The Spoons That Are My Ears!

The first is The Knight of Whatever, described as a chapbook for chaps, also for chaperones and cheeky chimpanzees; poems suitable for knights at night and dames in the daylight, or vice versa. Verses about vice and virtue; lyrical investigations into the nature of aardvarks, gibbons, and yetis; ditties about landscapes made of cake and funky ducks. Poetry suitable for all ages but especially suitable for unsuitable ages.

The second is Flunkey Monkey, described as poems that monkey around, poems that would swing from trees and eat bananas if they had limbs and mouths; poems that are cheeky and a little mischievous; poems that are rather hairy; poems that see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, but see, hear and speak lots of absurdity; poems that use simian similes and monkey metaphors. Monkey-poems.

The first of these books requires a little explanation. Twenty years ago I had a chapbook of poems published that was illustrated by an artist named Carole Humphreys. I decided to resurrect this chapbook and publish it myself, together with the illustrations. But then I thought, why not write new poems for the old illustrations? The illustrations were based on a set of existing poems, and now a different set of poems can be based on those illustrations. From illustrative to ekphrasitic in one mighty bound! The book contains lots of other poems that weren't inspired by illustrations.

The second of these books is currently a free download from any Amazon outlet, but only for the next three days, so if you are reading this after 25th May you have missed out on the offer. I regard this as my best poetry book so far (by far) but who am I to judge these things?

As for the title... A few mornings ago, I woke up with the words "Bestseller Monkey" on the tip of my tongue. Never one to refuse the gift of a dream, I decided to give my next poetry book that title. And so I did. But Amazon rejected the title on the grounds that you shouldn't have the word "bestseller" in a book title. Fair enough. They asked me to choose another title for the ebook edition. I plumped for Flunkey Monkey. However, to my surprise, although they rejected the original title for the ebook, the paperback passed through the vetting process with the title unchanged. So now I have a poetry book that has two different titles, one for the paperback and another for the ebook...

I am supposing that it won't be long before they notice that the paperback title violates their naming policies and I daresay the paperback will have to be removed soon. But in the meantime, Bestseller Monkey is on sale!