Brighton-based photographer and writer Greg Allum, whose last book The Night Shines Like Fireflies captured Oxford band Supergrass recording their sixth and final studio album Diamond Hoo Ha in Berlin, has another tome due for release. But this time he has turned his hand to the words and enlisted Polish illustrator Taxi Taxi to add the pictures.

The Sail, a self-published work, consists of 20 short-prose chapters and is his first collection of poetry to be released. To celebrate, Allum has organised a launch party at Latest Music Bar featuring Stuart Lee’s one-man Brighton band Jacob’s Stories, plus other local acts Strange Animals and Richie Phoe. There is a limited guest list of a hundred for the show.

To book tickets email greg@gregallum.co.uk or call 07545 26923.

To pre-order one of the 500 limited edition 64-page hardback copies, which are numbered by the artist (£9.99 + p&p), visit www.gregallum.co.uk/thesail or www.facebook.com/gregallum.

The Sail launch party, Thursday, September 2, The Latest Music Bar, Manchester Street, Brighton, 8pm to 2am, £5.

Is there a writer that made you think, “I want to do that”?

I remember being a fresh-faced 19-year-old, unassuming in most ways, and I fell in love with a hippie girl who lived in Maine, US. Before my heart got broken for the first time she gave me a book called The Abortion by Richard Brautigan.

It changed everything. His use of the English language to this day mesmerises me.

On my way back to England, I picked up a journal and started writing.

What is it about writing that you love?

Writing for me has always been cathartic and like any creative process I love the fact these words or photographs or sounds didn’t exist before. I often wake up in the middle of the night, trapped in dreams and find a thread, be it a sentence or an image, which then leads to a poem or a short story. The next day I find these scribbled words on bits of paper I can’t believe are mine.

What are you reading at the moment?

I’m exchanging books with a friend. I’m lending her Bukowski and she’s just given me Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges. I am on the cusp of starting it but the last book I finished was Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks.

What’s your favourite book, and why?

This is like choosing your favourite child. At the moment I’d have to say Written On The Body by Jeanette Winterson. To dissect the body into compartments of love and desire is a thing of beauty.

Were there any direct inspirations for your new book The Sail?

The Missing Piece by Shel Silverstein inspired me massively. A story of love, loss and accepting yourself as whole. It’s a children’s book that speaks to adults. He showed me you can write a book of a very simple nature and still have it move you more than any complex novel. He also wrote A Boy Named Sue, worked for Playboy and had one of the greatest beard/bald-headed combinations known to man.

Do you have a favourite illustration?

Taxi Taxi, who illustrated The Sail, is such a unique artist; there is a longing to her work which suited my words and structures. The fact that she’s Polish lends a mystical and, at times, mythical feel to her drawings but my current favourite is the illustration for The Dwelling.

Who is your favourite illustrator, and why?

I was introduced to an artist called Camille Rose-Garcia by a good friend of mine. Her work can only be described as Disney gone horribly wrong. Somewhere down the road Mickey Mouse took some pharmaceuticals and a left turn.

Tell us about any guilty pleasures lurking in your CD or film or book collections – something you know is a bit naff but you can’t help yourself...

I was compiling a Guilty Pleasures playlist on Spotify.com the other day. It included the tracks: Is It Ok If I Call You Mine by Paul McCrane from the Fame soundtrack; Kiss You All Over by Exile; Maneater by Hall & Oates; Somebody Is Watching Me by Rockwell; anything and everything by The Carpenters.

Do you remember the first CD you bought – what was it, and where did you buy it?

The first CD I bought was A View To A Kill by Duran Duran. I am assuming it was from Our Price back in the mid-1980s.

Favourite album...and why

Grace by Jeff Buckley. The perfect album to make love to: it rises, falls, ebbs, flows and in itself it is one movement. Without this music I would never have fallen in love as much as I did and never would have healed as quick.

Without it, I’d be dust.

Favourite film...and why

Annie Hall does it for me every time. Woody Allen’s finest.

Is there a song or individual piece of music you always come back to?

I can’t stop coming back to Detlef Schrempf by Band Of Horses. The album it’s from, Cease To Begin, is almost as perfect as you can get.

Is there a theatre or live music experience that stays in your memory?

One that stands out was Brian Wilson performing Pet Sounds at The Royal Festival Hall. I was with the guys from Supergrass and we had a Royal box. He also played some songs from Smile and when Our Prayer started we all pretty much cried.

It was so transcendent.

Away from writing you are a photographer. Which photographers do you most admire?

As cliché as this sounds, inspirations for my photography generally come from life. But one photographer who amazes me is Francesca Woodman. I’ve been working on a series of photographs called Heart Shaped Brick, which is a nod to Woodman’s work – ethereal, ghostly movements with a sense of isolation.