Blossom the magician transformed
winter’s curfew hours
into foaming white petals
Warm days sandwiched between cool mornings and cooler evenings, fireworks of blossom going off in the hedgerows, balloon-like sticky buds ready to burst into lush green, lawns getting ready for their first cut. Days stretching out like limbs from hibernation, the long dark days of Winter receding into the distance, the newness of the season slowly unwrapping itself, Mother nature applying a fresh coat of paint. Spring is the time of joy and hope, the season of possibility and smiles.
Blossom: a CV by Simon Armitage – from ‘Blossomise’
Blossom was a pavement artist.
Painted the trees
in concrete estates and sad precincts
Painted the streets.
Blossom was a fruit farmer.
Lived on the land.
Raised and nurtured saplings
with an invisible hand.
Think of Blossom as solar panels.
When the weather turned
and the seasons unravelled
Blossom was a weathervane.
Blossom was a mountaineer.
Didn’t look down. Weighed anchor
in hairline fissures
and stress fractures.
Blossom the magician transformed
winter’s curfew hours
into foaming white petals.
Abracadabra: flowers.
Rootless and homeless, Blossom
rode and drifted
on thermal currents
as the climate shifted.
Blossom the ballet dancer
was reborn
in the hardcore techno and thrash-metal
of the thunderstorm.
As a sculptor, Blossom
trained and wrangled
reluctant limbs in the studio
of the walled garden.
Blossom was a dictionary.
Knew how to spell resurrection
and the true meaning
of revelation.
It’s nice to see the sunshine at long last! It’s even nicer to see the release of the new Hunger Games book – Sunrise on the Reaping. Suzanne Collins brings us another prequel, this time, going back to Haymitch’s first Hunger Games. Floods of eager fans of all ages have been flocking into the shop, and as a bookseller, I find it comforting to know that people still feel as manically passionate about reading physical books as they ever did.
Alongside Suzanne, we have new crime (Jess Kidd’s Murder at Gulls Nest and Stephanie Wrobel’s The Hitchcock Hotel); a fantastic new Science-Fiction in Philip Fracassi’s The Third Rule of Time Travel; as well as Bicester’s own Holly McCulloch with her hilarious new romance, The Ick. Dylan Mulvaney’s telling autobiography, Paper Doll, is a must read; Ending Epidemics by Richard Conniff enlightens us on the past, present and future of deadly diseases; and Adam Frost tells us all about his garden in For the Love of Plants.
As always, if there’s anything you need, just pop by or reply to this email!
From Amber
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