Sequins in your eyes

The year 2013 draws moodily and mistily to its close, but if there is one bright spot in the nighted firmament, it is the advent of our 25th book. That’s right, with Nothing But a Star, by Jeremy Reed (cover photo by Gregory Hesse-Wagner), we have reached the quarter century in the number of volumes we have published. Jeremy Reed’s stellar novel, Here Comes the Nice, received a starred review at Publishers Weekly when we released it in November 2011. This time we are releasing an eclectic collection of his poetry, essays, lyrics and more besides. We may be shivering at the foggy fag-end of the year and of civilisation, but let us warm our hearts by the starlight of poetry.

Glamorous, autumnal, visionary, distilling the future from the present moment, glittering with pop spontaneity and smooth with velvet melancholy, capturing the dread and tingle of the moods of London, and spinning out from the light-polluted urban night across the universe, Nothing But a Star is the perfect book to bring a decadent, empurpled twinkle to the long, cold nights of December. Part intimate scrapbook, part jeweller’s tray, Nothing But a Star contains, as well as poetry, an essay on the suicides of Hart Crane and Harry Crosby, a playscript for a version of The Picture of Dorian Gray set in the 21st century, a pop libretto written for Marc Almond and based on J-K Huysmans’ À rebours, and other specimens of dopamine in literary form. Catch a falling star by picking up a copy here. There now follows the testimony of other stargazers:

Jeremy Reed’s talent is almost extraterrestrial in its brilliance. He is Rimbaud reconfigured as the Man who fell to Earth, a visitor from deep space whose time machine was designed by Lautréamont and de Sade, and powered by the most exotic fuels the imagination has ever devised.

- J.G. Ballard

The most beautiful, outrageously brilliant poetry in the world.

- Björk

The man is light worlds apart from his contemporaries in poetry.

- Andrew Loog Oldham

Jeremy Reed may be heard reciting one of his poems as part of the act The Ginger Light in the inset clip below:

As usual, there is a prize draw, details of which may be found at the bottom of the announcement. Please also remember, if you require books for Christmas, and they appear to be temporarily out of stock at Amazon, that The Book Depository delivers worldwide at no extra cost. And for those anticipating the coming year, please look out for Brendan Connell’s The Galaxy Club, which continues our astronomical theme. And finally, in other news, the collaborative novel by Chômu authors Brendan Connell, Justin Isis and Quentin S. Crisp, The Cutest Girl in Class, a less-than-simple tale of “boy meets inanimate object” (Joe Simpson Walker) was released last month from Snuggly Books.

Prize Draw for an inscribed copy of Nothing But a Star

The results of the Member prize draw are as follows: Caleb Wilson, of Illinois, was the winner of a specially inscribed copy of Michael Cisco’s Member, which should be on its way to him, or has perhaps already arrived.

This month’s prize draw, of course, is for a specially inscribed copy of Jeremy Reed’s Nothing But a Star. For anyone unfamiliar with them, please allow me to repeat the unchanging rules: To be entered for this draw, please sign up here to our mailing list (or using the ‘Free updates’ widget on our home page) and send an e-mail with the subject heading ‘But some of us are looking at the stars’ to info at chomupress dot com. If you are already on our mailing list, of course there is no need to sign up again – simply send an e-mail with the ‘But some of us are looking at the stars’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 3rd of January, 2014.

Those on our mailing list can also expect exclusive interviews from Chômu authors. The next interview is still to be with P.F. Jeffery.