I have some excellent news. My book Graft, which I wrote during my MA year at IIML and spent last year editing, has been accepted for publication by VUP. It will be published some time in 2012. It's an unusual situation as I also work at VUP, it had the potential to be very awkward! To make things a little less tense my book was read by an external reader and I'm very happy they liked it.

Why did I call it Graft? To graft something is to cut in and fix two things together, like tree branches, to grow something new or heal (as with skin). The word graft originates from the Old Norse groftr, meaning to dig, and is also linked with the verb grave, an ancient Germanic one also meaning to dig. The poems in Graft attempt to bring things together – ideas, cultures and people, sometimes to heal. There are unlikely pairs: science and magical thinking, fact and fiction, myth and history. Sometimes there are more predictable pairings with less predictable outcomes - mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, parents and children. They dig away at things, trying to find a truth or an answer or a lost person. What we find is often not what we are looking for.

To be honest I've swung through a range of emotions since getting the news. Firstly fist pumping the air and yelling 'Yes!', then a quiet Zen calm, then an attack of the 'Oh no, everyone will find out I'm a fraud and can't really write!'. I guess I stepped out of my comfort zone. Right now I'm feeling more level-headed, the sense of limbo I've felt all year is lifting and I'm thinking about the next project.

So thank you all my lovely readers. Just by stopping by and reading what I have to say you lift me up and keep me going with my writing, even on those days when I'm not sure what I'm doing or why I'm doing it.