Valley Press Friday Digest, #6

After two quiet weeks, we come to my recap for the first week of June - which has been a lot livelier, as you'll see below...

• In Between arrived this week, and is looking good! See below for a tweet from the York Curiouser festival announcing the arrival of their copy. I'll post out VP website pre-orders next week, in time for the official release date next Friday.

@jwedgwoodclarke 'In Between' has arrived #poems about snickets in #York published by @valleypress pic.twitter.com/OmTjwO4ESX
— Hazel C & Lara G (@YorkCuriouser) June 5, 2014

• Other tweets from the York Curiouser team that you may be interested in: a competition, which is still open at time of writing, and a picture of one of the poems from the book literally installed in a snicket - very cool.

So we're nearing 500 followers so 500th deserves a free copy of @jwedgwoodclarke new #york poems about snickets please RT
— Hazel C & Lara G (@YorkCuriouser) June 5, 2014

Starting to install #poems on #York by @jwedgwoodclarke pic.twitter.com/krlP00fOfF
— Hazel C & Lara G (@YorkCuriouser) June 6, 2014

• On a tangentially-related note, the marvellous Bridlington Poetry Festival (established, of course, by Mr. Wedgwood Clarke in 2010) is coming around again, starting on June 12th. The dream team presently running things, Antony Dunn and Dorcas Taylor, have put together an epic programme (perfect, in fact), which features Andrew Motion, Wendy Cope, "our own" Don Paterson, four VP authors, and a football-team's worth of other much-loved poets. This, for me, is the mid-year Christmas... I'm gutted that I can't make it to the weeknight stuff (due to transport issues), but you never know what might turn up!

• A huge milestone for Valley Press this week, as I achieved my long-held dream of having a permanent presence in Scarborough Library. As this appears to be the week I embed tweets, see below for my announcement of the new stand, with photo. (Confession: I'm going back in tomorrow to add a little sign saying 'for sale', to make it clear that these are not actually library books - though many of them can be borrowed elsewhere in the library.)

Delighted to report that a selection of Valley Press books are now on sale at Scarborough library - see pic. pic.twitter.com/2M9Jn2o8EO
— Valley Press (@valleypress) June 2, 2014

• Last week I was hopeful that a review, and some photos, would emerge of Eskimo Snow's Edible Book launch - and the folks at Novelicious have not let me down. You can read their eloquent thoughts on the event here.

• This week in links: I found this great little article from the designer of the Sixty Watt Las Vegas cover, talking about the process behind it. I enjoyed this joke, this exchange of tweets between Cara Brennan and a happy customer, and reading about the amazing new Foyles bookshop. I accidentally asked for, and thus received, this illustration of a topless man (will explain another time!) And I can't let this week go past without linking to Jeremy Paxman's call for an inquisition of poets, George Szirtes' awesome comeback, and Todd Swift's ongoing raging against this injustice (start five posts down and work up, if you're reading today).

• Next week on the Friday Digest: To avoid having an enormous post after two short ones, I'm saving the most interesting thing that happened this week ... how I was faced with the most difficult decision of 2014 so far, and then how I managed to get out of making it ... for discussion in next week's blog. Intriguing huh?