Dressing Up the Poetry

I've been looking forward to posting this news for what seems like half a lifetime, or about 6 months of a poetry year as it actually turns out to have been! Since my pamphlet, Dressing Up, was announced as a winner in the Cinnamon Press pamphlet competition back in April 2016, the day has been both hurtling forward and simultaneously inching like a snail towards the day when I am able to say it is available in the Cinnamon Press shop.

Drum roll please ......... and the day has arrived! The lovely editors at Cinnamon Press, Jan Fortune and Adam Craig, with the valiant assistance of Michelle Angharad Pashley, spent one evening last week tying up parcels of pamphlets and books ready to dispatch them to their respective authors.

My dream is that everybody who reads my weekly posts will also want to read my poems, and by the end of the year Dressing Up will be ready for a second print run. If you'd like to help me achieve this dream you can find Dressing Up by Giles L. Turnbull in the Cinnamon Press shop.

Later in this post I'll treat you to the opening poem, Alarm, which was first published in London Magazine Rockland, and recently in the Cinnamon newsletter :)

Back on 27 November 2016 I mused in my weekly post about how many poetry pamphlets I thought was going to be a realistic yet challenging target for sales at readings I aim to do in support of my pamphlet launch. I opted for 50 copies and now begins the task of planning and arranging the readings. I have potential venues in mind in Cardiff, Newport, Brecon, Leicester and a couple in London. I hope you'll look out for dates being posted on this blog in coming weeks and put them in your diary to come, see and hear me reading from Dressing Up and a few other poems :)

Alarm

Orange
the colour of traffic lights
that are neither stop nor go.
 
The bands of wasps
sandwiched recurringly between black
more electric than the shock.
 
Give me daffodil yellow
or the fathomless purple of night
as the orange sun's glow
begins to slow, then stops
before sinking out of sight
 
as we set the clocks
to wake us with a morning slap
for juice.
 

About Dressing Up:

The poems in Dressing up present scenes of life from getting ready in the morning to going out at night. They include nails and shoes. They embrace opera and knights in front of castles. They are always looking at life, from the beauty to the self-harm, from job interviews to houses that have burned down. (Giles L. Turnbull)

Dressing Up is at the heart of absolutely everything. When you put on high heels and lipstick and a beautiful dress, you're dressing up. When you put on a shirt and tie and cufflinks and that watch that may or may not be a Rolex, you're dressing up. When you put on a safety helmet and hi-vis jacket, you're dressing up. Put on your poetry gladrags and come and have a look at the world in its frailty and finery (Giles L. Turnbull).

"These poems use energetic and open free verse forms to evoke the slippery and mercurial nature of contemporary urban experience, and have a conspicuous command of voice and tone, so that they are very lively but also capable of shifting, with high intelligence, into more meditative modes." (Ian Gregson).

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