection of never-seen-before poems, I am not a fish, has been accepted for publication. I’ll give you more news as it occurs, but I thought I would share the initial buzz. Yes, it’s still a buzz when this kind of thing happens…

6 Comments

October 20, 2012

One Day in High Park, Toronto

Flash fiction – One Day in High Park, Toronto.

I was sitting on a bench, reading – hardly noticed the man, hand-in-hand with a boy. Both were dressed in black pants and white shirts, and the man had a black hat of woven straw. “Old Order Mennonite – what are they doing in town?” I mused momentarily.

They had been talking quietly, but suddenly the man raised his voice, still gentle in tone.

“No, Karl, that’s not true. You’re lying to me. I can’t allow that. You’ll have to take your punishment.”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Shall we get it over with now, rather than later?”

“Yes Dad.” The boy reached and rolled up the legs of his pants as far as they would go. The man bent down behind him and slapped him on the back of each calf, then slapped him again.

“Hey! Hey!” A guy in t-shirt and jeans, came from behind where I was sitting, vaulted over the end of my bench, and barged the man away from the boy.

“Pick on someone your own damn size!” he said, swinging a punch which caught the man on the right cheek. Down he went, and sat on the ground, hat awry, face bleeding. The t-shirt guy stood over him, fists balled.

After about fifteen seconds he got up, dusted himself off, straightened his hat, and looked at the t-shirt guy. He said nothing, but seemed to angle his left cheek a little, as though inviting another punch. Then he turned to the boy.

“Punishment over, Karl.” He said. The boy rolled his pants legs down, and came over to hold his father’s hand. “Shall we get some ice-cream?”

The boy grinned. “Yes please, Dad.”

They walked away, and the t-shirt guy stood, hands on hips. “Well… I… should… fuck… a… pig!”

I said nothing – I had a good book.

2 Comments

September 20, 2012

Apples and Ink Angels

Into my hands today popped a copy of Ink Angels. Edited by Kevin Watt and Elizabeth Neilson, it is an anthology of two hundred or so poems, out of more than four million on the web site allpoetry.com, picked ‘as examples of having a profound perspective’. “Reading them,” says Kevin, “will take you to a lovely place.” I mention this because my poem Apples, written back in 2007 is included in the anthology. It’s among a wonderful collection… from my point of view it’s worth buying because it contains Don’t ask by L A Smith, who is one of my favourite poets of all time, yet so rarely is she published that she remains barely known outside a circle of friends. Put Ink Angels next on your wish list, after Lupa…

10 Comments

September 16, 2012

How does it feel to have my first novel published?

At last my first novel Lupa is published. It was taken up by an independent publisher in South Africa who offered me a commercial contract. It feels as though the novel has had a long gestation period – it was my first work of full-length fiction and I completed it in 2004, and so it is in some senses a ‘young’ work. I have doggedly resisted the temptation to self-publish or even to accept an ‘author-subsidised’ deal. To my mind conventional publication does still confer legitimacy on a written work. This is not to say that there are not some excellent self-published works out there, nor that conventional publishing exclusively promotes works of great literary merit. We can all point to the exceptions. Nevertheless – I have to tell you – this feels good!

At present the book is available in print or in Kindle form via Amazon. My SA publisher is currently struggling with the problems of printing in both SA and the UK, so a bookshop launch in either country is not imminent. But as so much of the book trade is now on-line Lupa will actually be available internationally before it hits its domestic markets! Who knows – it may end up being printed in China.

Another aspect of being taken on by an ‘indie’ publisher is that such a lot of the publicity and marketing will have to be do-it-yourself. I am going to have to plug it via this site, via social networking, and so on, hoping that people who say they like my writing will actually prove it with a purchase, will recommend it to friends, will write favourable reviews, and so on. Over to you, I guess!

I would like to thank my agent, my publisher, my friends Lucy (who insisted that I wrote this book in the first place) and Joey (who gave it its first critical read-through back in 2004) and everyone who has made this possible for me.

21 Comments

August 18, 2012

A galley proof day.

The moment you hold a galley proof of your book in your hands is a significant one. It is the moment that your mind-set shifts from ‘if this ever happens’ to ‘this is going to happen’. Of course there is still many a hurdle to jump on the way, but that’s how I felt when I held a preliminary copy of my novel Lupa today. I wonder if other authors feel the same way, and whether it applied as much to Harper Lee with her grand total of one novel – the wonderful To Kill a Mockingbird – as to Erle Stanley Gardner with his massive canon when they received a proof copy. My task today will be reading through the proof to see if anything has been missed during the editing stage.

Lupa is scheduled to be published by an independent publisher outside the UK; the publishers are trying to organise a separate print run in Britain, however, and it will also be available worldwide as an eBook. When I know the final arrangements and the launch date you’ll know too, but it may be in time for Literary Dundee in October.

Meanwhile a UK publisher has asked to see my second novel The Everywhen Angels. I merely mention this in passing because, as every author knows, that is only the very first step and one which might have to be retraced, having led nowhere. Even having a book accepted is part of a process in which each stage provokes a different reaction. There is the initial elation when the publisher says yes, the frustration and boredom when nothing seems to be happening, anger when a publisher’s editor insists on a change to the text – I recall how it felt to sacrifice a line of dialogue from Lupa, a line which I felt was the emotional climax of a key episode, at the insistence of the editor, but it had to be done and done with good grace on my part – anticipation as publication date moves nearer. As writers, authors, poets, we feel all these most keenly; it has to do with the urge to communicate, our art depending on language, the prime mode of human communication.

Ah well, time for a morning cup of tea. There’s a sunny day ahead today, and if I start my reading now I may get out into the fresh air later…

15 Comments

May 8, 2012

After the revolution

He had been a capitalist of so great ascent that he had once been called a captain of commerce; now such things were put by, and the jut of his jaw was bravado, belied by the glisten of sweat on his forehead. He was genuinely puzzled when we asked him for his secret dream; having taken a few breaths he said he had always wanted to work with wood, to feel the buzz of the grain against his thumb and the satisfaction of pulling a splinter from his finger when the carpentry was done. We found him a job in a boat yard, the period of his employment was inverse to his aptitude. Eventually he found a niche caring for a girl with Down’s syndrome, who came to call him uncle and to love him. There is no success without attempt; things balance eventually. I have heard that often he expressed something like the guilt of a survivor, which he was until he died of a heart attack; he was found in a water closet, the type that is so small that you have to rest your elbow in the hand-basin and gaze into the mirror. There would have been no pain.

__________

The online literary magazine qarrtsiluni is currently publishing poems in a series themed imitation. The entry for 7^th May is my O great maritime bears, which is an emulation of poet Lisa Jarnot. The theme of imitation continues to the bio note which is an imitation of a telegram by the artist Balthus. From the qarrtsiluni site you can download a podcast of the poem, read by Dani Adomaitis.