latest update of seagull assistant april 2018

On my first day out, my head closed in, my voice grew strained and raw. Nature defies a narrative directive life sets its own course. I longed to release the words that had ceased to flow. In my head, I had fashioned a journey of healing, imagined an ordeal to open a conduit to choked and buried grief. Traverse a vast terrain of sound and sand and stone. Sadness was an opened door, an invitation, across the globe, to an ancient place where, for a time, the world might stop swaying, where I could focus on the moment, freightless after years of pushing against this cage of flesh and bone. It starts, not with a shout, but with a whisper, a tightening at the back of the throat.

Thank you, as ever, to Naveen Kishore and the entire team at Seagull Books for this beautiful creation and for once again inviting me to take part. My brief prose poem/essay, “The Cost of Words,” was written upon my return from the trip I made to central Australia in May of this year, to participate in a charity walk on the Larapinta Trail west of Alice Springs. I have only just begun to glance through it-this 428-page masterpiece begs to be savoured slowly and carefully-and, for the second year, I am honoured to have a piece of writing included. Today my contributor’s copy of the latest edition of the elegant and engaging Seagull Books Catalogue arrived. Well since that time I haven’t been reading much either, but I have been busy with writing related activity and, fortunately, I have more work written earlier in the year that I am now able to share. Earlier this month I wrote about the fact that I had not been writing much, despite my pledge to focus on my own work for a year.

Latest update of seagull assistant april 2018