“…brief breaths in a poet’s life.” #NonFicNov26 #ConfingoPublishing

After finishing “The Possessed” I must admit that I wasn’t quite sure what to read next. I picked up and put down a number of books, read a few pages of several, and hit the doldrums for a day! Fortunately, I was saved by the unexpected arrival of a book I’d pre-ordered a while ago from a favourite indie, Confingo Press – and it turned out to be exactly the right book at exactly the right time, and just what I wanted to read! “Manchester & Ginsberg” by Roger Bygott, is a neat little volume that takes what is perhaps a tangential subject and turns it into a fascinating read. It is, of course, about both the city of Manchester and the poet Allen Ginsberg, and the very small interactions they had. Ginsberg was a peripatetic poet, always on the road travelling around the world, visiting other countries and constantly performing at poetry readings. He visited Manchester only twice; and Bygott’s premise is that, although Manchester may only have had a minimal presence in Ginsberg’s life, he…