Cinnamon Press should be proud to be nurturing, mentoring, editing, publishing and promoting such interesting and diverse poets as Hugh Dunkerley, Mark Fitzgerald, Lizzie Fincham and David Gilbert.
Unfortunately, Lizzie Fincham was unwell and unable to travel over from Wales, and was replaced, very generously, by David Gilbert. Jan Fortune of Cinnamon Press read one poem from Lizzie’s moving three-act collection Green Figs & Blue Jazz, which follows the seasons mapping loss, hope and resolution, so she wasn’t completely absent.
David’s poems made us laugh and touched us deeply, portraying as they did mental illness, family life and couple dynamics. His new collection, comprising these poems, will come out in the autumn.
Hugh Dunkerley’s book, Kin, is a series of poems and prose-poems on the theme of fatherhood from the first glimpse of the foetus in a scan to the unexpected birth of a premature son, and more via science, iconoclastic humour and domesticity, but always original and resonant in content and form.
Mark Fitzgerald read from his second collection for Cinnamon Press, Downburst, a very different voice and not just because Mark lives in Virginia and teaches in Maryland. ‘As rich in sound as in sense, the book is about finding magic in the ordinary, the afterglow of time, family inspirations and resurgences across seasons.’
Books available from Cinnamon Press’s own website and Amazon, or to order from bookshops.
Photos to follow, hopefully…