Cover shots done for Barbara Campbell’s News Haiku, POPP.024, and my own London Palm, POPP.025. These editions were published and launched simultaneously at an informal event at Riverside Studios bar on 29 November 2009, and at an event in the new Performance Space Clubhouse, Sydney, NSW Australia on 12 February 2010.

News Haiku was written and produced during Camp- bell’s recent visit to the UK and here is the short explanatory statement that she wrote for the press release.

‘While I’ve been in London this autumn, I’ve been searching the Guardian and Observer for buried haiku. The task requires a soft-focus reading. It can take a while to find these signs of the eternal now amongst news of the only-just-happened. Like a poetic code, the five and seven syllable runs of text are dispersed throughout the paper; from items on climate change, local floods, meteor showers, EU and M&S appointments, to what’s on the TV or what to buy your dad for Christmas. I shake the lines free of newsprint, reassemble them into their 5-7-5 haiku formulation, punch them out again with a Dymo labeller and give them to you here for further deciphering.’

London Palm comprises short notes that I wrote to present at a symposium to mark the 1000th night of Campbell’s 1001 nights cast. That symposium was at Performance Space in Sydney, so it was particularly fitting to do the launch of these titles there. I was only sorry that I couldn’t be there this time.

I have a small number of spare copies of both books (which reconciles the print runs we’d given away in UK and Australia) and I’ll make five sets (one copy of News Haiku and one copy of London Palm) available to the first five people to comment here. No rush.