Is it crazy to have agreed to do a new collection of poems so soon after the last? When the offer came, I was surprised and doubted I had enough poems. On the other hand, I didn't want to turn the opportunity down, so I assembled everything I had and thought about whether it could all be viable by the beginning of 2018. I decided to risk it. The chance might not come again. I think it's going to be ok but--well, I hope it is. Right now I'm reading a wonderful new collection by Sinead Morrissey, On Balance, which I picked up in London at the Broadway Bookshop in Hackney. I like it a lot, better I think than her previous book, though I must read that one again in the light of this one--perhaps I just wasn't in the right mood.

Also working on a review of August Kleinzahler for the TLS. Just about done with that. Tinkering. I like the tinkering stage of writing, probably let in go on for too long.

About the new book. I had to do a lot of writing for it, in a very short time, and I'm wondering whether that isn't a good stimulus rather than being hasty.

Just came back from a run around the Garden, which ended in a downpour. Now I have errands to run and it looks as if the rain has slowed or stopped. How lucky is it to be able to go out and run errands in the 6th arrondissement of Paris? Would Beverley Bie of Saskatoon Saskatchewan and Vancouver ever have dreamed she'd end up running errands (kitchen sponges, radiator paint) in glamorous Paris? (Sometimes now I think Saskatoon Saskatchewan sounds pretty glamorous.)

(I'm going to attach a second post with a page from the Saskatchewan Archives, that someone in the archives sent me.)

Beverley Bie Brahic