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.

"Young Adult"

I was interested to read in the Review section of yesterday's Guardian of the significant fall in sales of Young Adult fiction in the last twelve months, put down to saturation of the market and a feeling that many of the books classed as such have become "too worthy". I neither read nor write Young Adult fiction so perhaps my views are uninformed. However, I interview quite a few writers on The Writer's Room who work in the area; frequently they speak of the paramount need to make their subject matter relevant to their reader's lives and they often cite issues such as mental health, relationships, substance misuse.

It's certainly a long time since I was a "young adult" but not all that long since my children came into that category. Thinking back to the books they really enjoyed at that stage, fantasy and magical realism seemed to figure large - books that took them out of their everyday lives, not ones that majored on them. I do appreciate that life can be very challenging indeed for today's young people and that anything that can help them navigate their way through their problems is more than valid. But reading should be enjoyable and relaxing too, and if fiction has become too "worthy" I can quite understand the resultant drop in sales.

Talking of my own young adulthood - a real blast from the past yesterday when, as I was clearing out the debris from the back of a wardrobe, I came across a coat hanger from more than fifty years ago.  It had "Gill Garrett, LVIM" inked on it and I couldn't think why. It was only when I turned it over and saw "Don Pedro" on the back that I remembered hanging my costume on it in the dressing room (ie. the school gym) for the bi-annual Shakespeare play; I was Don Pedro, the Prince of Aragon, in Much Ado About Nothing, in 1966, under the expert direction of Miss Johnson. I can't say that my schooldays were the happiest years of my life, but I wouldn't have missed those plays and Miss Johnson's input for the world. She was a teacher  par excellence, introducing us to all sorts of theatre, coaching us in different acting techniques, making lessons fun - and giving many of us a lifelong love of drama. It was only when I read her obituary a few years ago that I realised that in retirement she had lived quite close to me; I would have loved to visit her and to thank her for that great gift I feel she gave us all those years ago.

Stories beneath my feet

Three days ago I was shovelling snow - today I'm having to open all the windows in my writing room to get some relief from the heat of the afternoon sun! The vagaries of the British weather ...

Yesterday morning it was still bitterly cold, but there was a lovely sunrise as I walked along the seafront in Penarth. For the first time in years I walked out along the pier there - and found stories beneath my feet. But stories in miniature; stories that, like all the best stories, stay with you because they leave it to your imagination to fill in the details, to really enter into the world of the characters.

Of course plaques on memorial benches are familiar sights on coastal paths, in parks and in other beauty spots, but I hadn't come across ones literally beneath my feet before. There on the planks of the pier in Penarth were dozens of plaques, some with fairly standard inscriptions but several with quite different ones. Maybe in truth the lives commemorated were quite "mundane" (if any life could be said to be mundane), but maybe far from it; I was struck, though, by how, for writers, those few words that summed up a lifetime could conjure up any number of realities. Next time I'm asked for some writing prompts, I know what they'll be, although I may well have used them myself first! In fact, some research into "Dick Lueken, US Navy" is already proving fruitful.