At the AWP Bookfair, Boston, 7–9 March 2013

I’d just come from 35˚C in Nicaragua. In Boston the temperature was scarcely above 0˚C and there was a snowstorm on the way.

I was in Boston for the AWP Conference. AWP is the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, i.e., all the university creative writing programmes in the USA. And each year, in a different US city (this year Boston), they have a big conference, more of a convention perhaps, with now upwards of 11,000 aspiring writers, practising writers, writing teachers and administrators, all eager to progress their careers. Lectures, seminars, discussions, readings, book launches. “Nothing else has quite the packed, desperate frenzy of AWP,” writes my friend Jim Kates, poet, translator, co-director of Zephyr Press, an AWP veteran.

There’s a bookfair too, for three days, from 8.30 am to 6.00 pm, with all the associated university presses displaying their magazines and peddling the first books of their ambitious star graduates. And among this orgy of programmatic creativity (“This is, after all,” says my friend, “a conference not of writers, but of writing programs”), like Daniels in the lions’ den, are some independent small presses and literary magazines. These are mostly US-based, but this year Versal was there from Amsterdam and for the second time, Seraph Press and Cold Hub Press from New Zealand.

The aspiring writers, mostly unacquainted with world literature, or indeed with anything much other than their tutors’ work and their own dreams of publication, drift by the tables with a casual glance at covers, but there are enough genuine readers, writers, editors, translators to make the thing worthwhile.

Books are examined, admired, discussed, swapped, bought; cards are exchanged, invitations issued to submit work to magazines. On the Seraph/Cold Hub table Vivienne Plumb’s The Cheese and Onion Sandwich (Seraph Press) sold out (it’s a little guidebook to the quirks of Middle Earth after all); John Gallas’s Fucking Poets (a three-volume Cold Hub Press chapbook) was, unsurprisingly, the most scrutinised title on the table and almost sold out.

Outside, in a foot of snow, brownstone Boston was doing its best to look like an impressionist painting. But by the time we emerged from the cavernous Hynes Convention Centre for the last time the snow was beginning to turn to slush.

            Roger Hickin

Isn't it gorgeous!

The cover features a wonderful artwork by Michael Hight, which was especially painted for this book. I've just added a page for The Baker's Thumbprint, so you can go there to find out more about the collection, and about Paula: http://www.seraphpress.co.nz/the-bakers-thumbprint.html. There's also a sneak preview of a few poems from the book.

The Baker's Thumbprint is going off to print next week, and will be all ready for us to launch it at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival, on Saturday 18 March, from 1.15 to 2.15, at Q Theatre, 305 Queen Street. Invitations will be forthcoming closer to the time (and also to the second launch we're planning to have in Wellington later in May), but all are welcome. Unfortunately the book launches don't seem to be included in the listings on the website, but you'll find them in the front of the print booklet.

Immediately after the launch, you'll also want to see Paula introducing the Poets Aplenty event later on that Saturday afternoon, which features Fleur Adcock, John Newton and Maris O'Rourke (2:30 to 3:15 in the Limelight Room, Aotea Centre).

It's a great weekend for seeing Helens read poetry on the Kapiti Coast.

First up, Helen Heath joins the Rocky Outcroppers: Kirsten McDougall, Pip Adam and Ashleigh Young, and other special guests: Lynn Jenner, Tina Makereti, in an event chaired by Lawrence Patchett. That's at St Peters Hall in Paekakariki, on the afternoon of Saturday 23 March, at 2 pm. (Here's the Facebook event thingy, if that's useful to you: https://www.facebook.com/events/452016948197657/.) Rumour has it there will pikelets and ginger crunch! The event is free, but you'll most likely want to buy their books, so cash is useful.

And then the next day, on Sunday 24 March at 4 pm, at Valhalla in Raumati South, you can see (and hear!) Helen Lehndorf and fellow Palmerston Northian Poet Tim Upperton read their poetry. There'll be an open mic before the guest poets wow us.

Maria McMillan has written on her blog about her 'next big thing', which is The Rope Walk, the poetry collection we're publishing in July. She explains the project's genesis, swhat she's exploring in the poems, and that Jennifer Lawrence could play all the characters, should it ever be made into a movie.

Here's a taster:

I became fascinated with the idea of waves of people from Scotland and England, leaving their countries, their parents, their siblings, the graves of their ancestors and coming somewhere new. And then sometimes awful ship journeys where babies died, and adults too. And then arriving somewhere so utterly different. There must have been so much grief with that. And then I started thinking about how every generation seems to go through some major losses, men being lost in wars, the soul destroying recession of the 1980s, the suicides, the bitter thread through all those years of violence against women. I think grief often isn't dealt with well, and what does that mean, and how does that get passed on down the generations. All that feeds into the book, You might not realise it reading the poems, some of which I hasten to add, are more joyful than sad, but all that stuff is going on there in the background. 

Read the whole thing on her blog here: http://mariamcmillan.weebly.com/3/post/2013/03/the-next-big-thing.html