The Story Behind The Book
There are many things I am not.
‘Wealthy’, ‘successful’ and ‘living out my days on the sun-kissed island of Capri’ are just three examples that spring to mind.
I am also not a poet. This may seem an odd thing to say, given that ‘The Moon Carrier’ is stuffed full of things that look suspiciously like attempts at poetry. However, I think it’s worth making a simple distinction. Keats was a poet. A magnificent poet. He could stir the human heart, illuminate the human condition and tell tales that have stood the test of time. What’s more, he did all this despite tragically never reaching his 27th birthday.
I’m someone whose mind gets tickled by noticing I can make ‘helium’ rhyme with ‘really dumb’. It’s not quite the same, is it?
Given that I’m not a poet, those of you suffering toxic levels of idle curiousity may wonder how ‘The Moon Carrier’ came into being. Well, the story involves the weaving together of three strands.
Grave inspiration
I don’t know when I first started writing bits and pieces for my own harmless amusement. I just always enjoyed playing with words and seeing what I could do with them. By my mid-twenties, I had several thin, tatty folders containing thin, tatty fragments of writing: some short stories, a few attempts at humour and some bits of verse.
At the time, being well into my exemplary career as a clueless under-achiever, I had somehow stumbled into a job as a ‘technical writer’. You probably have no idea what a technical writer does, and neither have I. It’s the sort of job where not having much of a clue what you’re suppposed to be doing is apparently no impediment to doing it.
All I know is that I went to a nice office in Islington each day, sat down and wrote manuals that were desperately, vitally important and that no one would ever open, let alone read. As a job, it ticked every box on my golden wishlist: indoors, no exertion and I could drink tea all day. Welcome to my life of vigorous, dizzying ambition. (If you’re really curious about the ‘tech writer’ thing, here’s a more factual explanation).
During this wage slave chapter of my life, with my soul growing more desiccated by the day, it was my lunch-time habit to browse the local bookshops. One day, I came across a book by Robert Graves entitled ‘One Hundred Poems About Love’. I thought it was rather good and I bought it. The title stayed with me, and I thought that one day I’d like to publish something similar.
This vague ambition lay dormant until, many years later, I encountered a problem…