Putting pen to paper

Jenny Lewis at Oxfam

Enough of listening to other people's work - time to get back to doing some of my own! But how much we learn from reading / hearing what others are writing; over the period of this year's Poetry Festival I feel I've learned a lot. Last Tuesday I heard Professor Charles Bennett from Northampton reading some of his excellent verse and was really inspired; on Saturday I was compere at the event for writers of the Worple Press and could have listened all day to their exceptionally talented and very varied poetic voices. The last event on the Festival I attended was "Taking Mesopotamia" with Jenny Lewis, in which she discussed her research into the WW1 service of the father she never knew and the poetry that grew from her findings - a fascinating story, especially at a time when I am pursuing my own family history, partly through poems.

So it's pen to paper again here, with a lot of new ideas but plenty of work still to do on outstanding projects. Next Monday I'm off to Cumbria for a four day writing course led by poet Kim Moore - I haven't met her but she comes highly recommended! Before that I really need to make some progress and tick off at least a couple of items on the "To Do" list ....