Thursday, March 05, 2009

World Book Day 2009

I should mention that it’s World Book Day, an initiative that seems primarily aimed at children. I guess that’s where to start, but children won’t read books if adults don’t encourage them by reading themselves.

So buy a book today. Better still, buy a poetry book!
Recently published poetry collections on my ‘to read’ pile:

D.A. Powell – Chronic (Graywolf)
Claire Crowther –The Clockwork Gift (Shearsman)
Antony Rowland – The Land of Green Ginger (Salt)
Roddy Lumsden – Third Wish Wasted (Bloodaxe)

The last of these features a sleeping snow-fox in mid-air on the cover. When I bought it, at Waterstones, the shop assistant told me she loved the cover and started showing it to other people in the queue! There was a short discussion on how the image had been captured – was it photoshop trickery? That’s my guess.

8 comments:

deemikay said...

Maybe not... see here. They seem to do that. It may be jumping off something, and that something's been airbrushed out.

(I bought a book... but not of poetry. Instead, origami.)

Colin Will said...

Arctic foxes (which this is) often leap vertically to break a snow crust to get at lemmings etc below the surface. I think that's what's happening.

Bought Victorian Farm - nice book.

Anonymous said...

Yes, Colin's spot on. The fox is leaping in the air, to get at some rodent or other. I first saw the picture at the Natural History Museum's annual photo competition exhibition a few years back. Even though it came second or third, it was this picture that had a crowd round it and that caught my eye too. I bought a few postcards of it and it has been a constant image for me and I still like it. Hope you enjoy the book, Rob.

deemikay said...

Roddy: can you remember the name of the photographer?

deemikay said...

Or even - Rob: what's the photographer's name on the back of the book?

:)

Rob said...

Thanks, David, Colin and Roddy - fascinating stuff.

The photographer is Steven Kazlowski.

I promised the bookseller in Waterstones that I'd go back in and tell her if I ever found out anything about the photo, so I'll do that next week some time.

It is a terrific cover.

Rob said...

He seems to specialise in Arctic photography. There’s a gallery of his photos here, including the leaping foxes.

deemikay said...

Thanks. :)

I've seen some of his polar bear shots before. I hope he packs his thermals each time he goes...