No.167

I don’t know what to tell you, because there are so many things that I could say, or not say. I like best to start these newsletters with something that is of me, that comes from inside my nice-and-sieve-like head and comes from where I am when sitting and writing these, but after a while of not having anything to necessarily announce, I have two things to announce, and so it feels right this time to focus on the announcing.

Just before this though, because it feels too strange to not have some kind of gentler thing at the start, here are some books that I read during the peculiar, year-ending space as December ceased and January began:

From left to right, up to down: Melissa Harrison, The Stubborn Light of Things; Lucy Ellmann, Mimi; Patricia Lockwood, No One Is Talking About This; Kate Atkinson, Life After Life; Zoe Gilbert, Folk; Raynor Winn, The Wild Silence

WORK-RELATED NEWS:

The ending of one year and the beginning of another brought with it these two large, happy work happenings, the first of which I have been keeping resolutely quiet about for some months—needlessly, but I wasn’t quite ready.

Some of you might remember that spring 2021 brought with it an illustrated essay I did for Orion Magazine—given that the essay was entirely hand-lettered it isn’t available to read online, but Orion keeps back print issues available to order. As astonishing as it felt to create a piece for such an important, sublime (sublime as in: ‘of outstanding spiritual, intellectual, or moral worth’) publication, then came further feelings to be felt, as the editor asked me some months later whether I would be interested in writing a column—we were on a video call, so I had no choice but to remain calm. A column about words within landscapes, about words within people within landscapes, about words within landscapes within people—essentially, words. Which brings me to the winter 2021 issue of Orion, carrying inside my first ‘Root Catalog’ column, the first of, I hope, many. Fingers crossed it isn’t too tiny to read here; I have been given the go-ahead to share in its entirety.

The second happening happened on January 4th, and this was the US publication of Close Again, a hardback edition of the book wrote and self-published last spring. I wish to say how beautiful it feels that other people are being comforted and held gently by this slim book, in Italy and Germany and Japan and now in the US, because when I sat down to make it I had no expectation of it ever extending beyond the 200 copies I carried (inelegantly) to the post office in batches. But like any book, it ceases to be only yours the moment anyone else reads it, and I really hope that whoever choses to pick up Close Again will be able to sense something of its small, unassuming personal-ness, that it will feel like sitting for half an hour in the kind of sun we’ve been missing for two years.

The link below will take you to the page for Close Again on the publisher website, which in turn (under ‘Details & Purchase’) gives you various options if you wished to purchase a copy, from IndieBound, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, etc. I’m mostly (entirely) terrible at promoting my work, so once in a while it feels alright to say: If you like my work, the best way to support me right now—if you are able to—is to find a copy of one of my books, keep it like a treasure, and tell me what its pages mean to you.

THIS WEEK I FELL IN LOVE WITH:

Film photography by Netherlands-raised, Barcelona-based Colette der Kinderen.

(If you are living in a January in the northern hemisphere then you will know precisely how it feels to be imagining such warm temperatures.)

“It was mistake to believe that other people were not living as deeply as you were.”

— Patricia Lockwood, No One Is Talking About This