Special offer on New AudioBooks – Routes

We launched three audiobooks on Thursday night, and this is the last of the recordings of readings. To celebrate the launches, we have a 20% off special offer voucher for these three audiobooks if you buy them via our  audio and eBook store, this isn’t valid for any other site. Just use the code AudioLaunch before the end of May!

Tonight’s recordings: Rhiya Pau‘s Routes, read by Farhana Khalique

Rhiya introduces the book:

the readings:

and an actual audiobook file

 

Special offer on New AudioBooks – In the Blood

We launched three audiobooks on Thursday night, and over the next couple of days we are going to share some of the recordings. To celebrate we have a 20% off special offer voucher for these three audiobooks if you buy them via our  audio and eBook store, this isn’t valid for any other site. Just use the code AudioLaunch before the end of May!

Tonight’s recordings: Anna Fodorova‘s In the Blood, read by Lisa Rose

Anna introduces the book:

the readings:

and a couple of the actual audiobook files

 

Special offer on New AudioBooks – Paper Crusade

We launched three audiobooks last night, and over the next couple of days we are going to share some of the recordings. To celebrate we have a 20% off special offer voucher for these three audiobooks if you buy them via our  audio and eBook store, this isn’t valid for any other site. Just use the code AudioLaunch before the end of May!

Tonight’s recordings: Paper Crusade, a book length poem by Michelle Penn, read by Sophie Aldred, Nigel Pilkington and Saul Reichlin

Michelle introduces the book:

the readings:

and one of the actual audiobook files – combining the voices of all three narrators

we are deeply impressed with the skills of Sean Kennedy at Listening Books, who spliced this together so seamlessly from files recorded in 3 different home studios!

Crab Pots and Coffee: Writing The Arctic Diaries

As publication of The Arctic Diaries approaches, we spoke to poet Melissa Davies to ask about the inspiration for her debut collection and her experiences on Sørvær – a tiny island in a remote Norwegian archipelago.

Here we are, The Arctic Dairies is about to go out into the world and what am I feeling? 

In this moment, I find myself thinking often about the people living on Fleinvær. The handful of residents, the weekenders and friends I’ve spent another winter with. I picture them reading it and try to imagine what they will feel. After all, every poem sits in their landscape, not mine.

Listen to Melissa Davies read ‘Bird Wife’, on location in Norway

The Arctic Diaries truly started in the spring of 2017 with a Facebook post asking ‘Do you want to live and work in the Arctic?’ to which I replied yes! Months later a Skype call with the jazz musician who founded an artist retreat on Sørvær (one island in the archipelago of Fleinvær) and in November 2018 I was on a plane to the north of Norway to run The Arctic Hideaway for two months….which turned into six. My husband and I landed in the middle of an arctic storm to quickly learn the way of life here: weather rules winter and it is futile to resist that fact.

Sørvær is one of two year-round inhabited islands in the archipelago and during that first winter we spent many of the cold afternoons of polar night with the only other couple overwintering there. It was over kaffe, lefse and boknafisk (semi-dried cod) that I heard the tales that eventually became The Arctic Diaries. The book really began to form when I realised that many of these stories—eroded through family retelling—would disappear with the passing of the people we came to call friends. Not just traditional or folk tales but vocabulary unique to the landscape, ways of living and happenings that continue to tell us how it is to be here.

However, I don’t see The Arctic Diaries as an archive. The characters I’ve written are fictional, they are not two dimensional drawings of the people I met, I could never do them justice. Instead, I hope that readers will take from each poem what they need, along with a raised awareness or reminder of what we are losing as industrial fishing and fish farming continue to devour Norway’s coastline.

Having said that, the book is also a diary of my first winter on Fleinvær. An exploration of being ‘other’ and the personal demons I was facing at the time so I kept the diary title, structure and dates.

As someone from rural Cumbria, it was interesting to see so many of the difficulties facing Fleinvær and wider Nordland county reflected in the issues facing my own home. I write about the coastal Arctic because it’s the landscape that speaks to me but many of the poems sing a mourning song familiar to the fells too. So as you dive into sea orms, crab pots and eider nests please remember, The Arctic Diaries is only the first chapter in a project that has more to give, especially as art cements a place in the forward momentum of climate activism and Europe swirls with questions of borders and migration.

Pre-order a copy of The Arctic Diaries through our shop.

‘Oi’ on Tour

All kinds of loveliness and laughter experienced so far on the A Voice Coming From Then Tour. Here’s a quick snapshot from Brecon Carmarthen and Cardiff

Join Jeremy next Thursday 5.45 at Cardiff Library for more…

[There’s an annoying flicker on the Brecon video, I’ve cleaned it up as best I can, and set that part to B&W as it’s less trying, but it’s the sound that’s the joy in this so… you could always shut your eyes…]

Thanks to our lovely audiences, and our hosts, The Hours, Brecon; Waterstones, Carmarthen; and Waterstones, Cardiff.

 

Arachne Tenth Anniversary Sale – September

We are celebrating our 10th anniversary by exploring our back catalogue and inviting you to do likewise with special offers on books celebrating their anniversaries in each month.

So for September we have a voucher, ARA10SEP, to get 50% off the following books, some of which are reduced already, so proper bargains!

London Lies our very first book and Liars’ League collaboration – stories about London, published 08/09/2012 here’s just one of the stories

Mosaic of Air  short stories fantasy, history, science fiction, LGBT by Cherry Potts, published 26/09/2013

Weird Lies  our third Liars’ League anthology science fiction, fantasy and the downright odd – also published 26/09/2013

Vindication poems from six women poets, published 27/09/2018 as part of our year of women celebration to mark the centenary of some women getting the vote (or regaining it, in some cases) in the UK.

All you need to do is use the code ARA10SEP at the check out when you buy any or all of these books – you can only use the code once, so we encourage you to buy in bulk!

 

A Pocketful of Chalk Online Launch

We went the for the whole gamut of launches for A Pocketful of Chalk, outdoors, in a barn, in a museum and on line! Here’s the online version, a triumph of technology that took a lot of setting up – those downs are beautiful, but they interfere with Claire’s internet signal. A lot of testing and rearranging of kit was involved, and turning off of interfering phones etc, but it worked!

First Set

Second Set

Q&A

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A Pocketful of Chalk at Keats House

Claire Booker reading at the launch of A Pocketful of Chalk, in the beautiful Chester Room at Keats House

Hey Diddle Diddle

 

Dinosaur Boy

 

Drone Boys

 

Green Ray

 

Grey Heron

 

Long Man Dreaming

 

Mirabelles

 

Morning After

 

Fisherman’s Daughter

 

Remembering Chocolate

 

The Wrasse

 

Looking Towards Smock Mill

 

 

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Eight Poems for Seven Sisters

In which we discover that ancient barns have no soundproofing at all, while reading poems about the glory of the landscape outside.

Claire Booker reads from her poetry collection A Pocketful of Chalk at the visitor centre at Seven Sisters Country Park, between the downs and the sea.

 

Fisherman’s Daughter

 

Breaking Out

 

Drone Boys

 

Gaia in the Garden

 

Green Ray

 

Grey Heron

 

On the Centenary of my Teacups

 

Looking Towards Smock Mill

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A Pocketful of Chalk out and about

As we head towards a bank holiday weekend and you are perhaps thinking of a walk, here, somewhat delayed, are the poems from A Pocketful of Chalk that Claire Booker read en plein-air in Seven Sisters Country Park, above Cuckmere Haven, in perfect walking weather back at the end of July.

 

Towards Beachy Head

 

Dinosaur Boy

 

Hey Diddle Diddle

 

Long Man Dreaming

 

Mirabelles

 

On Beacon Hill

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