Poetry Tour Preparations: The Physical Tour ... and the Virtual Tour?

 
The Physical Book Tour: It's All On

It begins in a fortnight. And appropriately enough, it beings on a Tuesday.

"It" is the book tour Keith Westwater and I are embarking on to launch our new poetry collections: Keith's first collection Tongues of Ash, and my new collection, Men Briefly Explained.

Here are the stops on the tour:

• Dunedin: Tuesday 25 October, Circadian Rhythm Café, 72 St Andrew Street, 8pm
• Christchurch: Wednesday 26 October, CPIT, Madras Street, 5:30pm
• Wellington: Thursday 27 October, Wellington Central Library, 5:30 for 6pm
• Lower Hutt: Friday 28 October, Rona Gallery/Bookshop, Eastbourne, 6pm
• Auckland: Tuesday 1 November, Poetry Live, Thirsty Dog, 469 Karangahape Road, 8pm

If you live in one of those places, I hope you'll be able to make it along - and, whether or not you can make it along, please tell your friends in those centres!

Some other things you can do:

• Sign up for the tour on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=188416554563635
• Check out the tour poster and other details
• Buy the books online if you can't make it to a tour event: Men Briefly Explained: paperback and ebook and Tongues of Ash: paperback and ebook.

It's worth noting that Dr David Reiter, the publisher of Interactive Press and a noted poet in his own right, will also be in attendance and reading from his new collection My Planets. As he is an international poetry publisher who has a track record of publishing collections by New Zealand poets, he may be someone you want to get to know.

The Virtual Book Tour: Under Construction

On hearing about the physical book tour, two writer/bloggers have kindly offered to host stops on a virtual book tour to follow the physical one. I'm grateful to those people, I think this is a great idea, and I am keen to line up more stops. So, if you would be interested in your blog hosting a stop on the virtual book tour, please get in touch by emailing senjmito (at) gmail.com, or say so in the comments below.

Hmmm, you may be wondering, what is a virtual book tour? Well, it involves a series of bloggers hosting interviews with or guest posts by a writer with a newly released book, according to a pre-arranged schedule. Not long after setting up this blog, I was one of the stops on the virtual book tour for Tania Hershman's debut short story collection, The White Road and Other Stories, which serves as a good model.

(Note: Some of the links in this 2008 post no longer work.)

I don't have Tania's impressive stamina for answering a lot of questions in a short time, so I thought - and one of my generous prospective hosts has suggested - that I could use the "Five Questions With..." format used in the tour for Tales For Canterbury. That makes the load a bit lighter on everyone.

So. If you can come to one of the launch events, please do - I think you will enjoy them. And if you're interested in hosting a stop on a virtual book tour, please get in touch.