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Thursday, March 24, 2011

Putting it out there

Dear Jemal Sharah,

I would like to use your poem 'Revelation' for a letterpress broadside.

I have looked for you everywhere. I have written to your publishers, who say the rights have reverted back to you. I have googled you, found where you worked a year ago (Dili, Timor), tried to email you (it bounced back), emailed a colleague who might work near you (again, bounced back), so wrote to you via your employer (a very large government agency), but the letter came back with 'whereabouts unknown' on it. I have asked around, since you are very connected to Canberra, even found someone who has rented your house, but they do not know how to contact you directly.

I do not want to give up. All I can do is make the broadside, fully acknowledge you and the volume from which the poem comes, and hope that you surface and contact me to get your rightful dues: a fee, or a copy of the broadside, or a mix of both.

I will try to make it beautiful, and if it's any consolation, I won't be making any money from it, as it's being printed to raise money for a good cause.

Cheers,

&Duck

Postscript:

I love blogging. Jemal found me, we got in touch, I'm printing the broadside with a clear conscience. Results! Thank you, interwebs.

7 comments:

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

I've got a bunch of literary types and organisations as FB Friends -- I'll ask if anyone knows.

Ampersand Duck said...

"I bet you do, you saucy minx."

{Ooh, go away, Hugh Grant, you bad man}

Thanks, Pav!

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

I love Hugh Grant. He is everything one should eschew.

WV: unite

sally mci said...

He is a wuss! which is not necessarily a bad, unattractive thing

Ampersand Duck said...

yeah, baby

Ampersand Duck said...

Hi Jemal
I got your comment (YAY!) but didn't publish it in case you were besieged by spammers. What I did was cut & paste the email and send you a detailed letter, including images of my print -- but it bounced back. I don't know why, but the universe is conspiring against me contacting you. If you read this, could you please email me directly at ampersandduck at gmail dot com. I'd love to have a real conversation!
cheers
Caren

Ampersand Duck said...

Damn damn damn Blogger for having a big outage last week.

Jemal, I got your comment (YAY!) but didn't publish it for fear of awaking a wave of spammers to your email address. Then I cut & pasted your email and sent you the letter I'd been trying to send you BUT IT BOUNCED BACK. AGAIN. Sigh.

Then I wrote a big comment like this one, but because Blogger was in read-only mode, it didn't publish properly.

So... I hope you come back here out of curiosity, if not sheer frustration, and find this. Then email me directly at ampersandduck at gmail dot com and we can finally get connected.

Best wishes, Caren