Mario Benenati of Fumettomania Factory invited us to Sicily. We were there for two presentations of Dotter of her Father’s Eyes and Rain. First in Messina to students at the Liceo Artistico Basile:

And then again in Barcellona P.G., where we also participated in the opening of Mario’s Anthropocene Project, an international exhibition.

But we were also treated to plenty of touristy delights. We loved Messina’s Museo Regionale Mume. And the Parco Museo Jalari near Barcellona is an extraordinary, magical place.

Capo Milazzo was lovely too.


And of course we ate far too much fabulous Sicilian food!

The Italian edition of Dotter of her Father’s Eyes was published in April 2020, with arrangements in place for launch events. Well, then lockdown happened, the whole trip was cancelled and, like everything and everyone else, the book got rather lost. Fortunately, Edizioni NPE have decided to republish and we’re all set to go again… (fingers crossed).

We’ll be at the NPE table at Napoli Comicon on 23rd April, then down to Sicily for events in Barcellona and Messina later in the week. In particular, we’ll be at the inaugural  event of the ‘Anthropocene’ International Exhibition on 27th.

We’re on the road again!

An announcement to make, at last! Having been floating in limbo (like the rest of us) for the past eighteen months, the wonderful Company Carpi is about to burst back into action with three public performances of When You Light a Candle, You Also Cast a Shadow, on Thursday 4th November 2021. With climate crisis and celebration of the seasons as its central themes, it features a trio of dancers, a string quintet, and some poetry written for the occasion by me. Here’s a taste:

And there, life, the soar of it
The swerve
The nerve
The sheer, pure, unremittable verve of it
Hatching out into the pure glad day
The gorse a burst of yolk-yellow joy

You can read more about the event on Company Carpi’s website. Tickets for the performances are available from Lancaster Arts. The work was commissioned in 2019 by Dance Consortia Northwest, Warrington Museum & Art Gallery and Lancaster Arts. It was originally scheduled for performance in September 2020.

Bettina Carpi and Gary Lloyd are the creators of the extraordinary operatic pieces, based on Dotter of her Father’s Eyes, that were performed at Dublin Worldcon in 2019. You can browse their photo gallery of it here.

Here’s another engagement with Rain that’s both welcome and unexpected. It’s a new podcast from PhD researchers  at Sheffield University:  Animal Studies in Focus 1 – Gemma Curto and Juliet de Little in Conversation. In it they discuss the book’s biocentric, or non-anthropocentric, perspective. I hadn’t encountered either term before, but I’ll be using them all the time from now on!

Rain has previously been featured in Landscape, a professional journal for landscape architects.

Durham’s very own Book Festival is online right now and accessible for free until 1st November 2020.You can check out what’s on here. Filmed back in August by the talented Topher McGrillis, our contribution is In the Studio with Bryan and Mary Talbot. It streamed yesterday and is now available to view.