Blackbird Singing at Dusk Takes Flight
Giveaway, 20% off a subscription, exclusive reading AND zoom link for VIP launch event
It’s launch day!
My poetry collection Blackbird Singing at Dusk is already heading out into the world and landing on the doormats of people who were kind enough to pre order it, but today it officially launches into the world.
To celebrate the launch of my new collection I’ve got a signed copy to give away. All you have to do is share this post to be in with a chance of winning one, just in time for Christmas. Alternatively you can buy a copy here:
Here’s what the wonderful folk at Nine Arches Press say about it:
Blackbird Singing at Dusk by Wendy Pratt is an illuminating and lyrical exploration of place within nature; of Northern rural working-class lives, the female body, and of the ancestors and history still close to the surface, just beneath where our feet touch the earth. Moving through both landscapes and human lives, these poems weigh the impact of loss and consider the circular, deep nature of time itself; how lifetimes can be measured – whether in jackdaw, beech tree or even glacier time.
From the silent sentinels of boulders to peels of birdsong “stopping the world”, Wendy Pratt’s archaeological attention to detail draws us into an intimate elegy, mindful of the connections of earth and people, the living and the dead. The wide horizons of her poems weave the heartbeat of working days and the rich inheritances of love in scribbled notes and domestic prayers – all that remains behind long after, marking us with grief for a lost parent or a baby daughter. These remarkable poems of solace consider what it is to endure and find reassurance in a rural land “quartered by barn owls and kestrels,” with its ever-shifting seasons and skies, its permanence of stone and soil.
The beautiful cover art is called ‘Hidden in the Crab Apples’ and is by Little Rams studio, who you can support by going to their shop and buying stuff: Little Rams
I’m very pleased and proud of this collection, written alongside my memoir The Ghost lake, it feels like a kind of sister collection to that longer work. If you enjoyed one, you’ll likely enjoy the other. You can buy The Ghost Lake from the bad place where it has 22% off here or from here, and both books are available in high street book shops, and you can request them at your local library. The Ghost Lake is also an ebook and an audio book, read in my own voice, my own accent.
Want to come see me read from Blackbird?
If you’re a paid subscriber scroll down for the exclusive VIP launch link below the paywall.
Otherwise you can come along to the official zoom launch on 2nd December, 19.30 - 20.30 UK time, where I’ll be reading alongside Amaan Hyder. This is a zoom event, you can get tickets here:
And I’ll also be reading at Louise Longston’s zoom event Human/Nature, alongside some other fantastic poets - 12th December 19.00-21.00 UK time. You can get free tickets here:
That’s enough of the self promotion (something I still feel a bit cringe about!)
What I really wanted to say was THANK YOU to my subscribers, both paid and unpaid, you have allowed me to create a space her where I feel at home.
To celebrate launch week I’ve got 20% off a year’s paid subscription for one week only, which gives you access to my zoom write alongs, online courses, paywalled essays and my complete archive. Come join me:
And now, for my current paid subscribers an extra special thanks. Below the paywall you’ll find an exclusive reading of my poem Ground Nesting Bees, and the link to tonight’s exclusive VIP private launch, just for Notes from the Margin paid subscribers. Thank you!
Ground Nesting Bees is a sonnet about a time that I found a bee colony, one that I had been watching for months, destroyed in the night by badgers. I was in a conundrum - it was a hot, dry summer and the badgers were desperate for food, but the bees, the bees! I hope you enjoy the reading!