I recently wrote two pieces on the subject of collaboration for The Friday Poem, an excellent and vibrant poetry venture (started by Hilary Menos and Andy Brodie a little over a year ago) which sends a new poem to subscribers’ inboxes every Friday.

The Friday Poem also carries reviews, articles, opinion, all kinds of good stuff related to poetry in the broadest sense of the word.

Here are links to my two recent pieces:

Collaboration and Transformation I

Collaboration and Transformation II

This week and next, I’m celebrating a multi-layered collaborative journey – End of Season – which has come to fruition, after quite a few years of incubation and work, in the form of:

(a) a beautiful pamphlet designed by Katy Mawhood and published by The Frogmore Press (to be launched upstairs at The Elephant and Castle, Lewes, 7.00 for 7.30 pm on Wednesday 28 Sept, alongside the 100th issue of The Frogmore Papers). My poems in English are presented alongside Italian translations by Franca Mancinelli and John Taylor, with cover art by Maria Isakova-Bennett from her stitch translations for the handmade limited edition of 2021.

Copies of End of Season /Fine di stagione are available from me directly (just email me at clarepbest@me.com) or from The Frogmore Press. Price £12 or 15 euros.

and

(b) a fascinating song cycle (composer Amy Crankshaw has set six of the poems from End of Season) which will be premiered in Cannero Riviera next Thursday 6 October at 4.30 pm – there are more details on the poster below.

There’ll be a performance of the song cycle in London before long – probably in March or April 2023.

From the author’s note in End of Season:

‘This End of Season project, in all its forms, has represented for me the essence of collaboration, translation, transformation – from feelings and thoughts to words, to images and stitches, to translation into Italian, to graphic design and print, to music and its interpretation in performance.’