Making an e-book

My aim in publishing David Henschel's Heres and Nows was to let these poems live on.

I do this partly in memory of a dear friend, but I wouldn't have done it if I didn't believe in the the poems themselves.

My next step will be to format this book for eBook readers, such as Amazon Kindle Reading Device, the Sony Reader and others. I believe it is even possible to read books (with some limitations no doubt) on an iPhone, and few things could be more suitable for reading on an iPhone when stuck on a bus or a crowded train than a poem.

This is not the death of the traditional book but another way of reading. I have now got a Kindle device and it is going to be excellent to take as many books as I want on holiday without having to fill up my suitcase with them.

I am reading Steve Weber's eBook manual which is full of useful information about marketing eBooks, but the book itself appears to have been created by uploading the file to Amazon's Kindle converter with no subsequent proofing. For example, there is no contents page and there are still hyphens in the middle of lines where line breaks used to be.

When I uploaded a pdf of Heres and Nows to the Kindle converter the result, as I have mentioned before, was a horrible mess. Poetry needs much more care with formatting than plain text.

I see no reason why an eBook should not be as beautifully-presented as a paper book, and that will be my aim when preparing David Henschel's Heres and Nows in eBook format in the New Year.

So far I have converted my original word processing file into HTML and am patiently going through the code line by line, eliminating the bloated code that results from automated conversions, and putting in the simple tags that I hope Kindle will understand.

When I have succeeded, the link will be here.

Creating new things - 2

From David Henschel's Heres and Nows

The workshed

Please come - do tread upon my road.
Let pass,
Lay on its side the deadly glass
Here mark time running in my blood.
Your understanding may explain
And so release this joylike pain
We to time’s s top may do each other good.

This workshed is the place. Come in.
For this time’s being rout
All thoughts of what you’d be about;
I’ll lend my spirit’s eyes till yours begin
To be awake. I only want to show
The poetry of things which by hands grow
Out of the dead wood new life win.

Oh, no - it is not nothing I have done
As yet not much, but trust:
I only stay you since there must
Between us pass the sense of things begun
Of shapes and uses in the fingers bred
New living lovely - as though saws and chisels bled
Into the wood, making creation one.

Creating new things

The next poem I shall post here from Heres and Nows is called The workshed.

I shall post the whole next week. If you like it, use the link top right of this page to order a copy of the book from Amazon, maybe for a present for a friend. Or put it on your own Amazon wish list.

The poem begins,
Please come – do tread upon my road.
Let pass,
Lay on its side the deadly glass
Here mark time running in my blood.

The deadly glass I take to be the hourglass marking our mechanical time.

It's an invitation to follow the poet David into his workshop. He made other things there, too – clay sculptures, paintings, wood carvings.

A workshed is a place where you go to be yourself, to think and make whatever you want. If we don't have a real shed we can still make one within – the sanctuary from where the comings and goings of the world do not affect us. Montaigne said one should always have a room where no-one else goes.

To be asked to follow into the workshed is therefore an invitation of the closest friendship, something not ordinarily risked.

Compare these lines from another of David's poems, A piece of the maine?:

Go to another man and show him –
"This I've just written, tell me what you think."
He'll say "Oh yes, how nice" and take the scrip
To use the eyes and hide the doubtful lip.

Later in The workshed is this line:
This workshed is the place. Come in.

and this:
...I only want to show
The poetry of things which by hands grow
Out of the dead wood new life win.


More next week.