Tasting Notes

Not long after last year's publication of Inventing Truth, I met up for lunch with my editor at HappenStance, Helena Nelson. We talked about my day job as the blender and export manager for a winery down in Extremadura, Spain, and she encouraged me to write about it. I recall discussing the minefields and pitfalls inherent in a subject and genre with such potential for kitsch when brought together. However, I drove back home that day in a blur of thought as to just how I could meet the challenge.

As part of my job, I write the back labels, advertising copy, website and tasting notes for all my co-operative's products. The wine world has a linguistic shorthand that's packed with hyperbole and clichés, and so in my poetry I decided to play about with them from an insider's perspective.

The first consequence was a set of four poems that I sent to Helena Nelson for some feedback. After all, she had been the initial catalyst for my creative process. Her reply was a shock - they were the basis for a chapbook that she'd like to publish!

In the months that followed, I fleshed out my ideas, building a manuscript that suddenly, with a tweak here and there, took off. The result is Tasting Notes, my second HappenStance pamphlet, due in September. I'll be giving a number of readings (and tastings!) to launch it. Dates and venues in due course...