Sketches by Derz is a collection of reviews, articles and stories by a writer well known to readers of such magazines as Tears in the Fence, Breakfast All Day and The Rialto. These pieces convey in a lively, racy fashion a charge of enthusiasm rarely found in longer works. In all humility the title hints of course at the title of the first book published by the great Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz.

As well as considerations of the work of such small press luminaries as David Tipton, Martin Stannard and Rupert Mallin there are some sarcastic and satirical character sketches and accounts of poetry functions as well as piercing flights of fantasy and peeks into weird lives ('The Dangers of "Daphne"' and 'The Decadence and Decay of Howard Hickson').

This is an array of scintillating literary gems and nuggets that you will want to have about you always.

About the Author
Poems and articles by K.M. Dersley have been appearing in magazines since 1974. These magazines include Poetry Review, London Magazine, The Rialto, Ambit, Scratch, The Wide Skirt, The Echo Room, Iron, New Poetry, Lateral Moves and Spokes. He has performed his work in Cambridge, Colchester, Norwich, Chelmsford, twice at the Wessex Festival, including last year's event where he gave a talk on Charles Bukowski as well as reading his own poems.

The working-world record includes twelve years as a Theatre Orderly at Ipswich Hospital plus stints as a postal clerk, bank clerk, lorry driver's mate, cleaner and busker. For the last ten years he has been a Data Input Assistant with Suffolk County Council

Writing in Tears in the Fence 17 about Clapgate Terraces, James Sale said, 'It has the full shock value that derives from thinking: it is not about images, although images feature; it is not about poetry, although poetry features as a pretty important subject--it is about life and about the mind of K.M. Dersley coming to grips with it. And a very tenacious grip it is; Dersley is obsessive, and this makes for a kind of greatness....'

Excerpted from Sketches by Derz by K.M. Dersley. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved As he flourished comb and scissors Chris at 'Hairtistique' halted in mid-clip. Thinking about publishing prospects he asked if I ever went in for comfort verse. 'You know, for the bereaved and that?'

I said I didn't think it'd be my forte.

According to him, another genre was 'Seasonal' verse--which could naturally be adorned with sprigs of holly, etc. His advice was to go into that side of it, make some money. They might even be good enough for Hallmark Cards.

This attitude is pretty prevalent. One of the low-grade, money-making, workshop-exploiting, correspondence course-pushing poetry magazines I looked into on its way to the wheelie bin even let fall a flyer advertising postal instruction in something called 'Sea Poetry'. That would probably make money too, along with Lake District verse and Suffolk Rural. I suppose it's always been possible to roll your sleeves up and earn money by churning this stuff out on piece work terms, along with the odd Christmas cracker motto and advertising slogan. Better still, start some courses for the aspiring bards. But I decided the rewards (not necessarily financial) were surer on the small press circuit.

It's a quarter-century involvement I've had with the (generally) welcoming and often infuriating world of what in the States are known as the 'littles'. All human life being there, just about.

What changes, though. Some of the dogged sloggers of the early days who were seen in every mag and who we thought were indestructible, have disappeared. Where is blackie fortuna who regaled duplicated pages with amusing complaints and tragic jokes issuing from what he called 'ma dole queue face'? We know what happened to Max Noiprox: sadly, he died of Aids. B.C. Leale's works are sometimes seen in hardbacked anthologies, but where is Paul Edwards, Palantir's energetic poetical historian of pop culture, who wrote memorable verses about John Buchan? Whatever happened to Cory Harding, with his X Press and Fetish Books? Didn't he go into higher education at Edinburgh?

The small magazines of those days formed a part of the history of literature. Or at least contributed to the mulch thereof. If only I'd lived elsewhere than bedsits and been able to preserve all the mags, booklets and bumf that passed through my fingers. Trying to keep the household goods and gods down to two suitcases though (an impossible ideal) I clipped my own and a few other poems and reviews (at least I had that much sense) and trashed whole runs of magazines.

Some, like Jim Burns' Beat-flavoured periodical Palantir which ran on into the early '80s, I saved. These, heavily restored because read and re-read so many times, I bound up into volumes. Even then, the first few I never had and one or two others are unaccountably missing. It's a similar story with Joe Soap's Canoe, copies of all of which I have, except ironically the duplicated number which I myself guest-edited.

It's rewarding to bind magazines up--the whole is more than the sum of the parts. As George Orwell says somewhere, it only takes a spare evening if you have the right materials. I have volumes of Scratch, The Wide Skirt, Tears in the Fence and Poetry Review. Am now working on The Yellow Crane. None of them are complete or continue and informative adverts in them are sometimes amazing. ibbles and sketches in the first part of this book. The second consists of fictional flights, elaborations and hearsay.