Christmas greetings

After a turbulent year for so many and with an uncertain future ahead, here's hoping for a restful and peaceful Christmas for us all.

Routines and rituals

I can't remember how many years ago it was that the tradition started. But Christmas hasn't begun for me until I hear Messiah sung somewhere locally - then you can legitimately bring out the mince pies, "deck the halls" etc. and wish people a Merry Christmas. Yesterday evening we went to hear the Three Castles Baroque in St. Mary's Priory Church in Monmouth with four superb soloists and first class instrumentalists - a really lovely evening. Now I feel galvanized into preparing for the coming festivities!

Near Goytre Wharf

But it's prompted me to think about the rituals and routines that we as writers often adopt, the little things we "have" to do to get ourselves going, to focus on the job in hand. I don't think we're obsessional, but I know so many people for whom the same pen, the right chair or the order in which they approach a task makes the difference between achieving a writing objective or not. For me an essential at the planning stage of a new project is a long walk; last Sunday it was along the Monmouth and Brecon Canal as I tried to get to grips with a plethora of ideas that had been forming for some time but refusing to coalesce into some sort of coherent whole. Another definite is getting something mapped out on paper in long hand (be it a long book or a short poem) before I start; the laptop is redundant until I can literally see the shape of what I'm doing.

The evening also started me off thinking about how large Christmas features in so many books and stories - usually, though not always, highlighting the negative! The enforced jollity, the high expectations of family get-togethers that crash to the ground on the first evening - we've all had them; the alcohol-fuelled outbursts, the stifling cocooning from well-meaning parents, the intrusive questioning about a life thankfully being lived out miles away ....  No wonder writers capitalize on the season for dramatic effect in their work. There are, of course, happier accounts; I was rereading A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas recently (it so reminds me of some of my own childhood experiences there) and I love Laurie Lee's tales of carol singing and family Christmases in Cider With Rosie. Let's hope that for all of us this year there are more pluses than minuses in whatever the season finds us doing!

Catching up before Christmas

If it hasn't been looking after someone else, it's been looking after myself since that last post! I hate being ill at the best of times but when life is as busy as it should have been ... Still, I'm back in the land of the living again now, and fortunately was in time for our Women Aloud Christmas lunch, which I would have been very sorry to miss.

But things have got very behind schedule with a couple of deadlines missed and a rush on now to get things done before the festivities are upon us in two weeks time. I'm working on a series of radio scripts for when I resume hosting The Writer's Room in the New Year, to which I'm very much looking forward now. The series is going to look at Welsh life past and present; I've had a very enjoyable couple of days working on a programme about Welsh folk tales, some of which I've known most of my life but several of which I've come across more recently. Fascinating stuff - and a welcome relief from current reality with this week's election business hanging over us! Although how much of that comes into the realm of fantasy ...

Fall asleep on Cadair Idris and you'll wake
up as a poet or a madman!

Life writing - who's it for?

Further to that last post - I've had rather more time to read than I anticipated. For the past fortnight I've been away looking after a very ill family member and late nights and early mornings have provided a surprising amount of reading time - not that I'd recommend it as a catching up strategy!

A couple of the books I've been reading have been memoirs, which, as some of you know, constitute a favourite genre of mine. Perhaps some of you also read Hadley Freeman's article in last Saturday's Guardian - it certainly struck a chord with me. "Some of my most beloved books are memoirs - but there's a subtle art to doing it well," she wrote. She was actually discussing a new publication by Will Self but her premise holds good for any published life writing; "One of the most common flaws in personal writing is forgetting that you're supposed to be writing for the reader's pleasure, not yours."

I'm in no way denigrating personal writing as a therapy when used appropriately; I hold LAPIDUS, the words for wellbeing association, in the highest regard and worked with older people in care for several years to promote healing and health through writing. But recently I've come across much published life writing that, whilst purporting to be for the enjoyment of other people, indulges the writer at the expense of those others. In doing so Hadley Freeman sees those writers as "self-cannabilising." Fortunately the books I've enjoyed over the last couple of weeks have been written by authors with far deeper insight into life in general and writing in particular. Antony Doerr's "Four Seasons In Rome" for example I couldn't rate too highly - do try it if you haven't already.

(And if you haven't seen this month's Snakeskin on-line poetry journal, do give that a try too; I'm delighted to have three poems in some excellent company there!)

Something missing ...

Life has been a bit out of hand for a couple of weeks - things going on socially, a major writing project underway  - and, of course, housetraining the new addition to the family! But I had a feeling that something was missing in all of it, something wasn't quite right. And, when I thought more about it, the missing item? Reading.

For the last few years I've kept a reading diary, noting down all the books I've read, my thoughts on them, why I've enjoyed them or disliked them, what techniques the writer has employed that have (in my opinion) worked or not. It's been a very instructive process and one I'd certainly recommend if you want to really get everything you can out of a book. But the diary pages have been tellingly empty over the last couple of weeks - apart from reference material to do with my current project, I've read very little indeed. And I don't see how writers can hope to write effectively without being readers too.

So - definitely a need to make time where I've been telling myself I haven't any. In recent years I've set myself writing goals for NaNoWriMo - never a novel I hasten to add, but different mini-projects to feel I'm at least in solidarity with those slaving away over their 50,000 word manuscripts. This year I'll be using the time though to catch up on the books sitting by the bed, waiting in my Kindle - and there's no shortage in either location; half a dozen by the end of November ...

A busy week

In a week that has seen a significant birthday, I've had much to be thankful for. I was joined for lunch on Tuesday by writing colleagues I've worked with over the past eight years and I was so aware of how much I owe them - for the inspiration they've provided, the constructive criticism they've offered when they've fed back on my work, the encouragement they've given me when the going's been tough. I free-lanced for many years in my professional life; much as I enjoyed the freedom that afforded, it could have been a comparatively lonely existence. However, I was fortunate then to have a network of peers to whom I could turn for support and I now value my writing groups for the same reason.

And, having been dog-less for the past eighteen months or so, this week also saw the very welcome arrival of Carys, a six year old Beagle. Having been a breeding bitch on an Irish puppy farm, I'm so glad to say that she's now in honourable retirement here with us. The poor girl has never experienced home life so certainly comes with her challenges, but she's already taken up residence in my writing room and listens very attentively when I read drafts of work in progress ...

...before snoozing in the sun!

Poems and Patients

A bit of a hiatus since my last post, largely due to seeing too much of hospitals over the last few weeks! However, with health issues hopefully looking to resolve now, it's back into harness and on with several waiting projects.

Sitting around in different wards and departments has given some food for thought though. Whilst most hospitals have a reasonable variety of art on their walls, brightening up otherwise cold and  clinical environments, and at least giving patients and visitors something to look at, few hospitals seem to use poetry in any significant way. I've found the odd poetry book or pamphlet in hospital chapels but only at Neville Hall in Abergavenny have I seen lines of poems used decoratively. In Neville Hall lines from Owen Sheers "Skirrid" greet you, painted on the walls in Reception; stand outside the hospital and you can glimpse the mountain itself across from the town.

In recent years so much work has gone into researching the therapeutic uses of poetry. You may be familiar with the work of the inspirational John Fox and the Institute of Poetic Medicine in the States, or practitioners such as Victoria Field in this country; you may have comes across the annual Hippocrates poetry competition for poems on medical topics. I was delighted a few years ago to have a poem in an anthology for medical students about to qualify as doctors. But the idea of using poems formally or informally in the wider hospital setting doesn't seem to have really gained much of a hold. In a week that's seen a very successful National Poetry Day with events all over the country, perhaps it's high time to work on changing that situation.

Ways To Peace

I don't know what it is about the Ways To Peace project at Tintern Abbey that does it, but the weather has it in for us every time! Last year our outdoor Festival readings took place in a spectacular downpour and last night's launch of the anthology invited similar conditions.... However, the event itself was a great success (indoors!) and the final product is a delight. Contributors come from all generations and many cultures; the writing encompasses peace in its widest sense - between peoples and cultures, with nature and the environment and inner peace. It was an enormous privilege to stand alongside a Palestinian refugee fleeing from Syria, a schoolchild desperate to preserve an intact world for his generation and older people whose memories of world conflict still haunt them seven decades on, to read and reflect. Thanks so much to Pascal Bidois, the custodian at Tintern Abbey, and to Val Ormerod, the driving force behind the anthology.

At the launch with Gloucestershire poet
Kathryn Alderman

Picking up where we left off ...

Part of my "getting straight over the summer" plan involved sorting out the filing cabinet - and that led to some interesting discoveries! Unearthing half-written poems, abandoned pieces of prose, some of which could be usefully resurrected. And they in turn reminded me of other sorts of projects which for one reason on another hadn't come to fruition but might still have some mileage in them - two quite literally.

Ten years ago I started the Wye Valley Walk and covered the ground from Chepstow to Hereford, well over half the total distance. Life got in the way and the project went into abeyance, but - especially as we now live not much more than a stone's throw from the river - it seems a good time to pick up on it again. We've only done two more days so far but they were both really enjoyable.

Another walk started but making only intermittent progress over the last few years has been the Wales Coastal Path. A real challenge that one - all 870 miles of it! So far we've covered about 170, from Chepstow to the far side of the Gower. But earlier this week I was in North Wales to undertake some research for a new writing project planned for the winter and I had the opportunity to do a few miles of the path just south of Barmouth on a glorious, windy afternoon, the Cadair Idris range soaring to my left and the sea pounding the shore to my right. I never fail to be inspired by such surroundings. Hopefully we'll be back on the trail there too before long.

The Mawddach Estuary

Summer Twenty Nineteen

I can no longer get to the Wye Valley Writers Group meetings in Chepstow, but the members kindly invited me along to their summer celebration on Wednesday and we spent a beautifully warm and sunny afternoon sitting under Pam Robinson's pergola enjoying tea, cucumber sandwiches, scones and a variety of cakes - but it was afternoon tea with difference, with added poetry and prose! All written in response to this season that's now too rapidly drawing to a close.

Recently I've been doing some work with a group looking at "found poems", so I was delighted to hear Pam's contribution on Wednesday - a reading for two voices based on her experience of the summer this year and newspaper headlines outlining less happy events around the globe. Thank you, Pam, for giving me permission to use this on line; it's a great example of how we can use "found" material very effectively within our own writing.

Summer twenty nineteen

A double acrostic sums up a summer bathed in natural glory against the backdrop of ominous news. Alternate lines paraphrase a single day’s headlines (6 August 2019). The remainder are snapshots of my summer.

So many bees in my garden

Shootings in El Paso, and in Ohio too 

Under the long grass, crickets chirp

UK is second-largest arms exporter – fourteen billion pounds in sales

Many butterflies dance on the buddleia

Markets fall as US-China trade war looms

My vegetable patch bright with uninvited guests

Modi splits Kashmir and tensions rise with Pakistan

Everywhere apple trees bend beneath the weight of fruit

Egyptian president gives condolences as car bomb kills twenty

Raspberries, plums and peaches give way to blackberries

Royal Navy ships respond to threats in Gulf

The artichokes flaunt punkish purple petals

The residents of Whaley Bridge talk about their plight

White lilies light the evening, scent assaulting

Water stress ‘alarming’ in forty-four countries

Elderberries ripen and crab-apples redden

Environmental activist killings double to four a week

Nigel, the dog, surveys the scene with satisfaction

Nuon Chea, who killed a million Cambodians, dies aged ninety-three 

The cats, for once, are absent and the birds are glad

Tesco cuts 4,500 jobs across the country

Young and foolish blackbirds, though, crash kamikaze in my window

Youth crime is declared ‘emergency’

Nice to hear cuckoos calling in the Newport levels

Nicola Sturgeon says most Scots will vote ‘yes’

I’ve yet to see the glossy ibis preen at Goldcliff

In Hong Kong, China and the West confront

Nightjars clatter in the dusk at Trellech Beacon

New funding for the NHS – or is it?

Egrets roost in plenty by the lake at Magor Marsh

European diplomats told PM intends a hard Brexit

The herons nest, considerately, in full view of the hide

The gap between London and the rest increases

Evening light shimmers as we camp on Gower cliffs

Even now there’s hope MPs will avert No Deal

Everything seems unchanged for so many years

End of the shipyard as Harland and Wolff go under

Night falls as the fire glows

Not guns but video games caused shootings, Trump declares.


(Copyright Pamela Robinson 2019)

Keeping faith

As writers I sometimes think we all fall into the "comparisons trap"; we compare our output with other, more prolific writers or even with ourselves at other stages in our creative careers. When, for whatever reason, we're not turning out what we'd like to, what we'd hoped to, and we hold ourselves up against others, it can be so depressing - and so demoralising too. Far from prompting us into action, it all too often makes it even more difficult to get our own show back on the road, even harder to keep faith in ourselves.

With this in mind, it was very refreshing earlier today to read Jan Fortune's blog, Becoming A Different Story. You may not have come across it, but Jan runs Cinnamon Press and blogs each week about different aspects of writing. I always look forward to it - it's a good Sunday morning read. Today she included an Oliver Sacks quote that I hadn't come across:

"Creativity = time + forgetting + incubation"   

The more I think about that, the more sense it makes. No experience is ever wasted for writers; it may not be of immediate use, but it's filed away (to all intents and purposes, forgotten) then quietly incubates, to be resurrected who knows when. The "fallow patches" we all endure may not be as fallow as we think.

This week I was certainly energised by the creativity of a group of photographers at Newport MIND. I'd been very impressed earlier in the summer when I was given a copy of "More Than Just My Mind", an anthology produced last year to celebrate the organisation's 40th anniversary. Some of the photography that accompanied the poems in that anthology was stunning. I'm now starting a couple of projects with the group, one in tandem with Women Aloud, my Cheltenham based poetry group, and one working on another anthology of my own poetry. The enthusiasm of the photographers is certainly infectious; the ideas I've been incubating for some time have, I think, found their soulmates!

Those lazy days of summer ...

I can't believe how quickly the summer is flying past - and not a lot of the projects I meant to catch up on have made the envisaged strides forwards! But I have caught up on a lot of reading and a lot of visiting - friends to hear how their work is going, festivals to see what's new and Welsh events to try to progress my language learning.

Emergency Blanket by Daniel Trivedy

A day at the Eisteddfod in Llanrwst last Saturday certainly helped on the Welsh front. Everyone there was so welcoming towards learners and people went out of their way to be helpful. I loved the music (especially the folk groups) and spent far too much in the book tents. But my favourite of the day had to be the art exhibition - there was some amazing work there. The Gold Medal for Fine Art had been won by Daniel Trivedy for his installation "Emergency Blanket". It takes symbols of two worlds and marries them; the survival blankets seen wrapped around so many refugees and migrants rescued from the ravages of the sea and the Welsh carthen (wool blanket), warm and comforting, reinforcing identity and belonging. The installation makes a very powerful impression. My one regret was that my Welsh is still far too basic to understand the poems that had been written to accompany each exhibit and for which there were no translations.

No translation needed on Wednesday, though, at the Wye Valley Seasons event at Pygmy Pinetum near Coleford. Celebrating the area where they, and we, live, the Forest of Dean poets (Elizabeth Parker, Meryl Pugh, Stewart Carswell and David Pownall) read their poems to accompany the composer Justin Nicholls' new jazz symphony "Four Seasons". It was a magical evening, sitting out in stunning gardens in the heart of the Forest, listening to superb musicians and very talented poets interweaving their work with consummate skill. It must be something in the Forest air or the Wye water, but the locality certainly produces some very gifted artists!

Justin Nicholls conducts

An excuse for a holiday!

Looking along the Mawddach Estuary to Barmouth Bridge

We may be taking a break from The Writer's Room over the summer but there's certainly no break from writing for the radio. I've just  started putting together a series of short programmes on travels in Wales. It's proving a really enjoyable project - the research especially! It's such a pleasure to revisit old haunts, explore new ones and unearth the photos, notes and diaries kept by previous travelers, my own family included. The great weather of recent days has definitely shown the country to advantage - because, o bod yn onest (to be honest) the odd damp day here is not unknown - how else are the hills to be so striking, the valleys so verdant?!

A few years ago the wonderful, now sadly late Nigel Jenkins really enthused me with his writing and teaching on psycho-geography. Perhaps you've come across Seren's "The Real .." series, books like Nigel's "The Real Gower", "The Real Port Talbot" by Lynne Rees or "The Real Newport" by Ann Drysdale; they're guide books with a difference, seeking out and investigating the oddities, the everyday, the unexpected places and people that conventional books ignore. I'm hoping that our radio series can take and present a similarly slant view, can surprise and interest those who don't know the country, can be celebrated by those who do.

So last week a visit to Aberdyfi took in the standard trips (Port Meirion, Cader Idris etc) and the "roads less taken" - listening to a talk on the work of the local branch of the National Search and Rescue Dogs Association (so often deployed in Snowdonia), watching fledglings make their amazing first flights at the Dyfi Osprey Project, investigating the history of Ballast Island in Porthmadog Harbour, trekking to the tiny church at Llandecwyn, part of the Small Pilgrim Places Network. Time and funds will only run to more local research in the next month or so, I'm afraid, but we're so lucky living here in south east Wales as well - with the Wye Valley literally on our doorstep and the Brecon Beacons and Black Mountains within the hour, I'm not complaining!

The nature reserve at Dol Idris

Poetry, pastries and projects

Unfortunately, life is too busy at the moment to manage more than two days at this year's Ledbury Poetry Festival - a real shame, as there are some great events I would have liked to have got to. But Sunday and Monday both saw really good sessions which I much enjoyed.

Our "Poetry Breakfast" (with some fabulous pastries) saw poets from all over the country and from as far afield as Vermont reading the "hill" poems selected for Ledbury's on-line project begun by Jean Aitken, the "Troubadour of the Hills". The event was held beneath Ledbury's famous black and white Market Hall; although the weather brightened up later, it was an early session and several of us almost lost contact with our toes - we had to repair to a coffee shop afterwards to warm up! Later I went to hear Hannah Swingler reading from her debut collection; although performance poetry is not really my thing, I was very taken with some of her work, especially "Mrs. Tiggy Winkle has fallen off the shelf again", a moving tribute to a grandmother living with dementia. Then it was a "Walking Workshop" with Phoebe Power after lunch, looking at walking and poetry - which definitely is my thing!

I loved this in a shop window display!

Hannah Swingler

As with last year, I really enjoyed yesterday's Community Showcase, with readings from members of several groups covered by Ledbury's poetry outreach programme - older people in residential care, members of "Rose Tinted Rags" (a social enterprise group), Hereford MIND, Segments (a group who work with historical artefacts) and my own Women For Women group. Then it was off to nearby Trumpet (great name for a village, isn't it?!) for an afternoon with The Malvern Writers Circle. It wasn't a group I'd met before but everyone was extremely welcoming and there was a very interesting open mic - to say nothing of the cakes provided by the Trumpet Tearooms! I don't know what it is about food and poetry but there's a definite connection ...

"We all have tales to tell..."

What are you doing for National Writing Day? How are you celebrating it? There are so many events on, all around the country, aimed at inspiring people in the UK to discover the pleasure and the power of writing. It's not just about the committed, the well known, the already converted - Michael Morpurgo reminds us that "We all have tales to tell. We just have to find a voice to do it. Find the voice, tell it your way, it's your story." Some of my best writing moments haven't been telling my own tales, but helping other people to tell theirs - in nursing and residential homes, in day centres, in supported living facilities - seeing the satisfaction and the pride that can come from putting together and setting down a story, a poem, a memoir on paper or screen.

National Writing Day is co-ordinated by First Story, the national literacy charity. There are loads of resources on line (www.nationalwritingday.org.uk) to use individually, in schools or in writing groups. There are prompts for scriptwriting, a "soundscape" exercise to fire the imagination, contact details for organisations and follow-up events. I'll be off this evening for a celebration in a community library in the Forest of Dean; I hope you enjoy whatever activities you're involved with today - and happy writing!

A sense of place

I haven't been a great one for North American literature in the past but yesterday may have been a turning point for me; at Penarth's Literature Festival workshop on "The Importance Of Place" Tyler Keevil, the Canadian author and lecturer from Cardiff University, introduced me to some interesting authors I'd not come across before. Extracts from the work of writers such as Joyce Carol Oates and Eden Robinson certainly whetted the appetite for more; the almost cinematic quality of their writing, creating worlds and placing their characters so effortlessly within them, was certainly impressive.

I've always been fascinated by place in a story or a poem - how it can drive a narrative, become almost a character in the piece. And I'm very aware of how much of my poetry these days is place based. I'm collaborating on two projects at the moment which will use photographs to compliment poems; over the summer I'm also hoping to work with the photographic group at Newport MIND, combining two art forms to create something quite distinctive from either. It should be really interesting - if fairly challenging.

Tyler Keevil

After Penarth it was on to Cardiff Castle for Tafwyl, the annual two day Welsh language festival held there. Saturday had apparently seen bright sunshine, record temperatures and record crowds - yesterday roedd hi'n bwrw glaw - it rained, solidly! But the learner's tent was packed anyway and there were some very inspirational speakers. The wonderful Cant a Mil bookshop had a stall there and I had to fight my urge to buy every level-appropriate book they had; my reading is far better developed than my speaking ability and I know I need to siarad, siarad, siarad (talk, talk, talk), rather than darllen, darllen, darllen (read, read, read) but I can't break the habit!
, 

"Homeopathic doses of poetry!"

.. that's a quote from Tony Curtis, the wonderful Dublin poet, talking about the series of pamphlets from Candlestick Press designed to introduce poetry to those who wouldn't usually read it. You may have seen some of the series in bookshops, museums or tea shops, "instead of a card" greetings, inexpensive but beautifully produced and a delight to read.

Yesterday evening saw the launch of "Ten Poems About Horses" edited by Alison Brackenbury, held in (appropriately enough!) Alison's Bookshop in Tewkesbury - appropriate too because it's Independent Bookshops Week this week and Alison's is an excellent independent one. A very appreciative audience were treated to wine, cake and some tremendous poetry, read by Alison and my old Cotswold colleagues Sharon Larkin, Iris Ann Lewis and Christine Whittemore. Tony Curtis opened proceedings with a musical setting of Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening" and closed them with more songs and his own poetic take on horses, both humorous and profound. A lovely evening.

We're taking a break ...

After a year of fortnightly programmes on NHSound - twelve months that have introduced me to some great Monmouthshire writers - The Writer's Room is taking a break over the summer. I've so enjoyed meeting and interviewing local poets, novelists and biographers, to say nothing of booksellers and librarians; as a relative newcomer to the area (or, more accurately, a returner after several decades), they've eased me in to the local scene and have been so welcoming. When we resume broadcasting in the autumn, I hope to see lots of them again - and plenty of new faces and voices too of course.

My final guest for the series was Sue Hatt, a member of the Caldicot Writers Group, who - like me - came rather later to creative writing after a career in academia. It was so interesting to hear about her current project, which had its origins in the war-long correspondence between her mother and her prisoner of war father; the remaining members of his battalion were captured after facilitating the evacuation at Dunkirk. Sue's meticulous research into events, combined with the intensely personal story of a young couple separated for years by war and hardship, is producing a fascinating story that should appeal to a wide readership - certainly one to watch out for.

Loud and clear?!

With Jean Aitken and Chloe Garner,
Director of the Ledbury Poetry Festival

Well, until yesterday I couldn't say that I'd ever done a poetry reading using a megaphone! But at Hellen's Garden Festival in Much Marcle our intrepid band of troubadour poets, led by Jean Atkin, the  current "Troubadour of the Hills", was issued with one to do battle with the elements and the clamour arising from several hundred (if not more) festival goers. Fortunately the awful weather of the previous day had abated - though  I was kitted out in wellies just in case - and the sun eventually deigned to come out as we read a variety of "hill" poems in the beautiful old gardens within sight of the Malverns. It was a very pleasant afternoon that hopefully saw a good amount raised for St. Michael's Hospice in Hereford.

This morning I was having coffee in the cafe at the Millenium Centre in Cardiff and was taken with the above Roald Dahl quote inscribed on the wall there. It struck me that you could put a lot of others words in place of "magic" - success, for example. It's all too easy when you're struggling with something - a piece of writing perhaps - to feel that you'll never achieve anything with it, the poem or the prose will never go anywhere;  I've learned that indeed it won't go anywhere unless you have a firm belief in it, a belief that gives you the determination to keep going, to put everything you can into it. On Wednesday evening this week I saw that exemplified a dozen times over. I was privileged to be a guest at the Inspire! Adult Learning Awards in Cardiff, where individuals and groups who had had the desire to challenge a variety of health, social and work difficulties, who believed that they could change lives for the better, were recognized for their achievements in doing so. My own daughter was among them; it was a moving and a humbling experience.

"The water that is past.."

Recently I've been reading some of the work of Katrina Porteous, a poet who writes a lot about changing landscapes and vanishing communities. So it was interesting last week to visit Clencher's Water Mill on the Eastnor Estate near Ledbury, on a workshop organised by the Ledbury Poetry Festival. It's one of a series of mills that stood along the Glynch Brook and it milled flour for almost two and a half centuries before becoming redundant in 1939. Now it's been restored to full working order and we were shown around by a real enthusiast, who demonstrated the milling process and explained the technicalities.

What struck me very forcibly on the visit was the language of the mill, the words and phrases that must have been in common use in our great-grandparent's day but that are quite foreign to our generation - wallowers, brayers, layshafts, tuns, many more. Although I've written before about the tragedy of a language loss when a community becomes displaced or dies out, I hadn't paid a great deal of attention to the importance of individual words and their associations - some real food for thought there (and material for more than one poem).

In the afternoon we had a walk on the Malvern Hills, the stamping ground of much of my childhood and adolescence. It was interesting to hear the variety of poems that came out of the group's short time there - again a lot focusing on the history of the hills, the lives of the people who have lived, worked and walked on them over the centuries. Perhaps you'd like to hear them too - Jean Aitken, the "Troubadour of the Hills", will be launching a celebration of them at the Ledbury Poetry Festival in six weeks time; do join us for a poetry breakfast under the Market House, 09.30 - 10.30 on Sunday July 7th. Coffee and croissants included!

Mental Health Awareness Week

Commemorating a journey of creativity 

How appropriate that my guests on The Writer's Room broadcast this week should be members of the creative writing group at Newport MIND - it was a great way to mark Mental Health Awareness Week, to celebrate their writing and to give some publicity to the anthology "More Than My Mind" which they produced last year to mark 40 years of Newport's branch of the organisation. On the programme, along with their facilitator Helen McSherry, they read extracts from the book and other work and talked about their lives and their experiences of mental health problems; they spoke eloquently of the value they placed on the group itself and on the power of creative writing to help overcome problems that they faced.

The group's anthology came about through collaboration with a renowned Newport poet, Paul Chambers, and a National Geographic photographer, Daniel Alford. Some of the poems within it were written by members of other organisations the group connected with, including Age Alive, a Black and Minority Ethnic organisation. Under Daniel's tuition, the MIND Photography Group produced superb photos to complement the writing and the hard back book is really beautifully presented. Copies are for sale through Newport MIND and they're also available at the Riverfront Arts Centre in Newport - they're well worth a look at.

Helen McSherry with Giles Hibberd, Patrick Jeremy,
Mark Haines, Eamon Sweeny and Mark Vrettos

Poems and places

Women Aloud
Judith van Djikhausen, Christine Griffin, Gill Garrett,
Belinda Rimmer, Frances March, Angela France.

Last week was "one of those weeks" - when your feet hardly touch the ground and you skid from one thing to another. All enjoyable activities but no time to process what's going on and quite exhausting!

The Cheltenham Poetry Festival was as fantastic as ever, with a hugely varied programme and some tremendous poets participating. Women Aloud, the group I so value belonging to, started off the Sunday afternoon activities and we had a great, very appreciative audience. We were followed by Duncan Forbes and Ann Drysdale; Ann launched her latest publication Vanitas (Shoestring Press) last week and that's really worth investing in. My Catchword colleague Derek Healy was up next with Roy Marshall and Steve Walter; as ever I loved hearing his work, especially the poems from his collection "Made Strange By Time".  And it was back to Cheltenham on Wednesday to read with the Poetry Festival Players.  Our theme this year was "Water" and the programme encompassed  poets and topics from Shakespeare to Alison Brackenbury, The Lady of Shalott to the floods of 1947 and viewing the Severn Bore.

Then activities of a very different nature over the weekend; a Welsh learners course at Glan Llyn, the youth centre on Llyn Tegid. The saying goes of course that to be Welsh is to have poetry in your blood and music in your heart. There was certainly plenty of music, both on site and at the local pub. On Saturday morning we visited Yr Ysgwrn, home of Hedd Wynn, the shepherd poet whose poem was announced as the winner at the 1917 Eisteddfod before it was realised that he had been killed at Passchendaele six weeks beforehand. The "Black Chair" - the chair that had been draped in black as the Archdruid spoke of "the festival in tears and the poet in his grave" - is prominently on display in the house. I had visited and seen the chair a few years ago but the story bears telling many times over and the experience this time was just as poignant.

North Wales was beautiful in the spring sunshine and as inspirational as ever. There is so much history in its industrial landscapes, its towering mountains, its deep cut valleys. No wonder it has generated such a plethora of literature and poetry. This time I was very aware of the sadnesses, the injustices in much of that history, especially when standing by Llyn Celyn in the Tryweryn Valley, created by drowning the village of Capel Celyn in 1965 to provide a reservoir to supply Liverpool. Beneath the now peaceful waters lie 800 acres of land, the homes of forty eight people, a school, the chapel, post office, a Quaker Meeting House and its cemetery; the protests of every single Welsh MP, every member of its small Welsh speaking community and their neighbours could not save the village from destruction. "Cofiowch Dryweryn" (Remember Tryweryn) wrote the singer-songwriter Meic Stevens, a sentiment echoed around Wales; how much today we need to remember - and to act on that remembering - with so called "progress" threatening ever more communities and their ways of life.

Llyn Celyn

Back in harness

Not a great month with health and family issues (hence the long gap) but life is back on as even a keel as it can be - and summer appears to have overtaken spring. I can't remember so hot and sunny a Bank Holiday weekend; I do hope everyone's making the most of it. I'm now way behind on a couple of deadlines but I've taken a few days out to enjoy things - then it's back to the desk with a vengeance tomorrow!

It's certainly hard to think that we only recently had to postpone a Writer's Room broadcast because of thick snow. But last Thursday saw us not only back in harness at NHSound, but also in our brand new studio in Tredegar. There were the inevitable teething problems with the technology of course, but overall it was a good start and an interesting morning; the programme had a "Tales from Wales" theme and we had three guests making very different contributions. Peter Dimery from Caldicot Writers spoke about his Pembrokeshire stories which are currently in preparation and we heard two from the series. Valerie Thompson and Nigel Daft both belong to Cwmbran Writers. Valerie's memoir of life as a small child in a Welsh village spoke, I'm sure, to a whole generation who grew up "up the Valleys" in the early post-war days; for something completely different we then turned to Nigel's "Tin Dog" series of books which feature a robotic canine faced with the bewildering scenarios of everyday life in South Wales. I'm still smiling at the description of a game of snooker!

Valerie Thompson

Nigel Daft

Peter Dimery

Joining forces

Last Thursday, March 21st, was World Poetry Day. Every culture on every continent has its own poetic tradition and it was great to see the day marked in countries all around the globe, and in so many different ways. Our own contribution to the celebrations brought two excellent local poets, Su King and Alyson Rees, in to the studio for The Writer's Room. Alyson was a returning guest on NHSound; a relative newcomer to the poetry scene, she has enjoyed considerable success in recent months and it was lovely to hear some of her new work. It was Su's first visit to us; she's a very accomplished performance poet and had us in stitches with her take on everything from hot flushes to seaside trips with Sunday School via the trials of looking after a demanding post-operative husband. As we discussed, in poetry nothing is off limits!

Alyson Rees

Su King

And yesterday I joined forces with a million other marchers from all around the UK. The People's Vote march has to be the biggest, friendliest, most orderly protest I've ever been on. It was a privilege to be there. Whilst I could wish it hadn't been necessary, in the circumstances I wouldn't have been anywhere else.

And it's for his generation
we needed to do it

Learning from the masters

An interesting afternoon on Sunday at the National Museum and Art Gallery in Cardiff, where there's currently the Leonardo da Vinci, A Life in Drawing exhibition. I'm always amazed by the power artefacts from hundreds of years ago can have over me, the strange bond they establish with the long dead of vastly different ages and cultures, the acknowledgement of the common human concerns and aspirations across the centuries - and what we can learn from them.

Unfortunately, time didn't allow a long visit (though I'll certainly be back); but two things struck me very forcibly. The first was the diligence in preparation for projects, the tremendous amount of time and effort expended studying the minutiae of the subject matter before getting anywhere near execution. The second was the fact that nothing is wasted; da Vinci spent ten years preparing for a huge equine monument project only for it to be abandoned at the last moment, but the sketches and models he had made were fundamental to other, later creations as well as being works of art in themselves. Certainly a couple of lessons there for anyone in the creative arts!

International Women's Day

I think it was Antony Sher who once said "Nothing is more interesting than human lives". I have an enduring passion for biographies and autobiographies; I'm enthralled by entering into another's world, seeing things from their perspective, going to places I shall probably never visit but experiencing them in another's shoes.

Looking through the books on my shelves, I'm very aware that most of the lives I read about are women's lives. So many of the best sellers, the supposedly "serious" biographies are of course about men, about the great and the good (or the not so good!) who have had major impacts on national or international situations. Women's lives, with notable exceptions, have so often been more private, often family centred affairs - more challenging to write about when there are fewer written or other sources from which to glean information. But I think it's this combination of the private and the public, the ability of the subjects to function on different levels in different capacities, that really interests me. Women's lives are often infinitely more complex than those of their male counterparts, and therefore, to me, richer to explore.

It was heartening to see the emergence of more "women focused" books during the recent commemorations of the First World War, with the vital roles women played at last receiving due recognition. And not just the famous ones - the likes of Vera Britten and Elsie Inglis - but the local, unsung heroines in towns and villages who nursed the sick, harvested the fields, manned the trams and stretched the meagre food supplies. Their more prominent sisters may be honoured on plaques and memorials but those stand as reminders too of all the women's contribution in such  desperate times.

The theme of this year's International Women's Day is "Think equal. Build smart. Innovate for change" - today's language perhaps, but those three principles were precisely those that motivated our predecessors a hundred years ago. In Newport earlier this week I was reminded of the women of my own home town to whom we owe so much. A mural in Commercial Street, unveiled during the WW1 commemorations, stands witness to their lives - all those who paved the way for the daughters and granddaughters coming after them, who had and have hugely greater freedoms and opportunities because of those women's stands.

The Newport mural followed from the publication of Sylvia Mason's book "Every Woman Remembered - Daughters of Newport in the Great War". The book not only recounts the lives of the seven women who died after "active" war service but pays due homage to the many others, my own grandmothers among them, to whom we owe so much. And it's far from a "trip down memory lane" - it all has direct relevance to what's going on in the contemporary world. The proceeds from the sale of the book (available from Amazon and Saron Publishers) go to Newport Women's Bursary which awards funds to help local women fulfill their ambitions today.

Our current concerns may not be those of previous generations but, as the saying goes, "you can only understand the present in the light of the past" - acknowledging it and learning from it goes a long way towards helping us into the future!

Community ventures

With the financial strictures local councils and charities have faced in recent years, so many really valuable community facilities that I've known have been axed. On the one hand the effect on local people can be devastating - on the other, it can be galvanizing, propelling individuals and groups into action to maintain or develop for themselves what they know they need and deserve. An excellent example is The Cwtsh in Newport. When Stow Hill Library was closed down in 2013, the site was taken over by a band of volunteers and re-opened two years later as an arts centre; it's now a thriving venue hosting everything from art exhibitions to ukelele classes via "pop up" activities and a film lab - and creative writing sessions.

On The Writer's Room this week I was fortunate enough to have as my guests members of the writing group which meets weekly at The Cwtsh under the capable leadership of tutor Angela Platt. Some of the group have written most of their lives, others are very much newcomers to prose or poetry, but they all share tremendous enthusiasm and dedication. Five members contributed to the programme, four in person and one in absentia with Angela reading her short story for her. It was a real pleasure to host such interesting and varied guests - hopefully we'll see, and certainly hear, more of them in the future.

Fay Jenkins

Angela reads a story by Barbara Hawkins

Alan Barrow

 Christine Armstrong

David Rees

Save the dates ...

At our Women Aloud poetry meeting this week we were looking at autobiographical poems ( a term I infinitely prefer to "confessional poetry"!) and the conversation inevitably turned to the topic of "factual" truth and "emotional" truth. I'd been thinking around this a lot lately, a great friend of mine having sent me a poem he'd written about a very significant event in my life in which he too had been involved. It was far from an "accurate" account of the actual occurrence, but was imbued with his feelings about the event and associated, but chronologically removed, happenings - and it was much the stronger for that collation of timings and emotions. In no way did it invalidate the "truth" of the poem.







 
Which brings me on to the theme of this year's Cheltenham Poetry Festival - yes, Truth! If you haven't already seen the programme, do check it out - there's ten days worth of talks, readings, workshops and slams which should suit all tastes. It runs from April 25th to May 4th. I shall be reading with Women Aloud at The Playhouse on Sunday April 28th at 14.00 and again with the Cheltenham Poetry Festival Players on Wednesday May 1st at 20.30 at the same venue. It would be great to see you there!

Holy Glimmers of Goodbyes - the poetry of war and peace

Looking out, not looking in ..

What a fantastic day at the Senedd in Cardiff yesterday; Literature Wales hosted a free, day long event to mark the close of Cymru'n Cofio 1914 - 1918 (Wales Remembers 1914 - 1918). But it wasn't just a day about the poetry of the past - it was about war and peace throughout the world, then and now; and it wasn't theoretical and academic, it was down to earth and sharply relevant to the world we live in and for which we have responsibility. Schoolchildren and refugees took part, reading alongside members of the Welsh Assembly. I wouldn't have missed it - and when my learner Welsh failed me, the simultaneous translation ensured I didn't miss anything!

Mark Drakeford, First Minister,
reading Wilfred Owen

Ifor ap Glyn, National Poet
of Wales

Ali Sizer, exiled Kurdish writer
and singer

                                       

Nerys Williams, poet and
professor

Gillian Clarke, previous national Poet
of Wales

J. F. Kennedy is credited with the insightful remark "If more politicians knew poetry and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live" and I couldn't agree more. With the audience at the Senedd yesterday though, I did feel that in many ways the speakers were preaching to the converted; now it's up to us to get out there and to do something about it - deeds as well as words, to adapt the Emmeline Pankhurst motto.