Books Received - and a Cabbage!

I've gotten a few books in the recent past, so I thought I'd better give them a shout out here.

From Throckmortons Bookshop in Warwick, I received the new journal on the block, Under the Radar, Issues 1 & 2 published by Nine Arches Press; On Warwick, by Jane Holland, Lady Godiva & Me, by Liam Guilar and The Terrors by Tom Chivers.

From Salt Publishing, I've got The Opposite of Cabbage by Rob Mackenzie, The Ambulance Box by Andrew Philips and another Jane Holland collection, Camper Van Blues.

And dainty of dainties, I just received Ben Wilkinson's The Sparks, published by tall-lighthouse (and which I'm quite excited about -but I'm excited by them all!).

So, why am I not talking about them yet? Because I am knee-deep in Denis O'Driscoll's epistolary biography of Seamus Heaney - far too interesting a book to rush...

In the next few weeks, I intend to fully explore Rob Mackenzie's collection The Opposite of Cabbage, with the intention of reviewing it, because Rob is paying us a virtual visit on his Decabbage Yourself Cyclone Tour which is currently whizzing around the blogosphere. I think I may put cabbage on the menu that day - a nice green York cabbage with leafy green and plenty of heart, as we say here.

One of my favourite poems from this collection so far is White Noise, which you can read as well on this sample of his work at Salt. Why do I like it? Because it isn't obvious - you read it and then you read it again and then you go off about your day and you have a little 'ping' moment, and you come back and you read it again: it makes me think of choirs of angels, but mucky angels, ones a little like us flawed humans. It makes me envious!