and it’s always the way of it for the lazy blogger that two things arrive in the same week that i wouldn’t feel good about if i didn’t post at least something.

also hitting the mat this week is joanne mckay’s latest venti. now it’s true i have many things written by many people and i really should have said something about just about all of them (but haven’t – note the comment about the lazy blogger). so what’s different about this one?

in the main, it’s just such a pretty thing. i love handmade things, things you can run your fingers across, things with texture, things that have the smell of new paper, paper with a bit of heft, the sort of thing you could never send off and have done by a printer. such is venti. and that’s before the illustrations, done in large part by matt kish, beautifully coloured and, by happy coincidence concerning themselves with moby dick, a subject unlikely to find ill favour with me. in between there appear to be random stamps of fleur-de-lis, seahorses,a cherub and even a thumb print at the end. have you been reading thomas bewick perhaps joanne? it’s a thing of care and loveliness and even better, given we know where it came from, all the better for it.

as for the poetry i have joanne’s last, the fat plant, but as i came to it late i always had the feeling reading it that she’d moved on and that i’d read things i’d preferred more recently. and that recently is in this. there’s a definite buzz about seeing work that was only familiar to me electronically or in a preparatory stage now worked up and down on the page (no kindle or the like will ever replace the book for me). and of course a poem about moby dick, which can never go wrong!

there are things you buy because you feel you should and there are those other things you come across that you just have to have, this, and the aforementioned poetry bus, fall firmly into the latter category. i’m delighted for joanne that her first run has sold out and the penpont child labour camp has swung into action to make more (for me!). venti is a genuinely beuatuful thing, a delight to own.

thanks for that joanne!

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