Launches here and there

 A lovely evening on Saturday saw a really good turnout for the launch of the two pamphlets whose authors had won the Cheltenham Poetry Festival Frosted Fire First Pamphlets competition last year. I had heard David Lukens reading with the Brokenborough Poets a few years ago and was very taken by his work then, but I hadn't come across Lee Potts before. One Brief Wave and A Drought Will Follow will definitely be on my reading list now. And I was delighted that my ex-Somewhere Else colleague, Iris Anne Lewis, was shortlisted for this year's award.

Also published this week, but in the States, was Voices of the Grieving Heart, an anthology edited by Mike Bernhardt, in which I have two poems. Nearly 30 years ago Mike turned to poetry after the sudden death of his young wife and a first edition of this book came out in 1994. The universal experience of loss and bereavement seen over the last twelve months however prompted him to bring out this second edition; in it 83 contributors speak movingly of many different manifestations of grief and healing in poetry, essays and images. All the profits from the sale of the book will go to the Institute of Poetic Medicine which does such tremendous work in promoting the therapeutic use of poetry in some very diverse settings.