Charles Lovecraft, P’rea Press and THE NEXT BIG THING

Leigh Blackmore tagged me recently about being part of a chain of book and author recommendations under the title of THE NEXT BIG THING. In line with this concept I will answer the questions below on my new book, AVATARS OF WIZARDRY, and in due course tag five other writers to continue the torch of this bright idea.

1) What is the title of your book?

AVATARS OF WIZARDRY: Poetry Inspired by George Sterling ’s “A Wine of Wizardry” and Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Hashish-Eater.” It was published on 26 November 2012 by P’rea Press http://www.preapress.com and is available from bookstores around the world.http://www.amazon.com/Avatars-Wizardry-Inspired-Sterlings-Hashish-Eater/dp/0980462584 Ask at your local."

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

From Sterling and Smith

, and Richard L. Tierney and Leigh Blackmore. I saw there was a tremendous link between the two lead poems of the title and two poems of the subsequent named poets, over a span of 108 years that merited following up. The two latter poems, “Visions of Golconda” by Tierney, and “Memoria: A Fragment from the Book of Wyvern” by Blackmore, were written in tribute to the second poem in the subtitle and which had originally been set alight by the first named poem. So it’s all very timely and historical, not to mention esoterical. It was as if the two lead poems were father and son, and that they had suddenly spawned two grandchildren poems. I can only suggest that Poesy herself was the mother. I merely then connected the dots of various contemporary poets around the world and asked if they would like to contribute. Bruce Boston, Alan Gullette, Michael Fantina, Wade German, Earl Livings, and Kyla Lee Ward came forth to bear poetic arms. The poems had to continue the lineage of English blank verse. They smartly did so, and the end result is historical linkage to the poetic giants of literature: Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Cowper, and Tennyson. Long live blank verse, the queen of poetry.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

Poetry, and also imaginative poetry, which is poetry of the supernatural, fantasy, speculative, and the macabre. It is a beautiful and elegant genre, a thing of beauty which transcends lifetimes and eras. Most of the greatest poets of the past can be named as having dabbled in fantastic poetry to a lesser or greater extent, and some of the greatest poems in literature and the mainstream can be found to be fantastic in nature. It can be recaptured again at any time, and waits like the elves of the English woods.

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

As there are ten poems a few examples might be:

Christopher Lee to speak “A Wine of Wizardry.”
Peter Cushing to recite “Memoria.”
Sir Richard Burton to vent “The Hashish-Eater.”
Peter O’Toole to declaim “The Necromantic Wine.”
Carolyn Jones (Morticia Addams) to speak “Lucubration,” a single solo voice for weird female, written by Kyla Lee Ward.

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A poetically elevated, lyrical apprehension of the beautiful, terrible, magnificent, cosmic, and grand, conducted under auspices of revelatory hallucination, and encompassing a celebration and exaltation of the divine nature of Poetry.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

As editor and publisher I will be publishing it under my imprint of P’rea Press www.preapress.com. I seek then normal global distribution and sales channels. Avatars should be available to booksellers throughout America, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, Brazil, etc, via Lightning Source.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

The first draft took about nine months from first contact with some of the authors. I allowed a good amount of normal relaxed creativity and time to occur. The editing process took about a further six months. The printing and production process took a further three months.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Epic poems and epic experiences such as the likes of Homer’s Iliad, Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Keats’s Hyperion poems, Shelley’s Alastor and Queen Mab, and the plays of Shakespeare.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The above named poets, as stated above, and English language poetry, in this instance particularly Blank Verse. I grew up knowing and hearing the tremendous lines of William Shakespeare performed in plays, read at school or quoted independently. It all had a profound effect on me. The magnificent and soul-bending structure and backbone of the poetry of Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, and Keats, among others, is a most lucid agente provocateur. When I found this kind of poetry in George Sterling and Clark Ashton Smith also, I knew I had to proclaim it loud.

10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

That it is fantasy poetry created with remarkable lucidity, perception, power, and pertinacity, that it is a celebration of English language poetry and blank verse and strives to continue that tradition, and that the book itself is created with loving attention to detail and production values. It is a kind of “hand-made film” of ten epic stain-glass windows. What you see when with trembling fingers you gently prod open those gorgeous antique panes is, as the reviewer Ann Schwader wrote: “From hashish dreams to psychic expeditions through deep space-time, here are experiences not to be found elsewhere.” A pillow of winds were just as weird and wild to lay your head upon in strangest sequined sleeps. And yet the fluttering over pages of this book you can hold in your hands, a veritable reality of beautiful strangeness!

Bio

CHARLES LOVECRAFT is an editor, publisher, writer, and versifier. He began his apprenticeship with literature and his love affair with poetry at an early age due to the influence of H. P. Lovecraft. About one hundred of his poems have been published in magazines and anthologies. He has also authored a bibliographical checklist of Richard L. Tierney’s work and edited thirteen books. In 2007 he established P’rea Press to publish international weird and fantastic poetry and non-fiction. Charles researches classic Australian supernatural poetry and promotes reading, writing and performance of fantasy poetry by conducting panels and workshops at conventions.