Almost There!

There are now only twelve days left until my book is launched! I'm ridiculously, childishly excited about this. The local Waterstones has been booked, my lovely publishers are laying on drinks and goody bags and I have a big stack of posters that I need to distribute to local shops and pubs.

This is a completely new experience for me. I've never had a book out, never seen my face on a professionally printed poster before (when I had various bands, my wife used to design posters for gigs, but this is the first time I've seen something that wasn't produced on an inkjet). I have been plugging the book to almost everyone I met for months now. I don't think there's anyone I know that isn't aware I have a book coming out.

I pity my poor friends on Facebook. Almost all of my posts recently have mentioned the book in some way. There's an application that tells you your most-used words. Number two on my list was 'book'. Number one was 'watching', but that's just because I often complain about what's on TV while I post. There's always something to complain about. Nothing to complain about with the book, of course! It's almost perfect.

I say it's almost perfect because there were a couple of poems I wrote that were too late for inclusion. One I've already given (An Epitaph for Justice can be found here) but there was also one about winning the poetry competition. My publishers had asked for this months ago, but typically, I didn't have any ideas about how to start it until it was too late. Oh well. Consider this to be a blog exclusive! The poem is here:


Two Words

Two words
Short ones too
A name
My name
Andrew Barber

I don't hear these words very often
The doctor
The dentist
The nasal Tannoy
For the deli counter drones
At the council offices

I hear them most
From my own mouth
Hello insert name here
I'm Andrew Barber
Shake the hand
Flash the eye contact
I'm not scared
Feel how firm my grip

And once
I heard two words from a stage
Short words
A name
And the winner is...
Insert my name here...
I've won

And everything changed