The Unfinished Hut

by Gerry Loose

68pages £5.00 (£1.50 P&P) – after covering costs, profit will be donated to: Medical Aid for Palestinians

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Book launch recording Passcode: +2gBNu6p

Alec Finlay wrote:

Here  is Gerry’s little hut.

Here is his little tattie-patch.

Here is his wee orchard.

Here is his little woodpile.

Here Gerry spent fifty years.

(after Leonidas/Rexroth)

Naomi Shihab Nye wrote:

Pare away the extra.  Bask in the coziness of the essential, the possible.  Feel stripped down, calmer, bigger.This is a wondrous text, rich with peace. The mind enters its own unfinished hut while reading.

Kim Stafford wrote:

This little book is made as a hut is made–moments saved, old words put to new use, sensations of weather, dusk, and silence fit into place to make a snug temple for thought. Yes, the book is little, but like the hut its aspirations are grand: there is a whole different way we could be living on this fragile and finite earth. I predict the pleasures of apprehension you find in these pages will begin your evolution toward a simpler life. I know, because I’ve been in this hut myself, and my life was never the same.

Andrew Schelling wrote:

A few years ago I jotted into my notebook, “harmonious asymmetry.” Where the phrase came from I forgot to record. Could have been thoughts about Japanese poetry, could have been Navajo weaving. Now I see it is a precise description of Gerry Loose’s splendid pocket-sized book, The Unfinished Hut. Anything unfinished is a bit wobbly after all, a bit chipped, cracked, rusted, not quite aligned. In other words, just like life. By Gerry’s account, everything honest and awkward sits better than what’s polished or artificial. It reminds you there’s something left to do. I never got to sit with Thoreau in his hut, or Lorine Niedecker in hers. But I’m one of the lucky ones, who got to remove my boots at the unfinished door of Gerry’s hut, accept a cup of tea, take cake with him and Morven, have a talk, got to rest in a saggy old chair. I love this book—there’s homegrown thinking, dusty dry humor, hot tea, and it is going to stand for centuries. Three bows to Gerry. Hand me my boots, I’ll be back.

Linda France wrote: The day after the unfinished hut slipped through my letterbox I started reading it and couldn’t stop until I’d turned the last page. Also a delight to the hand and the eye, this ‘unfinished journal’ is held between wonderful photographs of the wabi sabi hut in question, all texture and weathered grain. As I read, I marked passages that sang out at me with pencilled asterisks . . .read more .