The Owl & the Cragrat (Edited by Marc Chrysanthou and Gordon Stainforth) is an anthology of 79 classic English poems of English Literature skilfully and lovingly parodied by climbing writers to encompass many dimensions of the climbing experience - including fear, camaraderie, gear-worship, bouldering and death. Had W.B. Yeats, Shakespeare, Shelley, or T.S. Eliot ever climbed, this is what they might have written.

Wonderfully illustrated with 18 original drawings by Duncan Bourne, this is a 'must' for every literature-loving climber - indeed, for anyone who enjoys poetry.

Sir Chris Bonington describes the book as "Essential reading on any expedition - especially on long cold bivouacs!!!"

Ken Wilson praises the book as "Grass-roots stuff - marvellously entertaining"

'The Owl & the Cragrat' p/b 160pp. £5.95.

can be obtained from

http://www.stonegold.co.uk

How the book came to fruition

The book has its origins in an extraordinary internet 'thread' that unfolded between Dec 9 and 22, 2003, on an on-line chat forum on UKClimbing.com called Rocktalk.

On December 24 Gordon decided quite spontaneously to make a compilation of the best poems, and by the 27th had got in touch with the thread's instigator, Marc Chrysanthou. Within a week they had arranged the poems by themes and had decided to try to publish the collection as a book with Marc as chief editor and Gordon coordinating and overseeing the whole production. Two of the other Rocktalk contributors were then invited to join the team: Duncan Bourne to draw eighteen cartoons, and Nick Alcock to do the design.

Within the staggering space of just 10 weeks the 160-page paperback book was in the shops. The whole project was done almost entirely via the internet (involving Gordon in some 2,104 emails, often with document, Quark and PDF files attached) - with Marc in Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire, Gordon in Belper in Derbyshire, Duncan in Stoke-on-Trent, Nick in Tunbridge Wells in Kent, and the printers in Chippenham in Wiltshire. Nick and Duncan only met Marc for the first time at the book's launch party on March 13th .