Publishing my Edward Thomas

The first blog re-run with new pictures

Yew Tree Cottage, Steep

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plaque at Yew Tree

 

 

 

I've been in love with Edward Thomas for years. Sometimes I think he's unbearable but I can't imagine life without him. So when I'd completed my Masters degree on his poetry I was still thinking about him, and that thinking turned into a novel. Robert Frost, Helen Thomas and others feature too, of course.

And that novel is about to be published, on  7th February. But I find I'm not sitting back doing nothing - there is so much to do working with my publisher, Frank, as a kind of partner. (www.streetbooks.co.uk) He knows what he is doing, I don't, but I'm learning fast and I thought other writers might want to read what I'm learning as I go along.

So if you are working with a small/ medium sized publisher, or self-publishing, read on.

And if you know Edward Thomas was writing for you, I will be posting some poetry and maybe prose, keeping alongside him with the seasons. Some Robert Frost too.

October

Melancholy  hand-in-hand with beauty. This combination occurs often in his poetry.
                     

The green elm with the one great bough of gold
Lets leaves into the grass slip, one by one, --
The short hill grass, the mushrooms small milk-white,
Harebell and scabious and tormentil,
That blackberry and gorse, in dew and sun,
Bow down to; and the wind travels too light
To shake the fallen birch leaves from the fern;
The gossamers wander at their own will.
At heavier steps than birds' the squirrels scold.

The rich scene has grown fresh again and new
As Spring and to the touch is not more cool
Than it is warm to the gaze; and now I might
As happy be as earth is beautiful,
Were I some other or with earth could turn
In alternation of violet and rose,
Harebell and snowdrop, at their season due,
And gorse that has no time not to be gay.
But if this be not happiness, -- who knows?
Some day I shall think this a happy day,
And this mood by the name of melancholy
Shall no more blackened and obscured be.