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 Praise for previous collections by DIANA HENDRY:
Making Blue (Peterloo)
‘There is energy, variety, enviable wit and invention.’
- CHARLES TOMLINSON
‘. . . the fresh eye that shines in her children’s novels is even more alert in these heart-searchings fro grown-ups.’
- WILLIAM SCAMMELL
Borderers (Peterloo)
‘Hendry’s poems are a vibrant collection, as various as a room full of Picassos.’
- SYLVIA HILL
‘. . . gleams of magic that can inhabit commonplace events and phenomena . . .’
- VERNON SCANNELL
‘. . . a remarkable eye for the truth and an ability to see the otherness of the very ordinary.’
- U.A. FANTHORPE
Twelve Lilts: Psalms & Responses (Mariscat)
‘. . . a warmth and sense of deep affection in every line . . . ‘
- KRISTINA GOTZ
DIANA HENDRY has published three previous collections of poems and a poetic collaboration with Tom Pow, Sparks! (‘Scintillating!’ – The Herald). Her many books for children include Harvey Angell (which won the Whitbread Award 1991) and You Can’t Kiss It Better (both Red Fox). Her short stories have been published and broadcast widely. She has worked as a journalist, English teacher and creative writing tutor. Following a year as Writer in Residence at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary she moved to Edinburgh where she now lives. She is currently a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, attached to Edinburgh University.
All Diana’s books are available from Mariscat Press, 10 Bell Place, Edinburgh, EH3 5HT, e> hamish.whyte@btinternet.com
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Why it took so long
You were otherwise occupied
and so, in a thistledown way, was I.
Also living in the wrong town
and not done with the lunacies of youth
or the worse ones of middle age.
There were children, of course,
taking priority in energy, money, love,
and books to write and much mellowing
and tenderising of the heart to be done
and all the impedimenta of history,
fantasy, expectation to ditch,
and the fire wall to take down,
and the barbed-wire brambles to snip,
and the breast plate to strip,
and the look-out to drug,
and one’s mother to silence,
and one’s cover to blow,
and one’s heart to risk.
Even so, when my waist was slim
and my hair still brown,
where were you?
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LATE LOVE & OTHER WHODUNNITS
Price £7.95 per copy
Cover Illustration: Willie Rodger, ‘Once in a Blue Moon’.
Publication DECEMBER 2008 (laminated paperback) with Mariscat Press
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