I’m very grateful to the Italian poet Franca Mancinelli for hosting some of the poems from End of Season / Fine di stagione on her beautiful blog Diario di passo. The poems appear in both English and Italian.

It was a joy to work with Franca and with John Taylor when they were translating my poems for the bilingual pamphlet which was published by Frogmore Press in September (with its wonderful cover – a photographic reproduction of one of Maria Isakova-Bennett’s superb stitch translations for her Coast to Coast to Coast handmade edition of the poems in 2021).

I’m gradually getting to know Franca’s own work, and can highly recommend her extraordinary book of prose and prose-poems The Butterfly Cemetery, published by The Bitter Oleander Press in 2022, in a bilingual edition with translations by John Taylor. It was one of my standout reads of last year, and it’s a book I’ll be returning to again and again.

Also, I’d like to thank Matthew Paul for his generous OPOI (one point of interest) review of End of Season / Fine di stagione on the Sphinx website.

Copies of End of Season / Fine di stagione are available from Frogmore Press, or send me an email clarepbest@me.com and I’ll post you a copy for £12 (postage and packing included).

I hope your path through the New Year will be as interesting and beautiful as the mulattiera (mule track of laid stones) in the photos at the head and tail of this post. And may 2023 be happy, healthy and creative in all the ways you’d most like.