Here and There

Coming back from holiday is never great but at least this time there are several things to look forward to here - largely  on the Cheltenham Literature Festival which starts this coming Friday. Lots of poetry this time (including my own very small contribution in The Studio on Monday 7th at 8pm!) and some interesting talks I've booked for.

Before all that comes the Swindon Poetry Festival and on Thursday I shall be reading at the launch of the Blue Gates Poets anthology at the Art Gallery and Museum at 2pm - do come along if you're free (it is!). World Mental Health Day falls on October 10th this year and I'm also involved in a poetry reading in Cheltenham to mark that, organised by Anna Saunders, the director of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. She's passionate about poetry being life enhancing for everyone - and indeed life saving for some - and I'm delighted to have been asked to contribute.

So that's the "Here" - how about the "There"? Well, the "There" was Ireland, where I spent a week with my daughter in Cobh, near Cork, in a wooden lodge that would make an ideal "write-away" venue! I've come back with loads of notes and ideas, but I'm afraid I achieved little in the way of actual writing - too busy out and about. The setting and seclusion would certainly lend itself to another, solo, visit though. And Ireland of course is a land of story tellers and writers - as so many of the postcards, books etc. remind you. To my chagrin however, they all major on the males of the species (James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde) - tremendous writers I know, but how about Maeve Binchy, Edna O'Brien, Kate Cruise O'Brien, Julia O'Faolain? Why, oh why are female writers so frequently overlooked?