Since I started writing poems, I’ve been trying find ways to
put them into the world beyond words. In
my first year I (rather arrogantly) made a CD of recordings using a little Dictaphone
without any sense of editing, structuring or whether anyone would actually want
the bloody thing (I guess marketing).
I also put some poems out in the form of zines, under the
title Snapping Turtle Press. This was me
and my mate venturing into some self-publishing, and we really enjoyed the rough-and-ready
DIY element of glue, staples and combining words with illustrations. I even went to a few zine fairs, but in the
end it was just a fun hobby and it takes a lot of energy to keep putting out
zines, so much respected to regular poetry zines like Paper & Ink whom I
devour.
I always had huge respect for Burning Eye Books, who mainly
focus on publishing performance poets across the UK. At Say Owt, the night I run, we’ve had lots
of their published authors, Harry Baker, Rob Auton, Vanessa Kisuule to name but
a few. I am hugely proud to announce I
will bringing out a collection of poetry on Burning Eye next year! Woo!
The book is called Nerd Punk, which is no surprise to anyone
who knows my poetry. It’s about growing
up, friendship and home plus protest and politics. And dinosaurs.
It’s been interesting pouring through old documents, zines
and my memory to put together all these poems from the last 11 years. I don’t think there are many poems from the
first couple of years of my poetry writing and performing career, and some
poems never really made it into my core ‘sets’.
It felt like, if someone them weren’t included here, they would get lost
in the mists of time because they never made the ‘cut’ to the live
performances. Similarly one of two were
very specific to the context of a show or event and didn’t really need to be
part of the collection. Because I couldn’t
include song lyrics, one poems just fell apart as it was built around a Bedouin
Soundclash song.
It’s been an interesting journey going back in time (and I
do love nostalgia). Revisiting and
editing old pieces, realising that the structure is much sharper as it has been
shaped by performance. Rather than
chunks being added to a poem, the poem has become more streamline and I hope
the pieces are stronger for this.
So keep an eye out for the collection in (hopefully) April
2018. No doubt I’ll be shouting about
where to buy it and have a book launch.
I’d love to get out there in a tour if anyone’s up for booking me around
that time, drop me an email henry@henryraby.com
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