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My London launch for Something in Nothing will take place on the 8th June (6.45pm for 7.15pm) at The Cheshire Cheese, 5 Little Essex St, London WC2R 3LD . Tickets are free, just turn up at the door. I will be joined by two brilliant poetry friends - Adam Horovitz and Sue Johns. Do please come along and join us.

Photo of Lucy Partington by Roger G. Partington At the heart of Something In Nothing is the story of the Luminous Girl, a bright young woman with an angel on her shoulder. She is the light to Bluebeard's darkness. She first appears in the poem "Enter Our Heroine." Various characters watch her as walks through the town, not just Bluebeard, but also Beauty, the young man, and of course the Girl's mentor and unlikely fairy godmother - the old woman at number 5. The Girl visits t

Baba Yaga illustrated by Dmitri Mitrokhin I am beginning to get feedback from readers of my new collection, Something In Nothing, and it's fascinating and a bit surprising. "Compelling" and "Couldn't put it down" are not words I would normally expect in a response to a poetry collection. Describing a novel, yes. But then Something In Nothing weaves the lives of a number of characters as their lives cross and interact to create a narrative. It is arguably a novel made of poe

Today we said goodbye to a wonderful friend, the folktale and myth scholar Neil Philip. The North Oxford Crematarium was full of people, like us, whose lives have been made richer by Neil and his wife, the artist Emma Bradford. Neil was the author of over 70 books, mostly on children's literature, mythology, folktales and fairy tales. At Neil's funeral Philip Pullman recalled the impact of Neil's book The Cinderalla Story on how Pullman viewed fairy tales. And I recall with g