Different Forms of Magic

Midnight bluebells, finding your flock, and your free link to the online launch of "The House of Broken Things".

Off the road where the ponies gallop to the fence when I walk over the moors by night, up the stoney lane which leads past the chapel to my home. An audience whose faces I think I know, cakes and live music and poetry. Kim wasn’t exaggerating - the launch of The House of Broken Things was magic.

First me and some poems and “the Calder Valley has always been the right place for me, but it’s been even righter since Kim moved here”. Then Carola Luther, compassionate, wildly intelligent, whose poetry pays the most exquisite attention to language and life. Malika Booker, human flame, bright and fierce; the spell and prayer of her poetry; and my dear friend Amanda Dalton, who makes so many things happen - plays, music, essays, poetry, this launch - who takes grief and makes a landscape of it and walks us deep into it, and somehow still makes us laugh. Then Kim.

Listen Kim, if you don’t know by now that this book is extraordinary, then I give up. It’s been extraordinary since you started living it. You conceived it and birthed it and it was born through your daughter, so how would it ever be anything other than brilliant? If you ever need a light, Kim, then just look to this book, because it shines.

Of course, I already knew this before the launch, but what I didn’t know was how well the book would perform. Which seems a good time to remind you that Kim will be launching “The House of Broken Things” for our paying subscribers next week, Tuesday 12th May, at 7.30. If you want to attend but you aren’t currently a paying subscriber, then I suggest just taking out one month’s subscription: it’s £4.

And in the second half, after a break filled with cake and booksales, Jodie (Kim’s identical twin sister) played her french horn with Dave Nelson’s expert piano, and the chapel filled with a perfect sound, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry before Kim took to the stage again and settled the matter.

I would love to leave it there. I’d love to say that I had a wonderful time, and that I left smiling and feeling lucky and fulfilled but - that’s not how it goes for me. Time with people is costly, and there was so much chat; there were crowds and emotions and sitting still; too much sugar. I’d forgotten to wear my “I’m faceblind: please introduce yourself” badge so there was the strain of half-known faces, unfamiliar shifting etiquette, noise. I’d a migraine by the time I left, and come evening, I walked a long time in the darkness considering the strange animal I am, how I have no name for myself, how I don’t seem to fit in anywhere.

Then out of the blue, Kim texted to tell me how’d she felt calm when I arrived at the Wainsgate, and I realised that this place here, however rocky, however changeable the weather, is where I fit. And I carried on walking into the night taking photographs of lichen and bluebells with the UV torch Amy brought to my house because she thought I might like it, because I am a strange animal, and my strange little flock is right here. Here’s to The House of Broken Things. Here’s to poetry and friendship. Here’s to finding your kin.

And for our paying subscribers: you’ll find your Zoom link for next Tuesday’s launch at the end of this page, right after the bluebell.