Of late

Haven't written any poetry in the last few days, but they've been quite productive.

Finally, the last three issues of Otoliths are now available in print so I'm up to date there. Will hopefully sell enough to cover the cost of supplying the State Library of Australia with copies; have to do that in return for them issuing the ISSNs. & have my first formal subscription, from a U.S. University. I feel almost legitimate.

Have given permission to a U.K. publisher of educational textbooks to include a poem of mine. Received a modest fee for same.

Have replied to a letter from a lady in Philadelphia who, having attended a poetry reading by Paul Siegell where he'd mentioned me, & the fact I came from New Zealand, hoped that I might be related to her Grandmother's brothers who had emigrated to New Zealand after the First World War. The details she supplied didn't fit my family, so I had to disappoint her. But in giving my details in return, I realized there is an element of romanticism to them.

.....both sides of my family arrived in New Zealand in the 1840s, the first decade of European settlement.

Both sides are Scottish, although both descend from immigrants from continental Europe. My father's ancestors were protestant Huguenots who left France in the 17th Century because of religious persecution. My mother's side were, in effect, accidental immigrants. Her antecedents lie with German fisherman out of the port of Bremen, wrecked on or rescued off the coast of Scotland, who decided to stay, settle, & marry the locals. Hence her family name, Bremner.

& today the postman brought me my contributor's copy of poem, home, the anthology edited by Jennifer Hill & Dan Waber of selections from Ars Poetica. Looks great, as do the two chapbooks I got in the same parcel, one by Jennifer Hill & the other by Eileen Tabios.