2016 - going out with a bang ....

... literally! In a hurry yesterday morning I fell down a step in the garden that I'd forgotten we've got and landed up in a mess on some unbelievably hard concrete. We spent an interesting afternoon at the local community hospital (knowing that the main Accident Department twenty odd miles away was full to overflowing); the staff were wonderful - caring and very thorough. Somehow I have landed up with an unusual fracture of my right scapula - an injury more commonly seen if you come off a motorbike at 70mph or get rolled on by a car!

It's quickly become apparent that I'm not an accomplished typist with one finger on my left hand! This rather cocks up my writing plans for the next few weeks - I think my resolutions for the New Year may need to be amended accordingly this evening.

A Hopeful Christmas

As always it seems, Christmas news from around the world is far from what we
would wish. Destruction, fear and famine, anxiety for the future and sadness about the past - it's often hard to find any real "Christmas spirit". But two years ago, at a very difficult point in my father-in-law's life, a Quaker friend, an ex-student of his, sent in his Christmas card a bookmark with a Seamus Heaney quote. Since my father-in-law's death I have kept it on my desk and it's become a philosophy that I try to live by. Call it faith, call it the power of positive thinking, but I firmly believe that we have to look to the future with optimism that our actions can materially alter things, that we can make a difference in our own individual worlds.

Wherever you are, however this season finds you,

I wish you a hopeful Christmas and a peaceful 2017.

A Festive Evening Out

A hugely entertaining couple of hours yesterday evening hosted by St. Mary's Priory Church in Monmouth - "A Thousand Years Of Christmas", songs and readings performed by the soprano Sally Bradshaw and Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury and an outstanding poet. Richard Burton apart, I have not heard anyone read Dylan Thomas's prose so well - his Conversation About Christmas and Ghost Story had to be my favourite parts of the evening. Although I must say that "Christmas Cards" by Keith Watkyn amused me no end too - if you're struggling with writing the interminable annual updates to people you haven't seen for years (some of whom you haven't minded not seeing for years!) and could do with a break, do look it up, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

Two good reads

I have just finished reading two excellent books - "Another World" by Pat Barker and "A Perfectly Good Man" by Patrick Gale. I rarely dissect novels in the way I remember having to do for A level English Literature at school (that approach almost put me off for life!) but I have spent some time in the last day or so identifying what it was about these two books that so intrigued me. In the Pat Barker I think it was the plot that carried me along, eager to see how a difficult family situation could resolve relatively harmoniously. In "A Perfectly Good Man" it was the characterization; the author had created characters about whom I came to really care. For me he achieved this by only gradually revealing their backgrounds and life events; he built up their complex natures not in a chronological fashion but by interspersing chapters on other periods in their lives with the basic narrative. I found it incredibly effective. If you're not familiar with Patrick Gale's writing, do check it out.

Jennie reading from
"My Grandmother Skating"

New Bohemians on Friday evening was certainly a good setting for the launch of Jennie Farley's poetry pamphlet, and musical interludes provided  by Geoff March and David Butcher and the busker Jodie added to the festive atmosphere. Thank you to Su Billington yet again for providing such a super venue! Another venue that lends itself well to poetry is Smokey Joes in Bennington Street in Cheltenham - if you're free at 7pm on Wednesday evening, December 14th, Anna Saunders, the Director of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival, is the guest poet there for Poetry Cafe Refreshed. No doubt another fun, and interesting, evening.

Geoff and David

A Christmas Extravaganza

There's such a lot happening in the run-up to Christmas - and an awful lot of work that needs doing before then. It's definitely business before pleasure here if my first draft is going to meet the Christmas deadline. One thing I won't be missing though is the New Bohemians Christmas Extravaganza on Friday evening at which Jennie Farley will be launching her new poetry collection "My Grandmother Skating" (published by Indigo Dreams). Jennie certainly lives up to her reputation as a master story teller and the stories in this collection, based on myth and legend, family recollections and fancies, carry you effortlessly both to other worlds and to some surprising places in this one.

If you're free on Friday evening (December 9th), do join us at 7.30pm. at deepspace in Hamilton Street, Charlton Kings, in Cheltenham - £6.50 on the door for drinks, nibbles, music, friendly conversation and some seriously good poetry!

Musings on a walk

A bitterly cold walk by the river this afternoon with my dog, just as a wintery sun was going down. It was very atmospheric and started me thinking about how weather and surroundings become characters in their own right in fiction, and how they interact on the page with their human counterparts.

This was very evident in the book I have just finished reading, "Nightmare in Berlin" written by Hans Fallada. If you haven't come across it, it's well worth having a look at. It was published in German in 1947 but has only recently been translated for the English-speaking market. Based on the author's own experience at the end of the Second World War, it recounts the hellish situation in which a writer, Doctor Doll, and his wife find themselves on returning to Berlin from a small town in the country. The devastated social and physical environment and the freezing winter weather with which they must contend assume the role of aggressors, effectively thwarting any attempt at getting life back on the rails there. The couple sink into total despondency and apathy, living only for the morphine addiction they have both developed. That there is a ray of hope at the end of it all speaks volumes for the ability of humans to overcome even the most adverse of circumstances. A fascinating read.

"Such things as dreams are made on"

If I thought life was out to get me last week - it definitely was this! Car problems, a nasty bout of some viral infection and an overlooked and rapidly approaching deadline. Fortunately the car is now sorted, the infection is clearing and I've managed (by a very tight margin) to write the monologue for a Christmas revue in which I'm taking part.

The very vivid dreams I had a few nights ago were probably a result of the high temperature from the infection. At Swanwick earlier this year I took part in a fascinating workshop entitled "Poetry From Dreams" and I've been keeping a dream diary intermittently since. One or two of the entries in it have yielded some interesting ideas for poems but a lot of my  dreams seem very mundane. I couldn't get last week's dreams down quickly enough though - surreal images were coming so thick and fast even in a half-waking state, trying to make sense of them from my bedside note book is an interesting challenge!

Onwards and upwards ...

A disconcerting week on so many fronts - certainly on the international one, and, on home ground, illness and a bereavement making for family difficulties. So when my IT kit decided to present major issues too, I was beginning to feel that life was definitely getting the better of me! But I've spent some time this evening reviewing the situation with the family chronicles and have pleasantly surprised myself by finding that I'm actually not too far off target with the first draft. Six weeks and probably another 10,000 - 15,000 words to go though, so no resting on the laurels! But evidence of progress is certainly a great motivator.

The Quakers of Painswick

On Monday I was touched and also very humbled to be invited to the Friends Meeting House in Painswick by a long standing Quaker, Dr. Jim Hoyland. He had found a poem I had written after a visit to the town last year; wandering around the lovely old streets there, I had come across the Meeting House and looked out over the valley to the old Quaker burial ground on the hillside opposite. The story of the early Friends struck a chord with me and a couple of weeks later I wrote the poem.

At the Meeting House I found a framed copy of my poem on display - and to know that a piece of mine had resonated so much with those about whom it had been written was a very moving experience.

A bit of judicious pruning ...

In no way could I claim to be a keen gardener, but I spent a useful hour or so this afternoon beginning the autumn clear up in the back garden. As I was hacking back over-enthusiastic clematis and jasmine, it occurred to me that perhaps this was a bit like editing poems - a necessary activity to get the best out of something. Looking around afterwards, that little bit of care and attention had revealed the real shape of the plants and showed them to much better advantage. It's taken me a while to learn that poems often need a bit of cutting back too, but I'm certainly getting better now at putting a poem aside for a while, then coming back to it with the proverbial "red pen" to tighten things up - and it invariably reads all the better for it!

Friends old and new

It's been a stressful week with some major family traumas. I'm so aware that at times of crisis - and of loss especially - I turn more and more these days to poetry books and my "old friends" in them. "The Book Of Love And Loss" edited by Rosie Bailey and June Hall (Belgrave Press) is a great bedside companion in those circumstances; I've given a copy to friends in similar situations and know how much they've valued it too.

I've had a birthday during this last week as well though, and a lovely present from my daughter - "Whatever The Sea, Scottish Poems for Growing Older" edited by Lizzie MacGregor (The Scottish Poetry Library and Polygon 2016). About ageing they may be, but these poems are not all full of gloom and doom! Far from it - they certainly recognize the challenges of ageing but celebrate the positives too - many are witty and very life-affirming. Do have a look at a copy if you can - and I promise you won't have to be "ageing" to enjoy it!

The GWN at the Lit Fest

It was a lovely evening on Sunday at the Gloucestershire Writers Network event at the Cheltenham Literature Festival - as always, superbly organised by Rona Laycock. We had a very appreciative audience for our readings and the pleasure of hearing judge Phil Kirby's poetry afterwards. And I'm delighted to say that, as the winner of the poetry section, I'm once more the keeper of the Dursley Hare for twelve months! His origin seems to have disappeared in the mists of time but he's a delightful little statue and comes along with the monetary reward (which, I'm glad to report, does not have to be passed on to the next winner!). Last time I had the hare sitting on my desk he proved a very lucky writing mascot, so I'm hoping for a repeat performance this year.

This morning I was invited to read my winning poem and to talk about my writing on Corinium Radio, along with Judith van Dijkhuizen and Derek Healy, both runners up in the poetry section, and Graham Bruce Fletcher, a runner-up in the prose competition. The theme this year had been "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" and it was fascinating to see the different angles from which people had approached it, with poems on such varied topics as a disabled father giving away his daughter at her wedding to non-native giant conifers, and short stories told in such diverse voices as those of a weary Russian emigree and an unmanned drone!

National Poetry Day

Perhaps you heard Prince Charles on Radio 4 this morning reading Seamus Heaney's "The Shipping Forecast"? Or maybe you're in Glasgow and you've heard Big Issue vendors reading poetry? Look out for letters postmarked by the Royal Mail today. What's it all about? Well, today is National Poetry Day, with its theme this year of "Messages". Before each programme on Channel 4 today refugees and migrants will be reading their poetry, and there are bound to be some heartfelt messages there. Do look out for them. 

And if you're interested to learn more about and enjoy the work of one poet in particular, do think about joining us in Cheltenham in  a couple of weeks time. We're hosting "I Walk On Fire", a weekend festival of all things Dylan Thomas. You can get all the information about the workshops, readings and open mics on line and it promises to be a great few days. Do hope to see you there.

Festival Fever

There are so many literary festivals these days that it would be all too easy to fall into the role of professional festival attendee! And for some reason some of our local ones clash (the Swindon Poetry Festival and the Cheltenham Literature Festival for example), which is infuriating when there are competing events to which it would be good to go. I have no desire to hear the "big names" who are simply out to market their latest publications, but I do enjoy listening to poets and authors whose work has inspired me and who have interesting things to say about the creative process.

A poet who has certainly inspired me is Maggie Harris and last Friday I was lucky enough to attend one of the sessions she was running in Swindon. I had met her a couple of years ago at a Warwick writing weekend and determined then to get to any other workshops she offered. Along with Maggie, during the afternoon session the northern poet Jacci Bulman gave a reading from her collection "A Whole Day Through From Waking" (Cinnamon). Many of the poems were based on her personal experience of illness and were not only moving but very thought-provoking. An interesting day!

Maggie Harris

New Voices

New Bohemians continues to go from strength to strength. Last Friday saw an excellent performance by four "new voices" from within the group, Lukas Russell Thomas, his mother Dee, Iris Lewis and Peter McDade. Jodie Orton provided a very pleasant interlude busking for us which, along with the poetry and the usual drinks and nibbles, made for a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

Fresh from his success as the Gloucestershire Prize winner in the Buzzwords poetry competition, Peter joined Iris to give a joint presentation. Their poems ranged over a broad territory encompassing everything from myth to anthropology via an errant terrier named Smudge. Lukas certainly made us think, starting his performance with quotes to identify - Shakepeare or hip-hop? Remarkable how a well-read audience can get things so wrong! Certainly a challenge to our perceptions. Several of Dee's poems centred on motherhood and I could definitely identify with her reversal of the roles in Larkin's famous quote "They fuck you up, your mum and dad .."!

The next New Bohemians gathering will be on October 14th at 7.30pm; David Clarke will be leading a workshop before the usual open mic. Do join us at deepspace in Hamiliton Street in Cheltenham if you can - it promises to be another great evening.

Iris and Peter

Lukas and Dee

A French Interlude

Radio silence for the last couple of weeks I'm afraid, due to IT problems in France - how dependent we have all become on our technology and how bereft we are when deprived of it!

But an interesting and enjoyable time in the eastern Pyrenees, despite the incredibly high temperatures that made getting around a bit of a trial at times. There were a number of visits I wanted to make to follow up on some ideas and to do some research for a couple of forthcoming projects. Definitely the most moving visit was that to the memorial at the internment camp at Rivesaltes; the camp buildings now lie in ruins but the recently opened exhibition centre there tells the heartbreaking story of so many lives lived and lost over decades of the twentieth century.

Rivesaltes lies 40 kilometres from the Spanish border and early in its history housed some of the half a million refugees crossing into France during the Retirada in the Spanish civil war. It later incarcerated gypsies, Jews and French "undesirables" during the Vichy regime and subsequent German occupation; after Algerian independence many Harkis and their families were sent to live there. Through recordings, film and photographs each group tell their own extraordinary story in the exhibition. With the present refugee crisis, our visit was a timely reminder of the horrors man inflicts on man.

Less troubling (except for the precipitous drops from the single track road!) was a visit to the tiny mountain hamlet of Montalba, the setting for a planned short story. I always try to research settings carefully - they are "characters" in writing as much as the people who live out situations within them and I find that taking extensive notes and photographs really helps when it comes to recreating them on paper.

My setting ...

And talking of settings, another really good trip was to Carcassone. One of my favourite books read last year was Kate Mosse's "Citadel" and it was fascinating to visit the area in which she set her tremendous WW2 story. Another one to reread, I think.

...and Kate Mosse's!

One communication that did get through on our trip was news of the Gloucestershire Writers Network competition results. I was delighted to find that I'd won the poetry section and consequently will be reading again at the Cheltenham Literature Festival next month. My Picaresque colleague Judith van Djikhuizen, who also guested on this blog earlier this year, was a runner-up.The "locally sourced" event will take place at the Town Hall on Sunday October 16th at 19.00 when the winners of both the poetry and the prose sections and the runners-up will be sharing their work. It's always a very good evening so I'm really looking forward to it.

Walking history

As a teenager I was entranced by the Alexander Cordell trilogy, "Rape of the Fair Country", "Hosts of Rebecca" and "Song on the Earth". I realise now that it was those books that sparked my initial interest in family history, because the fictional Mortymers were based on the families of the miners and iron workers who were my forebears in the industrial heartland of South Wales in the early and mid nineteenth century. And, just as I was fascinated then, I'm now completely immersed in the books again as I re-read them decades later.

On Monday we walked in glorious sunshine to the summit of the Blorenge, the "Iron Mountain" that stands between Abergavenny and Blaenavon. The view from the top is tremendous - in one direction across the borders to Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, in the other to the Brecon Beacons and the Carmarthen Fans. But the significance for me had more to do with the history over which we were walking; this is the "Fair Country" of the trilogy. Heather now covers the old mine workings, the tramways are foot and cycle tracks, the pond dug to supply the iron foundries is a recreational lake around which children play and people walk their dogs. As we strolled along the mountain paths that once echoed to the throb of the Industrial Revolution, the only sounds were the wind and the wingbeats of a raven flying above us - but for me the ghosts of the past were never far away.

The year moves on

Well, the evenings are drawing in, it's darker in the mornings and I've done my last stint covering for Rona Laycock on Corinium Radio - autumn must be on its way! Not that I want to say farewell to the summer at all, but there's certainly plenty to look forward to writing-wise in the coming months.

An interesting morning on Thursday, though, with Jennie Farley and Marian Eason as guests on The Writer's Room programme. Jennie has a new poetry collection coming out before Christmas and gave us a preview of some of the great poems in it, along with some of my favourites from her recollections about childhood. Marian, the author of the 1950s childhood memoir "The Deaf Doctor", read one of her short stories and talked about her present project, which involves writing up oral histories she is taking from elderly residents in her North Cotswold village. It's something about which I feel very strongly, ensuring that memories of earlier days and ways are not lost but validated and preserved for future generations.

Jennie and Marian

At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old woman, something else about which I feel strongly is how little many people now know about the stories on which so much of our art and literature is based - myths and legends, Bible stories, folk tales. I recently wrote a poem based on a Biblical character; reading it to a group yesterday only one or two people actually got the derivation. My concern has nothing to do with religious persuasion, but a feeling that so much is missed without a knowledge of the tremendous stories found, for example, in the texts of so many great religions. Certainly the Bible has it all - sibling rivalry, murder, marital infidelity, the underdog defeating the mighty, romance, onerous journeys - all the components in fact of the seven basic plots for storytelling we learn about on creative writing courses! I have to admit that my own knowledge of the stories in other cultures leaves a bit to be desired, but I am trying to remedy that with some of my current reading - and, in very different settings, with people of quite disparate backgrounds, there they are again, the universal themes! 

Boring, but ....

I learned long ago that routine is essential. "Writing is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration" - a hackneyed saying, perhaps, but so very true. To make any progress, it has to become a habit - you get down to it and on with it. Life sometimes conspires to get you out of the habit though - with family and other commitments, as well as rather more pleasurable activities such as holidays. And then you have to re-establish the routine .....

All of which is to say that progress has been frustratingly slow over the last couple of weeks! But I'm back in harness properly now and hoping that completion of the first draft of the family chronicles is still on course for Christmas.

PS. Other "more pleasurable activities" have included Anna Saunders' Saturday morning poetry workshops and a Picaresque summer party - both very worthwhile distractions!

Searching at Cerne

Where God collides with science,
the Almighty, reduced to particles,
plays everlasting hide and seek
with earnest folk
who chase Him round in circles.

"Coming now, ready or not!" -
but He touches base before them.

(Copyright Gill Garrett 2016)

Swanwick's own "Great Escape"

I had no idea until this afternoon that The Hayes had been a prisoner of war transit camp during the Second World War and that the grounds still hold part of the tunnel through which five prisoners successfully escaped over seventy years ago. Not a lot to see now except for this small, dark entrance, which is carefully padlocked these days (against any attempt by conference participants to follow suit perhaps?!) but a fascinating story attached to it.   

The tunnel took less than a month to construct, although the prisoners had only spoons and plates with which to dig. New buildings have now replaced the old but at the time the tunnel ran from the chapel (used as a recreational area) to the outside world on the other side of the barbed wire fencing. The story was apparently told in the book and film "The One That Got Away", the title referring to the one prisoner who not only got out of the camp but out of the country, initially to Canada, then to the United States (neutral at the time), on to Mexico and back to Germany. His first mission with the Luftwaffe after his return was his last, however, as his plane came down just off the Dutch coast and his body was never found. 

A lot of us from the summer school went to view what is left of this historic site and to hear the story. Now, given that we are all writers, with an exciting event to ponder on - perhaps you should watch out for a slew of wartime escape tales in the coming months!

The "tools" they smuggled
from the dining room

Swanwick continued ...

...and of course I'm not disappointed - just exhausted! I had resolved this year to pace myself, not to attempt all that's on offer, but it's hard to resist going to anything and everything that looks interesting. So, with sessions starting at 08.00 and going through until midnight, it can get a bit out of hand!

My specialist course this year is "Creative Non-Fiction" with the American author Kathryn Aalto. If you haven't seen her recent book "The Natural History Of Winnie The Pooh: A Walk Through The Forest That Inspired The Hundred Acre Wood", you've really missed something - the prose is superb, the story tremendous. I've found her sessions not only very inspiring but, most importantly, really firmly grounded and I'm learning a lot. The shorter classes I've done so far have been fun but useful too. But today is timetabled as a "Prevarication Free Day!" so we're all beavering away at our own projects, without the usual domestic and work constraints that so often impede progress in our home situations.

Of course, the social interaction on these weeks is a vital part of the mix and, in addition to several old friends, I've met some great new ones. It's fascinating to hear what other people are writing, their experiences of publishing and marketing their work, all their ups and downs in choosing to put pen to paper. Many of them have their work on sale in the book room; after hearing them read at open mics or discussing their books over dinner, the temptation to spend a small fortune there is almost irresistible!

Award presentation for the short
story competition

Swanwick 2016

I've just arrived at The Hayes for the 2016 Swanwick Writers Summer School - the 68th time it's run! No wonder it's thought to be the longest running residential writing school in the world. And today the sun is shining, it's beautifully warm and the programme looks really great. There are writers here from all over the country - and beyond - and from all sorts of backgrounds, so I'm looking forward to a busy, interesting week.

The view from the Lakeside
Residence

Of its time and place?

I have spent a lot of time this week searching through late nineteenth and early twentieth century texts relevant to various aspects of life in the areas of South Wales where my family were living and working then. I wanted to get a feeling for places and people as well as some additional factual information to inform my writing of the family story. It turned out to be an interesting experience in itself, however, getting to grips with the contemporary writing style! Pages of turgid prose, so earnestly expressed.

Perhaps you can judge a book
by its cover?!!

I must admit that I was tempted to give up on the "History Of The United Society Of Boilermakers And Iron And Steel Shipbuilders". But I'm so glad that I didn't - having waded through pages of what appeared of questionable interest to anyone, written with true Victorian gravity, I hit upon three paragraphs with direct relevance to my grandfather's trade union activity in a long-running industrial dispute of the early 1890s - information that then made perfect sense of subsequent events. Worth every minute I'd slogged through the book!

But it started me thinking about writing as so often being of its time and place and why some books are able to transcend those barriers, to interest and enthuse generations of readers in diverse locations and cultures. I thought of  - and indeed got out again - some of the classics I had read as a youngster. No way now would I read a contemporary book with such dense descriptive paragraphs as you find in Dickens' "A Tale Of Two Cities" - but how I loved that book in my teenage years. And the Robert Louis Stevenson adventures I had read as a child - very much of their time and place but transplantable certainly to the 1950s and 60s, and I hope beyond. In the 1990s my children were fascinated by C. S. Lewis and Tolkein - and the Narnia books still sell in their thousands despite their '40s style. So called "young adult" fiction of today is very different I know, but I would be very interested to see how much of it survives and still entrances in sixty years time!

Assorted Writers

As writers I find it is all too easy for us to get stuck in our own little grooves, with a very blinkered perspective on what is going on in the rest of the creative world. So I always enjoy meeting other people who have different interests and approaches, who write in other genres, look at life through diverse lenses. I find that get-togethers such as Cirencester's monthly Writers In The Brewery are great opportunities to find out what other people are up to in the writing world; listening to writing programmes on the radio is another. And hosting yesterday's "The Writers' Room" for Corinium Radio was certainly an interesting experience.

Our producer Chris at work

We had three guests on yesterday's programme, all making very different contributions. The actor David Bailey had written two three-minute monologues which - needless to say - he performed beautifully. A skillful mix of memoir and fiction, they drew very poignant pictures of two men - one recalling a past love and one regretting a staid, unadventurous life but unable (or in truth perhaps, unwilling) to materially alter things. Pippa Roberts, a journalist, playwright and poet, then read a selection of her humorous verse, some for adults, some for children. I'm always envious of the skill to write for children and also to write humour - neither of which I possess!

Eugene Lambert

Our third guest was Eugene Lambert, reading an extract from his debut novel "The Sign Of One" published by Egmont earlier this year. For young adults "of all ages", the novel is a science fiction thriller, inspired in part by Eugene's experience of being an identical twin. He is a graduate of the MA programme at Bath Spa University in "Writing for Young People", a course which he found immensely useful in developing his chosen genre. The extract he read definitely whetted the appetite for more - and there will be two further books to complete the trilogy. Certainly an author to watch out for!

Living with your characters

Even when writing short stories, I have always felt the need to "round out" a character. I may not use all the detail I develop but the process fixes a person, both as a physical being and as a personality, in my mind. So I might list the contents of a woman's handbag, make notes on places a certain character might have holidayed at in their past, that sort of thing. Then, when they are "real" to me, I can put them in a time and place to live out the story I'm writing.

Novelists often talk about "living with" the characters they develop, probably over many months as their books are written; those characters become a real part of their everyday lives. Recently this situation has come about in my own life as I write about the lives of my forebears in the family chronicles (which are at last making considerable progress!). My characters of course are not fictional but, with sometimes limited factual information to rely on, I have to use a fair amount of conjecture and informed guess work to reconstruct their daily experience in the early to mid nineteenth century. I now find that shades of Victorian Britain are encroaching more and more into my twenty first century reality!

I have been researching and writing up the life of my great great grandmother, Martha Carter, who lived in rural Wiltshire, married to an agricultural worker and bringing up twenty (yes - twenty!) children in a tiny labourer's cottage. In writing her story I have tried to immerse myself completely in her world - and in doing so I have found her becoming increasingly real to me. I was dismayed when I found that after a life so circumscribed by her fertility she died alone, a pauper, in 1896. I found the chapel where her funeral was held and even the bier which bore the plain coffin to its unmarked resting place a hundred and twenty years ago. It was almost a tangible grief that I felt for her. A real living with one's character!

Writing Up Family History

To the music of memory a 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)

"The Writer's Room"

I'm delighted to be hosting some of "The Writer's Room" programmes on Corinium Radio over the next couple of months, standing in for Rona Laycock. Each programme features three local writers who read pieces of their work and discuss their writing. I've very much enjoyed taking part in the programme in the past and it will be fun to be on the other microphone for a change!

Last year I was talking to Paul Dodgson, who writes extensively for radio, about his residency at a school in the south west where, on arrival, he found that the young people were totally unused to listening to spoken word on the radio - it was music or nothing as far as they were concerned. Knowing Paul's teaching ability, I'm sure that his encouragement must have ignited much interest and enthusiasm there, but I'm saddened to think that many other young people may not have that opportunity and consequently miss out on a lot. I've learned so much, and had great enjoyment, from listening to stories, plays and poetry over the years (and they have certainly taken my mind off cleaning, cooking, ironing, the general minutiae of everyday life!). On the long drive to school my children would listen to story tapes and can recall favourites almost verbatim twenty years later.

If you would like to listen in to "The Writer's Room" you'll find it on line at www.coriniumradio.co.uk; the programmes are broadcast at 14.00 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday one week, and then rebroadcast at 14.30 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday the following week. Hope you enjoy them!

Sold down the river?

A lovely walk with the dog this evening down by the Wye - the river running as fast and high as people's feelings after the EU referendum! It's been such an anxious and disconcerting time all round; the only things that have made me laugh all week have been some of the political sketches in the newspapers. How clever some of the writers are, and what a wonderful, often quirky, take they have on things. I only wish that I could write in that vein!

Swanwick 2016

I've just found out that I've won second prize in the short story section of the Swanwick Summer School competition so I shall be off to Derbyshire in August for the second year running - and I'm really looking forward to it.

If you don't know about Swanwick, do look it up. It's now in its 68th year and the longest running residential summer school for writers in the world. The surroundings are beautiful, the atmosphere is so relaxed and friendly and the food delicious. Then, of course, there are the courses .... the specialist ones that run over four days, the short ones that change daily and the hour long ones on a whole variety of writing-related topics. Every evening sees a different after-dinner speaker and there are open mics and short dramas to join in with. Certainly worth thinking about if you're planning to invest in your writing this summer!

"Learning by heart"

Having re-read some Coleridge last week, I've been rediscovering some other classic poets such as Longfellow. That followed some family history research when I was looking at my grandmother's childhood in Stackpole in Pembrokeshire. She and her siblings were at the village school there in the early 1890s; when I visited the school a couple of years ago I was lucky enough to find records of the curriculum from her time there and they made fascinating reading. Reading books included a series entitled "The Royal English History Readers" (of which I can now find no trace) and there were "object lessons" on items such as postage stamps, the forge and coal, taught to combine elements of literacy and numeracy - pretty much like present day project work.

But it was the poetry teaching that really caught my imagination - I could almost hear the children reciting in turn the weekly poem set for learning by heart. Favourites seem to have been "The Wreck of the Hesperus" by Longfellow, "The Forsaken Merman" by Matthew Arnold and "Somebody's Mother" by Mary Dow Brine - all good, "improving" stuff! But woe betide the children if they failed to commit the poems to memory and to regurgitate as required - corporal punishment was very much the order of the day. My grandmother had a life long stammer and must have found recitation before her peers a nightmare.

I have known many people put off poetry for good when it was badly taught at school, but I know others who have developed an ongoing love of it when it was introduced in an interesting and sympathetic manner - I'd include myself in that group. I'm always so pleased when I hear of schools in which poetry is still an important feature and delighted when we have young people taking part in our local poetry events. Not that we hear a lot of "The Wreck of the Hesperus" these days though ....

Stackpole School staff and pupils c. 1891

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan .....

Over the last couple of days I've spent time re-reading some Romantic poetry. Although I have always loved "Frost at Midnight", I have to admit that the last time I read much Coleridge I was probably still at school! But, having been visiting the Somerset area where the poet lived for a while, where he wrote several of his best known poems and gained inspiration for many others, I felt duty bound to revisit his work.

The house where Coleridge spent three years in the late 1790s is in Nether Stowey; now looked after by the National Trust, it's an interesting place to visit. But not only do you find there a lot about Coleridge, there is so much too about his wife, Sara.  And I found myself full of righteous indignation at the lot of so many male poet's wives! I've always felt for Helen, the wife of Edward Thomas, given such a bad press by Robert Frost after her husband's death in France. At Nether Stowey my heart went out to Sara Coleridge. She was burdened with total responsibility for all things domestic whilst her husband pursued grandiose and unworkable projects, she was left unsupported by him during their second child's illness and subsequent death, only to be written off by Wordsworth's sister (who gladly ate her food, spent long hours walking with her husband and even borrowed her clothes) as "a sad fiddle-faddler"! How many strong, intelligent women, talented in their own right have sacrificed themselves in the past to enable their partners to shine? And, sadly, how many continue to do so today?

Statue of The Ancient Mariner
in Watchet Harbour

When is enough enough?!

When I began my project that should (eventually!) result in a comprehensive family chronicle I was convinced that I had at least the bulk, if not all, of the research under my belt. How wrong I was. The more I write, the more I find I still have to follow up.

Family history is by its very nature an endless quest. The story I am writing is in part the story of my personal quest to pursue my forebear's lives and to put them into their social and political context. Even though I am sticking religiously within my defined parameters, avenues keep opening up which cry out for exploring if I am in any way to do justice to the saga. But there has to come a point where the line is drawn! Something I think I recognized in a  poem I recently wrote ...

Needlecraft

(“At fifty one wants forebears almost as much as heirs” James Lasdun)

I have stitched you a life,

a patchwork of shades and shapes,

of textures and tones,

remnants pulled from the ragbag

of memory, snippets of hearsay,

embroidered at the edges

to neaten off your days.

But would its pattern

perplex or please?

Would you recognize

the contours of your years,

lie comfortable beneath this quilt?

Forgive my inept needlecraft -

this is all I have in which to wrap you.

(Copyright Gill Garrett 2016)

Poetry Promenade

Anna Saunders, Robin Gilbert, Marilyn Timms,
 Annie Ellis, Howard Timms and myself

A very pleasant afternoon on Thursday; as part of the cultural exchange between Cheltenham Poetry Festival and the Winchcombe Festival of Music and Arts, a group of us from Cheltenham took part in a "Poetry Promenade" at the Methodist Church in Winchcombe, each of us reading poems inspired by the town and the beautiful scenic area that surrounds it. We were made extremely welcome and thoroughly enjoyed our visit.

One of my own contributions was inspired by Winchcombe Hospital, a much loved local facility that closed in 2008. Like so many other small units around the country,  it was a casualty of centralisation of resources and (in my view, having spent my whole working life in health care) the misguided belief that bigger is always better.

Cottage Hospital

Listen. Between neat maisonettes with close cropped lawns

the ghosts of birth and death hover in the midnight air;

a hoarse, consumptive cough, a fretful, febrile cry

vie on the wind with carbolic stench

by the hawthorn hedge and memorial bench where 

pyjama'd patients smoked and tea leaves fed the roses.

Harsh street lights mirror the shaded lamps where nurses,

capped and cloaked, wrote notes, sipped Horlicks,

stifled yawns and watched till dawn their charges

blanketed against the chill in balcony beds

between Sister's torchlit rounds, her footsteps 

grating gravel in the shadowy grounds.

But few now recall this previous incarnation;

only the wide-eyed cat, silently stalking suburbia's streets,

scaling a wicker fence, perceives with some sixth sense

a rustle of starch and the absent beat of a long-still heart.

(Copyright Gill Garrett 2013)

Normality restored

Well, it's back to earth with a vengeance after a magic time at Ty Newydd. I didn't actually get a lot of writing done whilst there, but the week gave me the space and the opportunity to rethink various projects I'm working on, to prioritise and to do some planning. Now comes the reality - the hard work of putting all that into practice!

Despite being snowed under with work lately, my good friend and Picaresque colleague Kathy Alderman found time to make a couple of very successful appearances at the recent Cheltenham Poetry Festival and she's now very kindly agreed to guest on my blog this week. I'm a great admirer of all Kathy's writing but, perhaps because we share some of our heritage, her poem below has to be my real favourite. Thank you so much, Kathy, for letting me use it here.


Old As Hills

I remember you - just. Old as hills, still
as Snowdon with rain in your pocket,
quiet as mist, clothes a grey mountain scree,
mind crow-flown back to the land of our fathers.
Your family loved you in the time before I knew,
their best of Dadis, in those green valley days
before night came. Full of Celtic brooding he was,
a marriage aunt said and Mam was cross
but the mist was enveloping her. When you'd gone
the crows stole her voice away and left
an imposter behind. They came back for me;
once. Then I longed for you Tadcu,
to tell my tormentors, my mizzle was true
as the crows that surrounded them too. 


My writing evolved from my career as an actress and a love of language. I wrote this experimental sonnet for a creative writing degree module and it won the Canon Poets "Sonnet Or Not" competition in 2012. I had a strong childhood memory of my Grandpa Hughes and of my mother's deep love for him. At its heart, the poem is about family bonds and how we take strength from them in times of need.

Kathryn Alderman.

Never mind the rain ...

Weather apart, the week at Ty Newydd gets better and better. I spoke about the sense of privilege I feel at being here; in addition to the excellent quality of the tuition, I find I get such a lot from the other people encountered and worked with. There are eight of us on the course this time, each with our own area of interest. The personal writing projects we are pursuing are very disparate but all fascinating in their own ways. If you are free to listen to Radio 4 at 3pm this afternoon, you can hear one of our course members, Ursula Martin, discussing her project on "Ramblings".

Ursula was diagnosed with ovarian cancer five years ago and has since done an enormous amount of work raising awareness of the condition and money for research and care.To do so she has "walked Wales", completing 3718 miles in 538 days. Her routes have included Offa's Dyke Path, the Glyndwr Way, the Cambrian Way and the Rivers Conwy and Dee from source to sea. On these walks her website (onewomanwalkswales.com) informs us that she has fallen over 10 times and had 37 close encounters of the bovine kind! Now she is writing up her experiences as a book and hence is here with us for the week.

Yesterday evening has to count as a highlight of the week, with the visit of that most prolific and wide-ranging author Jan Morris as guest speaker. I had heard Jan speak before, on my visit here five years ago, but she was as interesting and entertaining as ever. What tremendous gifts, to be so blessed both as a speaker and as a writer! A thoroughly enjoyable evening.

Justin Marozzi, Jan Morris, Leusa Llewelyn, Rory Maclean

Croeso i Gymru! (Welcome to Wales)

After a busy weekend, including a lovely event reading with Penny Howarth and Carrie Etter on the penultimate evening of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival, I'm back in one of my favourite places in the world - Ty Newydd, the Welsh writers centre near Criccieth. It's my fifth visit here and I could never tire of the centre, the grounds, the fantastic surroundings; David Lloyd George (who lived in the house at the end of his life) is buried just across the lane on the banks of the River Dwyfor, there are sea views from the upstairs windows and the whole building seems to have absorbed the collective inspiration of the hundreds of
writers who have visited over the years. I always feel that it's an enormous privilege to be here.

Ty Newydd

River Dwyfor

The Goddess In Poetry

Another great day at the Festival - especially in the company of four goddesses! Or, more strictly speaking, four great poets who have written about goddesses of all complexions, from Persephone to Malala. Kathy Alderman, Louise Crossley, Jennie Farley and Frankie March held their audience spellbound at the Cafe Rouge - it was a really good event.

On a more down to earth note - I was very pleased last autumn when one of my poems was shortlisted for "Tools of the Trade", a poetry anthology that is given every year to each medical student qualifying in Scotland. The eight shortlisted poems are now up on their website at
http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/tags/tools-trade-editors-selection 
I'm sure (especially in the current climate!) new junior doctors must have plenty of other things to think about, but hopefully some of the poems may help them reflect on aspects of their patient's lives from a slightly different perspective.

Festival Fever

What a ride it's been so far! We've been swept along on a tide of great readings, workshops, talks and films over the past five days here at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival and now we're almost at the half way point. The weather - beautifully spring-like to start us off - has turned decidedly chilly and wet again but it's certainly not dampening any enthusiasm here.

Highlights for me so far have been Matt Black's "The Way I Remember It" workshop, Martin Lytton (especially his reading of his narrative poem "Magdalen"), Linda Black (whose family-based poems are both amusing and poignant) and the wonderful Rhian Edwards. If you haven't been lucky enough to hear Rhian, make sure you do soon; her readings have been described as getting you "in the emotional gut" and Sunday's definitely got me in mine. I also really enjoyed the Festival Players presentation of "The Bard Of Avon: A Celebration Of Shakespeare"; two of my Picaresque colleagues, Kathy Alderman and Frankie March, were reading with Robin Gilbert and Peter Wyton, and their selection included several of my favourite sonnets and monologues.

So much still to come - the Festival runs until next Sunday, May 15th. All the details are on line, so do check us out - we'd love to welcome you here!

Lesley Ingram with her collection "Scumbled" -
"My images are like dreams, but not all are dreams are good ..."

Don't miss it!

We're gearing up here for the annual Cheltenham Poetry Festival, running this year from May 6th - 15th. Do look at the website to see what's going on; there's a tremendous variety of events - some great poets reading, five workshops. poetry cinema and lots more.

I shall be reading with my Picaresque colleague Penny Howarth at Carrie Etter's event on Saturday May 14th at 8pm at the Wilson Museum and Art Gallery - the ideal venue as Penny and I will be reading some poems from "Poetry Amongst The Paintings", the pamphlet inspired by the Wilson's collections. All the ticket details are on the website but many of the events are selling fast, so don't miss out, book to join us now!

Walks to work from

After a disappointing weekend (the "Writing About The Past" course not coming up to expectations), two lovely days over the border walking with my husband and the dog. And plenty of inspiration there! On Wednesday we climbed Skirrid Fawr, the last outcrop of the Black Mountains. The area abounds with myth and legend, the most striking of which is the story of how the mountain got its name. In Welsh the mountain is called "Ysgyryd Fawr" - the shivered mountain. The gospels tell how, after the cruxifiction, "darkness fell upon the land" - and in far away Wales, the mountain shivered and shook, part of it sliding downhill to form Skirrid Fach (Little Skirrid). Thus the earth on the mountain was considered holy and especially fertile; it used to be scattered on fields, on coffins and on church foundations. Pilgrimages would be made to the summit. Definitely a poem in that to go with my Celtic myths project!

Skirrid Fawr

Then a very different walk yesterday - exploring the area around the Whitebrook, a hive of industrial activity in the Victorian era, now a tranquil, wooded valley with all the scars erased. Or are they? Perhaps no longer scars, and well hidden amongst the trees and shrubs, suddenly you come across the ruined remains of an old mill, the contours of ancient quarrying. So many stories buried beneath the bluebells and anemones that carpet the woods there today - an interesting challenge to resurrect and tell some perhaps.

What stories could it tell?

Rather pushed for time!

I must admit to struggling a little with NaPoWriMo this time. For a variety of reasons life is extremely busy just now. I'm very glad I haven't committed to putting my daily poems on the blog! Some may see the light of day eventually but they are in a very rudimentary form in my notebook at present ... Still, at least they're there.

Tomorrow I'm off to the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester for a Relax and Write weekend course on writing about the past. It looks as if it should be really interesting and it certainly has direct relevance to the major project I'm undertaking at the moment. Talking about writing about the past - I'm currently reading "Portrait of Orkney" by the wonderful Scottish poet the late George Mackay Brown. It's a fascinating account of the heritage and islands from which he came - some poetry, mainly prose, but prose that is so poetic in nature there's really no divide. A lovely book to read.

Interesting evenings

We're well into NaPoWriMo now - but it's proving a time to listen and to read a lot of poetry as well as to write it. As it should be, of course - I don't think you can hope to write without being an avid reader too, taking every chance to widen your own knowledge and understanding of the art. And the past week has provided some great opportunities to do so - at New Bohemians last Friday, Buzzwords on Sunday and at a tremendous reading on Monday at the Suffolk Anthology bookshop here in Cheltenham.

Two American poets, Katherine E. Young and Rose Solari, had been in the UK for the Oxford Literary Festival. Their reading, "Wayfaring Strangers: Identity Beyond Borders", gave fascinating insights into two different approaches. The two women are obviously very used to reading together and complimented each other beautifully. Rose read from her third collection "The Last Girl"; I found her poems, several of which related to family, very moving. Katherine - a translator by background - read some of her own poems from "Day Of The Border Guards" but also a couple of her translations from Russian poets. I'm not overly familiar with Russian history and culture but her poems, and the stories behind them, have certainly whetted my appetite - lots to follow up there!

Rose and Katherine

The Brokenborough Poets

An interesting evening at Writers in the Brewery in Cirencester yesterday - the Brokenborough Poets were this month's guests, reading from their anthology "Fieldwork". They're a long established group who meet monthly at the Horse Guards pub just outside Malmsbury; I had heard about them from my friend and Catchword colleague Liz Carew, who is one of their number, but this was my first experience of listening to their excellent work. I really enjoyed their variety of approaches and styles and, when I got home, read the anthology straight through, cover to cover. Some really good poetry there.

Another poetry event coming up on Friday (April 1st) - do join us if you're in the Cheltenham area. The New Bohemians evening coincides with a printmaking exhibition at deepspace artworks in Hamilton Street so is taking as its theme poetry inspired by the visual arts. Readings, a viewing of the exhibition, a classical music interlude, drinks and nibbles, to say nothing of the haiku competition, all for £6.50! 19.00 for 19.30 if you can make it - it's sure to be an enjoyable evening.

Thinking about it!

Nearly that time again! To do or not to do?! I did manage to write a poem a day throughout last April (at least in first draft) and a few of them went on to see the light of day properly afterwards. But, having committed to the project, I did find it a wee bit stressful, given the inevitable other calls on my time.

There's something very motivating though about being part of a truly world-wide phenomenon. National Poetry Month started in the States and Canada twenty years ago and then in 2003 Maureen Thorson, a poet living in Washington DC, linked it to a poetry writing exercise where people posted on their blogs the poems they'd written daily throughout the month. NaPoWriMo was born. It's certainly taken off since.

If you're moved to have a go - and I think I shall probably do so - there are some great prompts put together this year by mslexia and the Poetry School. Have a look on the website (www.mslexia/workshop/poetry-writing-workshops) and think about it!