Book Launch

My new collection of poetry, The Skylark’s Call, published by Dempsey & Windle, will be launched on Wednesday 9 December at 7.30pm via Zoom. The launch will feature readings from my special guests, Moyra Donaldson, Kevin Higgins and Damian Smyth. There will also be readings from Maureen Hill, John Knowles and Mary Montague from the Queen’s Writers’ Group. I’m delighted that so many outstanding poets will be contributing. Over 80 people have signed up for the launch and some of these will be joining in from long distance, including my cousin from New Zealand. With such an exciting and varied programme, I’m sure it will be a great evening.

Moyra Donaldson is a writer and creative writing facilitator from Co Down. She has published nine collections of poetry, including a limited edition publication of artwork and poems, Blood Horses, in collaboration with artist Paddy Lennon. Her most recent collection is Carnivorous, Doire Press, 2019. A new collection, Bone House, is forthcoming from Doire Press in 2021.

Kevin Higgins is a Galway-based poet and essayist. He has been described by The Stinging Fly magazine as 'likely the most read living poet in Ireland'. His new book, The Colour Yellow & The Number 19 – Negative Thoughts That Helped One Man Mostly Retain His Sanity During 2020, has just been published by Nuascéalta. His sixth full collection of poems Ecstatic will be published by Salmon in June 2021.

Damian Smyth's collections are Downpatrick Races (2000), The Down Recorder (2004), Lamentations (2010), Market Street (2010), Mesopotamia (Templar 2014) and English Street (Templar 2018). Irish Street is due in 2021. He is Head of Literature and Drama with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

Maureen Hill is a retired teacher who spent most of her professional life in Northern Ireland, apart from a year in Madrid, teaching English as a foreign language. Her work has been published in various literary magazines including Abridged, Crannog, The French Literary Review, Magma and The Stinging Fly.

John Knowles is a librarian at Queen’s University, Belfast. He has published poems in a number of literary journals, including Envoi, Poetry Ireland Review, Oxford Poetry, Rialto and the Shop.

Mary Montague is a biologist with a PhD in ornithology. Her poetry collections are Tribe (Dedalus 2008) and Black Wolf on a White Plain (Summer Palace 2001). Her poems are in a number of anthologies, most recently Her Other Language (ed. Ruth Carr & Natasha Cuddington; Arlen Press 2020), and have been translated into French, Italian and Russian. She contributes to The Guardian’s Country Diary. 

The Skylark’s Call is priced at £10 and can be bought online from www.dempseyandwindle.com and from www.pauljeffcutt.net  And if you buy the book through my website, I’d be delighted to sign it for you. For every copy of my book that is sold, £1 will be donated to Cancer Focus Northern Ireland. In these difficult times, it’s important that we continue to give support to those suffering from cancer.

Broadcast and Cancer News

Tomorrow I’ll be talking to Marie-Louise Muir about my new book, The Skylark’s Call, in The Culture Cafe on BBC Radio Ulster. I’m delighted to have been invited to appear on the show. Please wish me luck, because the interview will be broadcast live. The show goes out on Saturday 5 December at 6.05pm. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0009tl0

The Skylark’s Call, published by Dempsey & Windle, is my second poetry collection. The theme of the book is the vitality and vulnerability of everyday life. All of the poems were written during my years of treatment for and recovery from advanced cancer. The poems don’t seek to address my cancer experience directly, but explore the fragile and often invisible boundary between life and death. In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, this is a territory we are all now having to deal with.

And on this topic, I have some great news. I’ve just got the results of my latest cancer surveillance CT scan. I’m delighted to say that it shows no evidence of any recurrence. That makes me clear of cancer for four years now.

Thankfully, I can begin the process of trying to calm down. It’s not easy when you’ve been on tenterhooks for weeks on end. I hope the sleepless nights will soon abate. It would usually take me around a week to come down from all the stress and anxiety of a surveillance scan. However, this time the disturbances will likely last a little longer, because next Wednesday, I have my book launch. I will say more about that in my next post.

The Skylark’s Call is priced at £10 and can be bought online from www.pauljeffcutt.net and from www.dempseyandwindle.com And if you buy the book through my website, I’d be delighted to sign and dedicate it for you.

For every copy of my book that is sold, £1 will be donated to Cancer Focus Northern Ireland. In these difficult times, it’s important that we continue to give support to those suffering from cancer.

New Book meets Readers

I’ve had a lot to do this week. And at times I wished I had a house-elf to help me. I’d offered to sign my new book, The Skylark’s Call, with a personal dedication for anyone who bought it through my website. And many people have taken me up on this. I’ve got skilled at signing my name with a flourish, and adept at writing the dedications. Most people have asked for the book to be dedicated to someone in particular, perhaps as a Christmas present. The most unusual request, and the most gratifying, was to be asked to write two lines from a poem in my first book as the dedication.

The house-elf could have put each of the books in an envelope, addressed it and sellotaped it closed. Then the house-elf could have gathered the envelopes up and carried them all to the Post Office. But I’m not complaining. I’m delighted, because for each book that has been sold, £1 is being donated to help local cancer survivors and their families. And in just a few days, I’ve raised over £40 for Cancer Focus Northern Ireland.

Because my book is now out, I’ve also begun to get feedback on my work from readers. When you write, you work in a sort of vacuum. Yes, you can discuss early drafts and work in progress with other writers. But you don’t encounter real readers until the book is completed and actually published. I’m absolutely delighted with what has been posted by readers of the The Skylark’s Call on Facebook.

‘Paul Jeffcutt’s poetry is searing, current, humorous and mournful. He emphasizes world news, political issues, the environment and migrant crisis with pain and wit.’ Fiona Murphy McCormack.

‘I can thoroughly recommend this latest book of poetry by Paul Jeffcutt. It has a great variety of themes, styles and voices. It’s a tribute to his persistence that all these poems were written during his three serious bouts of cancer. An amazing achievement.’ Paul Burrows.

The Skylark’s Call is priced at £10 and can be bought online from www.dempseyandwindle.com and from www.pauljeffcutt.net  And if you buy the book through my website, I’d be delighted to sign it for you. The Skylark’s Call is also stocked by No Alibis bookstore in Belfast. For every copy of my book that is sold, £1 will be donated to Cancer Focus. In these difficult times, it’s important that we continue to give support to those suffering from cancer.

The Skylark's Call and Cancer Focus

I am a cancer survivor and I’d like to support the work of Cancer Focus through the launch of my new book, The Skylark’s Call. During my years of cancer treatment I got a lot of help from this charity, especially from their counselling service and from the Sing for Life Choir. Now I want to give something in return. For every copy of my book that is sold, £1 will be donated to Cancer Focus. The Skylark’s Call is priced at £10 and can be bought online from www.dempseyandwindle.com and from www.pauljeffcutt.net And if you buy the book through my website, I’d be delighted to sign it for you. The Skylark’s Call is also stocked by No Alibis bookshop in Belfast. In these difficult times, it’s important that we continue to give support to those suffering from cancer.

As you know, I first got cancer in 2011. It came back in 2015 and again in 2016. I wasn’t expected to live for very long. I didn’t think I would write poetry again and I certainly never imagined that I would complete a second collection. I learned to live for each day. I’m delighted, of course, that all these and plenty more good things have come to pass. Life has so many and varied ways of surprising us.

The theme of the The Skylark’s Call is the vitality and impermanence of everyday life. All of the poems in the book were written during my years of treatment for, and recovery from, advanced cancer. The poems don’t seek to address my cancer experience directly, but reflect on the memories and meanings that surround a cluster of places, people and artefacts. Together the poems explore the fragile and often invisible boundary between life and death. In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, this is a territory we are all now having to deal with.

Cancer Focus is a very worthy cause. In 2019 they celebrated 50 years of working to reduce the impact of cancer on people’s lives in Northern Ireland. They provide care and support services for cancer patients and their families; offer a range of cancer prevention programmes to help people lessen their risk of getting cancer; fund scientific research into the causes and treatment of the disease and campaign for better health policy to protect our community and its future. www.cancerfocusni.org

 

The Skylark's Call

A box of books has arrived on my doorstep. It contains my new collection of poetry, The Skylark’s Call, published by Dempsey & Windle. I’m delighted of course. And I think it looks great. But I am a bit biased. It’s almost ten years since my first collection, Latch, was published by Lagan Press. That seems an absolute lifetime ago. So much has happened to me over the past decade. The negatives are clear: three large cancerous tumours and four major operations. The positives, similarly so: being together with T for seven happy years and being clear of cancer for almost four.

The theme of the book is the vitality and impermanence of everyday life. This is a subject I know intimately. All of the poems were written during my years of treatment for and recovery from cancer. The poems don’t seek to address my cancer experience directly, but reflect on the memories and meanings that surround a cluster of places, people and artefacts. Together the poems explore the fragile and often invisible boundary between life and death. In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, this is a territory we are all now having to deal with.

The manuscript was in development for the best part of two years. In particular, I’d like to acknowledge the debt of gratitude I have to the late Ciaran Carson. He read and commented on an early draft of the manuscript and led the Queen’s Writers’ Group in his own inimitable fashion, where early drafts of all of the poems in the book were discussed.

The Skylark’s Call has received endorsements from Moyra Donaldson, Kevin Higgins, Damian Smyth and Ian Sansom. I’m grateful for their well chosen words and generous comments on my poetry. The book does contain my best work to date. Individual poems have been published in well regarded journals, such as, Agenda, The Honest Ulsterman, Ink, Sweat & Tears, The Interpreter’s House, Magma, Orbis, Oxford Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Stony Thursday Book and Vallum.  In the book are fifteen poems that have won awards in Ireland, the UK and the USA. There will be a launch via Zoom in December, to which you will all be invited.

The front cover photo is of Machrie Moor on the Isle of Arran. Many thanks to Stuart Waugh of www.jaggythistlephotography.com

Finished First Draft

I’ve just finished the first draft of my new novel. For three months, I’ve been writing every day. I've gained a new dimension to my writing and I’ve enjoyed it a lot. The first draft is 155,000 words. That’s an average of 1700 words a day. Although, some days I only wrote a few hundred words. My maximum in one day was 4000 words. And that evening, my brain was well and truly fried. When I set out I didn’t really have a plot. All I had was a sketch of a main character and the notion that the novel would involve some crime and some romance. I started writing and just kept going, making it up as I went along. Now I have a raft of characters, two settings that are twenty years apart, plenty of interwoven plot lines and enough loose ends to set the scene for another novel.

Over the past three months, I’ve neglected almost all other things, including this blog. Some days I only wrote the novel, ate and slept. My inbox overflowed, I didn’t deal with correspondence, I didn’t engage in social media and even Ginger Dog began to wonder who I was.

Now I’ve got to the end of the novel, I must admit I’m feeling a slight sense of loss. But this is only the first draft and there is plenty still to do. As I went along, I made changes to the characters and the various plot lines. But I didn’t go back and alter earlier chapters, because that would have interrupted the momentum of writing the story. I just kept a set of notes on the alterations that I would have to make. These now run to twenty pages.

All the advice I’ve seen recommends that you leave the first draft for a number of weeks before you begin to make any alterations. You need to look at the first draft again with fresh eyes, so that you can more clearly see the flaws and the opportunities to improve it.  After all, 155,000 words makes the novel a bit longer than average. So I’ll probably need to cut some of the characters and the plot lines too. That won’t matter too much if it improves the novel. Indeed, when you’ve got to the end, you’re better able to work out how the story should start and unfold.

This is a good time for a gap before beginning work on the second draft. When I began the novel in late July, I was also making final corrections to the manuscript of my second poetry collection, ‘The Skylark’s Call.’ My book will shortly be published by Dempsey & Windle and I now have plenty of work to do for that.

Novel Writing and Ginger Dog

My new novel is going well. I’m almost at the milestone of 100,000 words. I’ve been writing every day for eight weeks. It’s been very intensive so far, with plenty of early starts as well as often getting up in the middle of the night to write notes. I’m a long way through the story now, but I keep getting new ideas. So I’m going to keep writing until I either run out of ideas or I become completely exhausted. During my many hours at the computer, I’m grateful to have a writing companion. His name is Ginger Dog.

Ginger Dog likes to lie on the corner of my desk wedged between the computer screen, my diary and the telephone. Despite his name, Ginger Dog is a cat. I’ve written about him before. You may recall he arrived here a little over two years ago, just after our dog died. He was small, thin and very wary. We since discovered that he wasn’t a true feral cat. He must have had experience of people as a kitten. But then he was abandoned.

Over time, Ginger Dog became used to us and came to the back door regularly to get food. He now spends most of his time in and around the house. From an early age, he began to follow me around. So we called him Ginger Dog. I don’t know why he does it. Perhaps he sees me as a parent or a provider. He also likes to lie down next to me when I’m doing my stretching exercises. He never does any of the the exercises himself (see photo), as he’s flexible enough already.

When he isn’t asleep on my desk, Ginger Dog is writing his own novel. He often feels the urge to stretch out and tap the keyboard with his paws. And when inspired, he stands up and presses the keys. I have no idea what he’s writing, because it is in Cat. But I can give you an exclusive extract below. If you know someone who can translate Cat into English, please get in touch.

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