Shall we give this book a proper name?

Plus the Good Weekend article, in case you missed it

I’ll be back on deck fulsomely shortly. But I wanted to give you another update.

I’ve come to Greece to work on the final edits of this book (I have about another two weeks of solid work once my editor sends me her edits tomorrow). Greece? Because the rocks, the herbs, the heat and the kindness of the people ground me. And this whole project started here. Full circles always resonate.

In the meantime, however, Publisher’s Lunch Deluxe, a central newsletter for book news in the US, has just selected The Collapse Book for their weekly press announcement. And with it the title of the book, I Eat the Stars.

Why I Eat the Stars?

Well, it’s from a poem by astronomer and poet Rebecca Elson, who died at 39 from non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. It’s a line from her book of poetry A Responsibility to Awe, and specifically from the poem “Antidotes to fear of death”:

Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars

Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.

Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood..

The full poem is here.

I’ve loved the poem for a long time. And the name of the book. And Elson’s life story.

The line, I Eat the Stars, I feel, encapsulates what I want to share with the world. Things are shit, life is going to get hard and confronting, much uncertainty is ahead and, truly, what is left now is an invite to really live, to eat up life, to fully feel and breath in the gift of this universe. Now.

Going forward we will not be able to find comfort in the system or reason or our neoliberal leaders. The promise of our civilisation is redundant, dying. Our journey will become sacred and the beauty and possibility of it will be found in the space between the words of poems and music and in love and …in our humanity.

Wonderfully, Elson’s estate gave me permission to use it for the title of this book.

**As (perhaps) an interesting aside, the process of getting permission for the use of a line in a poem is quite detailed and it’s difficult to get the estate of recently deceased person to allow use of the work commercially. I went through the same process with Mary Oliver’s estate for This One Wild and Precious Life. In both cases I had to describe what my book was about and what my intent was for it. In both cases I was given the green light. In both cases I was told my case was exceptional.

Anyway, share your thoughts on the title in the comments. Did you get the “vibe” immediately?

I was a (reluctant) cover girl

I flagged a few weeks back that I was very apprehensive about this media feature. I’d initially been told it was a small story, then that I was one voice in a broader story. I got lured into a photo shoot that I thought was just a quick snap but turned out to involve the whole hair and makeup shebang. And before I knew it, I was on the bloody cover with the inside headline “CRUSADER” blasted across another full bleed picture of me.

Anyway.

Turns out the feature by senior Australian journalist Gay Alcorn (previously the editor of The Age newspaper) was reasonable and not the “gotcha” piece that I feared it might become. I mean, there are a few quotes that are out of context and a statement that was meant to be off the record. But, happily, most of the content was about my contribution to the subject. (That said, there is a long train of somewhat heightened emails from me urging that the piece not focus on what I look like, what I wear, my marital status, nor my mental health history as so many such features on women do, and I’m guessing this had a part to play in such a focus).

If you couldn’t (refused to) get around the Nine Entertainment paywall, below is a PDF I think you should be able to zoom in on and read. And here’s the link if you’re willing to pay.

I will be back in touch with some updates on the cover of my book soon. Would you be interested in being part of the cover building process and giving some feedback? Lemme know…

Yassas, for now!

Sarah xx

PS I’ve turned Paid Subscriptions back on because I was getting a lot of requests to join the community and the comments sections.