Pide, Poetry, and Putting Authors Together

idepidepidepide... Pide!

My favourite food ever.

Just look at it:

(image taken from The Turkish Muse)

Now, imagine a bit of salad on the side, some freshly squeezed lemon... Maybe a couple of hot peppers...

Yes, these are the images and flavours that distract me from editing. I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel, though. A couple more weeks, three more chapters, and then! Then I can return to drafting, once I've made a list of all the missing scenes.

Those are my ROW80 goals for Ayten's story at any rate. Rosa is still out on queries, poor girl. Please send her some pink lights!

For those of you who are at the beta reader/critique group stage - do you need readers? Kate Kaynak is hosting a beta match!

In other distractions, I discovered a lovely poem the other day, by Scottish poet Stephen Watts:

A Very Little Light by Stephen Watts


   Uma pequenina luz - Jorge de Sena

Simply for the breath of staying alive
   I should talk to you,
simply to pass some words across a table
      as bread or oil,
and not have them die in me. Or
            die in you.
         And as I
measure by measure slowly toss the crisp
herbs of speech over towards your face,
a very little light will come into my eyes,
   a very little light
will glow out at you and enter your eyes
and will be returned to me and calm our
   mouths against duplicity.
And when all the bitter fratricides are
   piled up about us
this little light, this tiny flame out on the
         waste patch,
this wind-shaped tent that is your eye
      with its slow torch,
this flickered heart with its ventricles
         that beat and pump,
will provoke in us a bonfire and the will
            to live,
and even from the embers there will glow
      a little light, a very little
            shining light,
as we pass some words across the table,
      simply for the breath of
         staying alive.

 -- from the collection The Blue Bag (Aark Arts, 2004, ISBN 1899179925)

Here's Watts reading his Praise Poem for North Uist. And here are some scenes from Uist, Scotland itself: