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.

So, while the Lakes International Comic Art Festival was buzzing online over the weekend, we were off to France for a festival that was taking place (almost) as normal. The organisers in Périgord had decided to go ahead with the 31st Festival de la Bande Dessinée de Bassillac et Auberoche, though as they anticipated the footfall was greatly reduced. We were there to promote Louise Michel la Vierge Rouge, the French edition of The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia, alongside an exhibition in advance of the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune.

On Saturday afternoon we did a presentation, after which we went to view the Il y a 150 ans exhibition in the Archives départmentales de la Dordogne. The rest of the time was pretty much taken up with ‘dédicaces’ at our table  –  shifting every copy, which felt good –  and sitting at table in the agreeable company of the organisers and other guests, while eating course after course of local produce (it’s a tough job, but someone etc…).

Here are some pics from the weekend. First, the hall:

And the exhibition. It was in two parts: 1. 24 informative panels put together by Les Amies et Amis de la Commune de Paris and 2. artwork from Jacques Tardis’ Le cri du peuple, from the Communardes! trilogy illustrated by Xavier Fourquemin, Anthony Jean and Lucy Mazel and from our Louise Michel la vierge rouge:

In addition, there were two fragments of history, or rather of the Vendôme column, destroyed by the Communards in May 1871 and on loan from Périgord Museum. Here’s one:
And now we’re home and self-isolating. Thanks to Matthieu Druillole and all the other organisers for making us feel so welcome. Behind the mask, I’m smiling…

Three events are going ahead next month! The Lakes International Comic Art Festival is taking place online. And it’s free, folks! Bryan Talbot and the Locations of One Bad Rat, filmed last month, will be available to view online from 7pm on Friday 9th October. It’s one of a host of unmissable contributions to this year’s festival. Check them out here.

Durham Book Festival is also happening online in October. Our contribution, In the Studio with Bryan and Mary Talbot, is scheduled for broadcast at 12.30 on Friday 16th. And it’s also free! You can check out everything on offer here.

Meanwhile, we’re invited guests at the Festival de la Bande Dessinée de Bassillac & Auberoche, which is going ahead in Bassillac, Dordogne, 9- 11th October. There will be an exhibition of artwork from The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia. The French edition, Louise Michel, La Vierge Rouge, is being republished to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune.

Two more lovely covers! Ediciones La Cupola published their excellent Spanish version of Rain this summer. It’s available from them directly here. More of a surprise was a fine Norwegian edition of Dotter of her Father’s Eyes, just published by Solum Bokvennen and available from them here. We’d not heard about it for so long – about three years – that we’d completely forgotten about it. They’ve translated the title as ‘Fathers and Daughters’ and the cover design they’ve used is the same as the Spanish paperback version. I did an interview over the phone for the daily paper Dagsavisen last week. Dotter keeps dancing on!