A New Edition

 The Queen Alexandra Hospital Home for Soldiers, which is just across the road  from where I live in Worthing, have just approved the manuscript of my new edition of my first collection of poems,50 x 50 - Useful Poetry For Troubled Times, which they are going to use as a fundraising tool. This should get my poetry to a much wider audience, and will raise much needed funds for this worthy cause. The hospital has a history that goes right back to 1915, when it first began to be a place of healing and rehabilitation for men returning from the trenches. Needless to say, their work never ceases, and at present they are a home to servicemen aged between 22 and 100.

The collection of my poems can be viewed in its original edition from my website, and the fundraising edition is fundamentally the same, but is based on the hardback edition, which required additional pages simply far the blinding of the hardback. I happened to choose as additional material for the hardback an essay about meeting Dame Vera Lynn at the hospital open day last summer, as well as a short story from my collection of short stories, mother and child with other stories.

The fact that I had included that piece about meeting with Dame Vera Lynn at the hospital has meant that not only has my book of poems been made available at the Worthing Lending Library, but a copy has also been placed in the prestigious County Local History Library, where it is rubbing shoulders with works by Shelley, Kipling, and Balzac.

It was this that gave me the idea of approaching the hospital, and since I am unable to earn royalties from sales of my work, it seemed like a good way of getting my work to reach a wider audience. I am greatly honoured that they have agreed to my proposition, and now we have agreement over the contents of the special edition, it will only be a few weeks before they can start selling copies.

I am hopeful that the inclusion of my film in the 2012 international Disability Film Festival may mean that sales of this edition may stretch as far afield as Canada. Who knows.