Compasses

Just to say, a new blog is launched, called 'Compasses'. Joe Hyam, who writes as Plutarch at Now's the Time, a daily joy and one of my favourite stopping-off points, has also produced a cycle of 50 sonnets with the title ' Handbook for Explorers', which he began to post a couple of years ago. I borrowed one of the series to do a photo illustration at qarrtsiluni a while ago, and I liked doing it so much I wondered if I might do the same with the rest of them. Joe graciously agreed, and has been sending me the poems in batches. Receiving new installments of 'Explorers', and gradually putting together photographs to put with them, has been one of the most pleasurable things in this line I can recall of late.

One of the reasons Joe stopped posting the poems originally was that doing so one at a time they appeared, as it were, in reverse order, which was unsatisfactory. This aspect of blogging as narrative is interesting but problematical, as I think a number of people have remarked. The 'Explorers' poems can be dipped into and read in isolation of one another, but really they do need to be read as a cohesive whole. However, publishing them in their entirety in one long post seemed, as Joe put it, " rather against the spirit of blogging".

I have found the experience of receiving them in batches, with time to read and absorb them in between, very satisfying, so we decided releasing them in groups of perhaps five or so at a time (preceeded by an epigraph in the case of the first ones), with photographs, was the best way, probably at intervals of about a couple of weeks. I'll post here to say when a new installment is out, and Joe will supply a link too.

I've certainly enjoyed preparing this project, so please go and have a look!