Free verse book festival 2013

It was good to meet up again with Acumen's Oxley's, Nine Arches Press and HappenStance, amongst others. I finally met Alison Brackenbury too. I bought more than I'd intended

• "Shaler's Fish (Helen Macdonald)
• "The Elephant Tests" (Matt Merritt)
• "Of Science" (Morley and Brown, eds)
• "The Longing machine" (Marcia Mentor)
• "The Colour of Love" (Jonathan Steffen)
• "Venetian Red" (Sue Hubbard)
• "Sandcastles at Evening" (Martin Lyon)
• "Uneasy Relations" (Michael Bartholomew-Biggs)
• "Nearly the Happy Hour" (D.A. Prince)

A steady stream of visitors passed through, though they often seemed as interested in getting a book published as in buying books. Discussion topics included: how public funding might best assist poetry; the relative merits of being published in pamphlets, books, magazines, online; plagiarism; why HappenStance stalls always have food on offer; who's going to give up publishing poetry; whether poems or poets are a book's selling point.