Two great days

I've had to chose carefully this year - there was so much on the Cheltenham Poetry Festival that I would like to have gone to but circumstances have meant that I could only make a very limited number of events. I obviously chose wisely though - I have so enjoyed the events that I have managed to get to. Yesterday afternoon's talk on John Betjeman (perhaps it's not fashionable to say so now, but a great favourite of mine for years) given by John Gallman - and liberally sprinkled with recordings by the poet himself - was excellent. I was then event managing the reading given by Wendy Klein and Dorothy Yamamoto entitled "Bloodlines". They are poets from very different cultural and social backgrounds but they interwove their readings beautifully and their poetry effortlessly bridged continents, reflecting the commonality of so much of our human experience.

Dorothy Yamamoto and Wendy Klein

And this evening two of my partners in crime in Picaresque, Kathryn Alderman and Frances March, were reading along with Peter Wyton, the reigning Cheltenham Poetry Slam champion. It was a wonderful evening despite Kathy having been very unwell; Jennie Farley kindly read some of Kathy's poems for her but, professional that she is, you would never have guessed from Kathy's performance that she was anything less than her usual quietly charismatic self. Hearing Kathy and Frankie read made me so aware of how fortunate I am to work with such excellent, talented poets - and how much I can learn from them.

Jennie Farley with Kathryn Alderman,
Peter Wyton and Frances March

Poets of place

 Charles Bennett

Christopher Somerville

A lovely evening on Sunday - with the Cheltenham Poetry Festival now in full swing, I spent a fascinating hour at The Strand listening to Charles Bennett and Christopher Somerville. Christopher is a travel writer and has worked for both the Telegraph and the Times. His poems took us on a whistlestop tour from Northumberland to Crete via Ireland and Gloucestershire. Charles - who was recently poet in residence with the National Trust at Wicken Fen - described himself as "also a poet of place but a little more static"! His poems were no less magical and conjured up such vivid images of the natural world, so much of it in need of support, sustenance and protection.

And now the end of the month - and therefore of NaPoWriMo! - is only a couple of days away. I still can't quite believe that I shall manage it, but I am now twenty seven poems down with three to go. They are for the most part brief and very much at first draft stage but I hope that several might see the light of day in a wider sphere in the not too distant future. It has certainly proved an interesting challenge.

The place to be ...

After Friday evening, I think I can safely say that Deepspace in Charlton Kings will be the place to be for any future New Bohemians evenings; for poetry and music it's certainly going to feature large on the local arts scene. A comment which was made by one of the musicians, Chris Hemmingway, that those people contributing to the open mic were more like invited readers sums up the standard of work performed - it was excellent.

The evening's theme was "Heroes and Heroines". Headline readers were Robin Gilbert, David Clarke and Anna Saunders and Jennie Farley read from the wonderful "Jocasta's Song". A whole range of music complemented the poems, from zither to cello, through guitar and quite startling percussion (a specially commissioned piece by Dan Cooper, "Sound And Fury", introducing Jennie's work). The venue, run by Su Billington, lends itself so well to such creative ventures and a really great time was had by all. The next New Bohemians evening will be on Friday June 26th and will feature a poetry workshop run by David Clarke on poetic form - something to very much look forward to there.

And this coming week sees the opening of Cheltenham Poetry Festival 2015 with some tremendous events over the ten day period. Do look at the website if you haven't already and  come along to support local and national writers who cover the whole range of poetic styles. I shall be volunteering at some of the events and hope to see you there!

But, in the meantime, I'm now nearly two thirds of the way through NaPoWriMo - flagging a bit but determined to achieve it! I find walking my dog early in the morning provides very useful thinking time (especially with the wonderful spring scenery here in the Cotswolds now) and yesterday afternoon's work in the garden was quite fruitful too - although gardening is far from my favourite activity, today's effort was sparked by this azalea! It took me back to a very lovely garden of my childhood, my mother's pride and joy.



Becoming You

Prawns, chocolate brazils -
even my secret weakness are inherited,

and photographs confirm it:
I am becoming you,
features, stance, expression,
the way I hold a cup.

It's no longer "as my mother used to say" -
now your familiar phrases slide
from my tongue with practiced ease.

You, though, did not live to age.
Should I exceed your lifespan
(two years my senior at your death)
in the mirror will there be
the you I would have loved to know?

(Copyright Gill Garrett 2015)

The Book Of Love And Loss

Rosie Bailey

A lovely evening yesterday at the Richard Jefferies Museum in Swindon for readings from the wonderful Book Of Love And Loss, published last year by The Belgrave Press and dedicated to the memory of the poet U. A. Fanthorpe. The book was edited by her partner Rosie Bailey and June Hall, both of whom read to open the evening, followed by several of the other contributors. The poems cover the whole spectrum of loss and make incredibly moving reading. If you haven't seen a copy, do try to get hold of one - and, for each book sold, 50p goes to Parkinsons Disease research, so appropriate when you consider the myriad losses (the "little deaths") the condition brings.

Today sees the half way point for NaPoWri Mo; I can't help feeling there ought to be a day off to take stock and to get one's breath - a bit like Refreshment Sunday half way through Lent! But - to my great surprise - I've managed to meet the challenge so far and two of the poems I've written this month got their first airing at the open mic session yesterday evening, so it's upwards and onwards with the next one ...

(PS. If you're free and in Cheltenham on Friday evening - 17th - why not come along to the New Bohemians evening at Deepspace in Hamilton Street in Charlton Kings? The theme for the evening of poetry and music will be Heroes and Heroines and for £6.50 you'll be guaranteed wine or a soft drink, nibbles and great entertainment!)

Keeping going!

If I can manage another poem today, I shall be a third of the way there - ten poems down in the first ten days of April, twenty more to go! I must admit that I do wonder what madness led me into this ...

But the hardest thing, I find, isn't getting the initial words down, it's moving on; the poems are very much in my head all the time and I keep thinking of better ways to express a line or a sharper metaphor for something I wrote a day or so ago. But no time for revising and refining at this point! Just for a quick note in the ideas book to come back to in May (or June or July...) before getting stuck in to the next one.

It means that there is not a great deal of opportunity to make progress on the other writing fronts at the moment without really burning the midnight oil. I have just been lent seven minutes books from my grandmother's old chapel; they span the years 1898 to the 1950s and are an invaluable resource for following up on the social history of her area - but so time consuming to work through! I think they must have been at the forefront of my mind when writing yesterday's "postcard" poem -

Writing Up Family History

To the music of memory 
this motley crew
congas through my dreams,
Cinderella skeletons
tangoing through time
for their night at the ball.
I must choreograph with care,
for to watch them dance
will be to hear them speak.

(Copyright Gill Garrett 2015)

NaPoWriMo

As if there wasn't enough else to be keeping me occupied! But I couldn't resist the challenge of NaPoWriMo - to write thirty poems in the thirty days of April. Started by Maureen Thorson in Washington DC in 2003, heaven knows how many poets and would-be poets are now participating - you can post your poems on the internet for the world to see or squirrel them away for private consumption only. No competition, no payment, just the personal challenge of sustaining the creative energy and enthusiasm for thirty days ....

To be realistic, my attempts are likely to be in outline (for working on later) or in miniature (but then I don't think I was cut out to write epics anyway!). I've written before about my postcard collection and my April poems will be of no longer length than can be written on one.

The offering for April 1st was all of six lines long; it was inspired by a visit I made yesterday morning to an elderly relative, now living in a residential home in South Wales where she is cared for by the most wonderful, insightful staff and it's dedicated to them.

She lives on the edge of yesterday,
where the past leaks into the present.

But do not seek to plug the gaps -
what trickles through

replenishes exhausted soil
and flowers bloom again in an arid landscape.

(Copyright Gill Garrett April 2015)

A sneak preview!

A stimulating morning yesterday at our monthly Hetton Cottage Poetry Group workshop - we were looking at the different ways in which members of the group had responded to an extract from "Invisible Cities" by Italo Calvini -

"Arriving at each new city, the traveller finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait in foreign unpossessed places..."

As always I was taken by the variety of interpretations that come out of a common exercise and very impressed with the resultant poems / prose poems. But the highlight of the morning had to be the sneak preview afforded by Jennie Farley's early Easter gift to each of us - a copy of her limited edition publication "Jocasta's Song" which will be launched at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival on April 27th, when she'll be reading with Eley Furrell at Tailors's Pub at 1.30pm. It's a sequence of poems based on women in myth and folktale - the betrayed Hera, Hecate the goddess of magic and witchcraft, Jocasta in the embrace of her son Oedipus - strong and beautiful poems about beautiful, strong women.