Happy belated birthday, Muhammad Ali!

Muhammad Ali was born on 17 January 1942. Happy Birthday to him.
© and photo credit: http://en.wikipedia.org

Simon II

On his way to the synagogue, Simon
grabbed god’s cross and dragged it
across to Golgotha. No one knew
if the time was right. But after tea when
the sun, going home, threw
against the city walls three shadows
just like scarecrows in the night,
a night which climbed his stairs
with a lamp and a book of poems
in its black hand, and stood at his bed
enveloping him silently with the dead,
he grabbed the book and read a poem.
There was no meaning in it for him.

Simon: http://www.canopicpublishing.com/canopicjar/25/retsimon.htm

An interview with Isobel Dixon

I met Isobel Dixon at the London launch of Sidekick Books wonderful Birdbook I last summer - her Upupa Epops (you're all such keen birders that you don't need me to tell you what species that's the scientific name of, do you?) is one of the volume's highlights, for me, and a good taster for the superb collection in which it appears, The Tempest Prognosticator.

She was born in Umtata, South Africa, and came to Scotland to study in 1993. She works in London as a literary agent, representing a range of clients, including many prominent South African writers. Her work is included in publications like The Paris Review, The Guardian, Penguin's Poems for Love, The Forward Book of Poetry and The Best of British Poetry 2011. Her first collection Weather Eye won South Africa’s Sanlam and Olive Schreiner Prizes. Her second collection A Fold in the Map was published in the UK by Salt and in South Africa by Jacana, and The Tempest Prognosticator, is published in the UK by Salt and in South Africa by Random House's Umuzi imprint. It’s been described as "a virtuoso collection" by J M Coetzee and an "ingenious carousel of a book" by David Morley.

Continue there: Polyolbion: An interview with Isobel Dixon