Thanks for the welcome - and the welcome back

A busy start to the New Year. I was delighted to be invited to speak to the First Friday group at Cwtsh Community and Arts Centre in Newport the week before last about Digging up the Family - especially as much of the action in that book took place within a stone's throw of the Centre, albeit a very long time ago! The group extended a warm welcome on a very cold night, and I really enjoyed meeting so many interesting people in such a pleasant venue. It was my first visit to Cwtsh (previously a small branch library) but it won't be my last. I'm hoping to run some workshops there later in the year.

Talking about an
aunt's Cub Mistress 
warrant signed by
Baden Powell himself

And I had another lovely welcome - or rather welcome back - at Women Aloud in Cheltenham yesterday. Over the past couple of years I've really missed the women's group that nurtured my poetry when I first set out on that path; it was wonderful to be back yesterday with old friends - and supportive critics! Some writers, I know, find writing groups unhelpful, but to me they're an integral part of a writing life and I've valued the ones to which I've belonged enormously. So, despite the geographical challenges now, I'm very happy indeed to return to the fold! 

Seasons greetings

                                                   

Perhaps this year more than ever we all need some light in the darkness. Nationally and internationally the last twelve months have seen so much turbulence, discord, ill-will and destruction; on a personal level for far too many people it's been a challenging year of hardship and sorrow. Whatever your faith or lack of it, however you're spending this Christmas season - I hope it will bring some light into your life, and for all of us some hope for a more positive future.

Looking for a Christmas present ...

                                           

.... for a writer / family history enthusiast in your life? Look no further! Writing A Life will be out in a few days now - as soon as copies are available, the details will be on my Buy My Books page. This book has certainly been a while in the coming but it's now very nearly here and I'm really excited to be "getting it out there". Having worked with so many people over the years, helping them to put on paper the stories they want - and need - to tell, I'm so pleased to now be able to get the message to a wider audience.

However "ordinary" we feel them to be, all of our stories - the personal ones and our family ones - have the potential to be fascinating, and they deserve to be told, whether for our offspring and future generations or a more general readership. There are plenty of more "academic" tomes on life writing, but this book sets out to be a gentle prompt, an encouragement and an innovative guide for those just setting out to piece together the jigsaw of a life or lives. And these dark winter evenings are a good time to start - so watch this space! 

Very nearly there!

For a short book that was meant to take a relatively limited amount of time, my present project has turned into a bit of a marathon! But the finishing line is definitely in sight now and the manuscript will be with the printer tomorrow. I have enjoyed working on it though. Life writing has been a particular interest of mine for many years now. "Writing A Life" offers guidance to people wanting to chronicle a story (their own or someone else's); it's based on the insights I've gained working with individuals and groups in the community and in residential care settings. Attendees at several workshops that I've run have contributed to the book too, and I'm very grateful for their input - it demonstrates beautifully the wide variety of styles and approaches that people can adopt.

As usual at the end of a project, there's a fair amount of catching up to do on the non-literary fronts! Things that have definitely gone on the back burners while writing fills the days. So it's time for a blitz on those before getting back in harness and picking up the pieces on the pilgrimage write-ups. Now the  autumnal weather is limiting the possibilities for the actual walks but at least I have the pleasure of doing again on paper the ones I've already done - as Laurie Lee said about autobiographical writing, that revisiting is "a celebration of living and an attempt to hoard its sensations".

National Poetry Day 2025

Happy National Poetry Day! For some of us every day is a poetry day but for so many people poetry simply doesn't feature on their horizon. Today the national festival, begun by the Forward Arts Foundation in 1994, is bringing it a little more into focus all over the country - in libraries and community centres, on social media and (crucially) in schools. The theme this year is "Play" and there are so many innovative resources available through the website to prompt all of us to have a play with, and to get creative with, words. From early childhood, poetry has been an integral part of my life and I firmly believe that every child has a right to enjoy it and to learn as much from it as I have.

At the moment though I’m focused very much on prose. A deadline that seemed an age away is now looming very large. I’ve got a half-completed manuscript that needs finishing, editing and sending off for printing within the next three weeks. Time pressure always focuses my mind but also panics me; with every publication I think “Next time it’ll be different” but it never is!

A big thank you though to the people who came to my Writing Our Lives workshop in Tintern last Saturday. It was, as always, such a privilege to share people's memories, to hear about their struggles and successes, their hopes and aspirations, and to help them think through ways of getting all those down on paper, both for themselves and for a wider audience. A really enjoyable and worthwhile day.

Shook Up!

 

 An interesting evening at the Melville Centre in Abergavenny yesterday. Ric Hool - who has done so much for poetry in the area, running the popular Poetry Upstairs for years, encouraging new writers and bringing together very diverse voices to great effect - was launching his new collection, "Shook up!" (Red Squirrel Press). A very prolific poet over the years, this is his thirteenth collection and a sizeable audience came to celebrate it. The evening got off to a cheerful start with music by The Grizzly Bears,  with some great retro songs, before Ric was introduced by the writer Ian Brinton.

A proud Northumbrian lad (although he's lived in Wales longer than anywhere else in his life), much of Ric's poetry is influenced by his roots. I particularly enjoyed his rendition of his dialect poem  about the myth behind the creation of the Farne Islands and North Star, his poem arranged around a Sat Nav's interminable instructions as he heads northwards towards Tyneside. His poems have such energy, such vitality. There are no long ones in this collection, but even the shortest of them - just four or five lines - repays reading and rereading. Brevity in no way means superficiality.

Retracing my steps

Twenty years ago my husband and I set out to walk the 220 miles of the Severn Way, the path that traces the length of the longest river in Britain through Powys, Shropshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. As we were both working full time in those days, we had to do it in short bursts; in the end it took us two and a half years to complete. But yesterday evening I travelled it again - in under an hour, at Griffin Books in Penarth, in the company of Sarah Sian Chave, the author of Hafren, the Wisdom of the River Severn. Her fascinating talk brought back so many memories - but also introduced me to so much that I hadn't known about the river, despite living by it throughout my childhood and walking every inch of the Way.

It's hard to categorize the book (which I then stayed up reading well into the night). It's a travel book, a nature book, a history book; it looks at the mythology associated with the river and its surroundings, speaks of the poetry inspired by it, points to the sustainability lessons we so urgently need to learn from it. It's beautifully illustrated by the author's sister, Rachel Collis - and it so makes me want to walk that path again.

For rather different reasons Sarah's travels along the Severn also had to be undertaken in a bits and pieces fashion, and she relied on family support to complete them. But in her Reflection at the end of the book she writes about learning from the river - learning that we are all interdependent. And that it's only by realising and acknowledging this that we can ensure survival - our own and that of our planet.