Cinnamon Press

Small miracles from distinctive voices

Jan Elisabeth Fortune

Disrupting perception as the world burns

Our last launch for September was an extraordinary evening of readings and questions with Kay Syrad, a poet, novelist, and editor who also collaborates with performers and artists, who was launching what is near. As the poetry infolded the audience poured out praise in the Zoom chatbox – words like sublime, clever, moving, terrifying, beautiful and tender. This is a collection that faces the horror of what humanity is doing to the planet. It’s unflinching, not afraid to see the absurd irony of ecological breakdown, but also a plea to disrupt this slide into our own oblivion that is wiping out so many other species in the process. It’s a powerful collection, yet also one that speaks with lyrical beauty, insisting that we name what is being lost or allowing language and form to unravel in those moments when there are no words for what is unspeakable.

If you missed the launch or would like to view it again, you’ll find in below and the discount code is good through October 2021.

Bringing the past into the present — two novels of extraordinary characters

One of the unlooked for gifts of virtual launches has been the ability to bring together not only an audience from different parts of the globe, but also to have authors from different places in one virtual space, sharing their work and creating encounters enriched by both the different and similar threads that weave into and out of their narratives.

This was certainly the case tonight at the launch of Aldermaston by Kate Hoyland and The Pathless Country by James Harpur.

Set in both the future and the past with the strapline: the future is a thing of the past, Aldermaston journeys with Jean, an archeologist of a future, wading through a drowning world and determined, at the end of her life, to find a time capsule from the 1950s.  And it travels also with Ida, 19, searching for a life that breaks the stultifying conventions of post-War Britain and burying a time capsule, a love letter to the future, before joining the first ban the bomb protest in 1958.

Set in turn of the century cosmopolitan London among the glamour of theosophical circles and in rural Ireland in the early part of the First World War and the lead up the 1916 Easter Rising, The Pathless Country walks with Patrick Bowley as he preaches peace and makes an epic pilgrimage, discovering the true nature of ‘the pathless country’.

Both books feature protagonists who are prepared to challenge the societies they find themselves, prepared to find lonelier yet more authentic routes through life. Both raise questions about the nature of self, service and meaning and both place strong emphasis on landscape as a character that interacts with these important questions.

If you missed the launch you can catch up with the video here and the discount code in the video is good through October.

From darkness to light: poetic perspectives on landscape, memory and language

There’s  wonderful buzz to hosting a launch and particularly when the poetry being read bears witness to our humanity and to the full range of questions that confront us as a result. As the Zoom audience listened to three extraordinary poets, Frank Dullaghan reading from in the coming of winter, Mick Evans reading from light airs and Nigel Hutchinson reading from do not enter alarmed area, the chat box filled — with metaphors and images that were resonating with the listeners, with deep appreciated and with a sense of recognition.

Good poetry is an encounter — with ancestors, with places, with music, image, with a creature or creatures — the poet, a snail, a hare, a shock of violet irisses — and with ourselves. Moreover it invites us to enlarge ourselves — to see a little differently, to ask questions, to make tiny yet seismic shifts.

I’m endlessly fascinated that even on Zoom we can feel this happening. The coming together of engaged readers with listeners who are attentive and open creates a presence that is more than the sum of the medium. It’s a bit of alchemy. It’s how poetry works.

And we’d love to share a bit of it with you. So if you missed the event, you’ll find a recording below and you’re welcome to use the discount code to explore these and other Cinnamon books further with a 20% discount that will run till the end of October.

Enjoy

Wished you were there?

  

Since launching this new website just over a week ago we’ve been beavering away at all the invisibles that keep it working. We decided to finally go for a full legal documenation solution for the GDPR and privacy policies, especially as we design and edit from France, but largely work (virtually) in the UK. The software has been an interesting learning curve, as has the new security software that now sends me terrifying messages each day. It seems it’s over-sensitive to any plugin on the site not updated in the last few minutes but it has also captured some real threats so I’m learning to like it. And a whizzy new vault software that uploads the whole site daily or every time a change is made to an off-site location (which is reassuring having just written over 400 pages of it). It sends a message each evening to say that “apparently” there were no errors or warnings. Hmm — apparently?

All this has taken lots of time, but it keeps the site up to date and safe. However, what we really want to be doing is editing, designing and sharing the love for the wonderful books. With this in mind you’ll notice our newsletters at the moment are all about forthcoming events and we hope lots of you will join us.

We also wanted to alert our readers to two lovely events from the Spring. We recorded both of these launches but our internet has been so appalling that we haven’t been able to upload the large files to our Vimeo channel. We’ve finally got a satellite dish on the roof and have remarkable internet speeds for the first time in over two decades (though Wales wasn’t as dire as it’s been in a remote rural hamlet in Brittany).

Lots of people have been asking for these videos and we’re delighted to have them at last. The first is a superb double reading from David Batten and Robin Thomas featuring their new collections Winterreis and A Distant Hum. The discount codes from the launch have now expired but we want you to give good homes to these collections so we’re offering a 25% discount if you buy both books. Add them both to your basket and use the code WINTERHUM21. The code expires on September 18th.

Add A Distant Hum to your basket:

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Add Winterreis

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And for an embarrasment of riches, we also have the launch of The Dancer at World’s End by Tricia Durdey. Our internet failed completely on the day of the launch so we’re grateful to Cottia Fortune for stepping in to host the event at very short notice. As you’ll see, the launch went superbly and this is a novel no one should miss.

The Dancer at World’s Ends stands well on its own, but you can definitely enhance the experience by immersing yourself first in the prequel, The Green Table. Add both to your basket and use the code WORLDSGREEN21 at checkout to benefit from 25% off both together. The discount runs until September 18.

Add The Green Table

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Add The Dancer at World’s End

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Enjoy the videos!