THE BOOKS
DAVID CRAWLEY (1916-2013) lived and worked in Los Angeles, but as a boy growing up in the 1920s he passed his summers at the wealthy Murphy's family 'camp' in the Lake of the Woods, Canada. This deeply-felt account offers a unique window on a lost world and lost innocence, historical as well as personal. It will draw in anyone who finds the search for lost time compelling. A Foreword by Patrick Curry, grandson of the Murphy's, sets the scene and supplies some of the context, emotional as well as factual.
Camp Life, by David Crawley(£8/ $10)
PATRICK CURRY is a writer and scholar living in London, England. He has published on subjects including history, metaphysics, literature and environmental philosophy. His most recent book concerns the experience of enchantment. Lockdown is made up of 249 three-line poems about each of the images – postcards, paintings, prints and photographs – on the poet’s study walls. Every one is a window on a world into which his fresh, acute and often funny imaginative response offers access.
Lockdown, by Patrick Curry (£5/ $7)
ANNE NICODEMUS CARPENTER (1914-2011)
raised five children and one grandchild. Most of her life was spent on Long Island, where she bred and trained dogs and horses. Later she moved to her farm in Lederach, Pennsylvania, where she also cared for cats, chickens, canaries, sheep, and a guard turkey, all while focusing on her poetry.
The poems here include some from her published collection but most of them were written subsequently and have never been published before. They are alive with the humour as well as pathos of life, death and relationships with humans and other animals.
Winter Viewing, by Anne Nicodemus Carpenter (£7.75/ $10)
By PATRICK CURRY. This collection tells of finding love and losing it, sometimes at the same time, amid the shifting ascendencies of guilt and gratitude, blessing and disaster. 'It's just a terrifying time to speak about male sexuality' (Ethan Hawke). Nonetheless, these poems show it can be done.
'I like it a lot, and find the poems moving.' (Hugo Williams, winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry)
Desire Lines, by Patrick Curry (£7/$9)