Looking Forwards, Looking Back

This wonderful photograph of my paternal grandmother was taken on the eve of her marriage in 1891. I love the intent look on her face as she stands motionless in the photographer's studio; but what intrigues me more is what is in her mind - is she looking forwards to her new life or looking back on her old?

"Looking Forwards, Looking Back" is the working title of a section of the family history book I'm currently writing. But it also seems an appropriate motto for today - New Year's Eve, a time for planning ahead on the writing front but a time of reflection too. What has gone well over the past year, what (albeit small!) success has been achieved? I've learned a lot over this last twelve months and I'm very grateful to the poets and authors I've read and heard, to the tutors who have taught and challenged me on different courses, to my peers in writing groups who have commented on my work and supported me in it. 

But now to the future. I'm old enough and hopefully wise enough to avoid the "resolutions" trap (the tremendous initial burst of enthusiasm, the good intentions that bite the dust half way through January etc.) but some realistic planning before the odd drink later today may be in order - so watch this space!

Greetings

My idea of a perfect Christmas Day would be an early walk with the dog in crisp, bright sunshine, followed by a swift change into my onesie to spend the rest of the day by the fire with a liberal supply of chocolate, books and wine in the company of my nearest and dearest. However, as this doesn't appear to be a viable option in current circumstances, I am gearing up to do the necessary on a more traditional footing!

But wherever you are, however you choose to spend the day, however you celebrate whatever festival you celebrate - greetings and all best wishes for a happy, peaceful, enjoyable time.

What inspires us?

I have always enjoyed the novels of Kate Mosse ("Citadel" being my favourite); at the moment I'm reading her collection of short stories, "The Mistletoe Bride And Other Haunting Tales". In addition to the stories themselves, I'm very interested in the author's notes that accompany each one. I am always keen to know the "story behind the story" - what was it in the writer's mind that conjured up the characters, the setting, the plot?

We are told that there are only seven basic plots for all the stories in existence - overcoming the monster, rags to riches, the quest, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy, rebirth. But how do writers build on these foundations to create what enthrals or appals us? What sparks their imagination, what inspires them to take a theme and to weave magic with it? Perhaps something as mundane as the look on a fellow passenger's face on the bus, an overheard scrap of conversation in a cafe, a solitary walk in the woods with the dog. A rich seam that I have frequently mined has been my own family history, where fact has often proved stranger than fiction!

Worcester 1956

Recently, in my poetry group Picaresque, we each took as a starting point for a poem a female character from a myth or legend. Whilst the underlying stories might have been well known, to see how each person imbued that character with something of themselves was a revelation. I have spent a lifetime fascinated by the River Severn (witness the above photo of me on one of my early childhood visits!) and a few years ago walked the 210 miles of the Severn Way with my husband and two dogs. So who else could I have chosen as my inspiration for that poem other than Sabrina (or Hafren in Welsh), a human child vengefully drowned in the river but resurrected as a nymph

  "... in that slow, gentle spawning

between the windswept thighs

of ancient hills at the bounds

of the nightingale's song."

The infant "Sabrina" on Plynlimon

I have an "ideas book" that goes everywhere with me in the day, sits beside my bed at night. In recent years it seems to have filled up alarmingly quickly - no shortage of inspiration but a severe shortage of time to translate that into coherent, finished pieces! Perhaps most of us who are "amateur" writers are just too busy living everyday life to write as much about it as we would like to, but maybe with the advent of 2015 ....

National Short Story Week

"The Wish Dog and Other Stories takes you into the realm of the unknown, the ghostly and the gothic, in a colourful kaleidoscope of half-glimpsed shades" said the blurb; not my usual sort of bedtime reading but, with a story in it by Rona Laycock, my mentor and colleague in Catchword, I thought I'd give it a try in National Short Story Week. And, with some from historical perspectives, some sharply contemporary, a really good read the stories have proved to be.

Published by Honno Press 2014

I've always liked short stories and they fit well into my time-limited lifestyle  - compact tales that slot in to a bus journey or a coffee break, take you into a different world for ten minutes but leave that world embedded in your own for you to think about and enjoy during the rest of your day too. But I certainly haven't found them the easy option to write! To create enjoyable, credible scenarios with rounded, 3D characters within a tight word limit is a challenge; knowing where to start and where to stop, allowing the reader to fill in the backstory, the sequel - skills that take a fledgling writer time and practice to perfect!

Sunday Afternoon Tea and Tales

What better way to spend a damp and dismal November afternoon than in a warm and cosy teashop listening to an expert story teller and a great poet over a hot drink and a piece of ginger cake or a scone loaded with cream and jam? That's how I spent yesterday afternoon, at The Burrow Cafe in Sheep Street in Stow on the Wold. Nicholas John regaled us with tales on such unlikely topics as bored elderly gentlemen and recalcitrant recycling and Derek Healey read poems on everything from first love to cricket and fishing. A thoroughly enjoyable afternoon. Next month sees Chloe the Midnight Storyteller entertaining customers with her "adult tales" (sounds promising!) - make a date in your diary for Sunday December 14th at 3pm if you're free to come to hear her.

Remembrance

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow ..." John McCrae

Much discussion this week about the nature of "remembrance" - a lot of it centering on the ceramic poppies at the Tower of London. Are they a fitting memorial to a generation of "glorious dead" or simply a sanitized, sentimental representation of the British losses in a conflict that started a century ago, a conflict that would be better recalled with graphic images of the horror of those four long years? Do they downplay the universal nature of loss and suffering, ignoring the millions from other nations who died both as combatants and civilians?  Views are strongly held on both sides of the debate.

On Friday evening (November 14th) at DeepSpace in Charlton Kings here in Cheltenham poetry will be read and performed by a variety of local poets looking at all angles of remembrance and at the reality of wars past and present. Led by Jennie Farley, Eley Furrell and David Clarke, it should be a thought-provoking evening. I shall be reading the wonderful poem written by the American Sara Teasdale in 1917, "There Will Come Soft Rains"; to me it expresses a salutary truth which we would all do well to ponder.

"There Will Come Soft Rains"

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows calling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild-plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Sara Teasdale

If you are free on Friday evening, do please join us. We'd love to see you there.

The Art In The Everyday

Life has been rather fraught lately with extensive family commitments, but earlier in the week I managed to get to an evening workshop run by the Irish poet C. L. Dallat on "The Art In The Everyday". He spoke about using the minutiae of our every day lives - the things and people on our street, the remains of a meal on the table - as a basis for our poems. Definite food for thought there, as life at present seems nothing but minutiae!

Black Night Dylan

   

It seems that the whole world has been celebrating the centenary of Dylan Thomas' birth this week - and this evening sees our own celebration here in Cheltenham, at the Black Night Dylan event at the Playhouse Theatre, beginning at 19.45. Arranged by Anna Saunders, the Director of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival, we have a great line up of poets, some local (such as Angela France and David Clarke), others from further afield (such as Fay Roberts and Charlie Baxter); all will be reading some of Dylan's poetry, some of their own.

No doubt we shall hear many of the most famous lines ("Do not go gentle...", "It was my thirtieth year to heaven ...") but I shall be reading one of my favourite, though undoubtedly less known, children's poems by the great man - "Song of the Mischievous Dog". Do look it up if you don't know it; I always imagine Dylan walking his dog Mably along the beach at Laugharne reciting it to the amusement of his children - it always amuses me! 

Do join us if you're free and in the area - it promises to be a great night.

"Let Us Remember"

There's still time to get your tickets! If you're free on Thursday or Friday evening this week, do join us for the Charlton Kings Community Players production "Let Us Remember", at St. Edwards Performance Hall in Cheltenham - it's a revue featuring poetry and prose, songs and images from the Great War. I'm delighted to be part of the tremendously enthusiastic team engaged in the venture, reading a dramatised account of the part my uncle played in the decoy ships campaign against U boats on the Western Approaches, leading to his death in action in 1917, aged just 21.

This evening sees our dress rehearsal, but here's a sneak preview - some photos taken yesterday evening at the technical. I'm sure you'll find it an interesting- and a moving - evening if you can make it; we'd love to see you there.

 

Keeping the home fires burning ...

Burlington Bertie, aka Vesta Tilley

"We don't want to lose you but we think you ought to go .."

The army dog handler and a VAD

Waiting for the "Wipers Times"

A Joint Effort

I always enjoy taking part in a group project, everyone working towards a common aim but bringing to the venture their individual interests and skills, their different perspectives. Earlier this year the members of Picaresque, my poetry group, visited Cheltenham Museum and Art Gallery; we each selected two items on display as inspiration to write poems. Yesterday morning we met to share the results of the exercise - and what an interesting morning it proved to be.

Several people had chosen paintings or photographs from a visiting exhibition, others had chosen objects - in my case, medieval floor tiles from Hailes Abbey, a Cisterian foundation a few miles outside the town, now in the care of English Heritage. All of the poems were extremely powerful and I found it a revelation to see works of art growing out of other works of art; all in all a fascinating exercise.

 

Ora pro nobis

The coldest hour of the night;

guttering candlelight sidles

Selection of decorated floor tiles

in beneath the yawning arches

as sightless saints gaze down

upon our cowled file,

sentinels to the litany of intercession

prayed with our sandalled feet.

Richard, Earl of Cornwall

Beatrice of Falkenberg

Sanchia of Provence.

Immortalised in fired clay

in footworn shields and coats of arms,

compass to our shuffling steps

(our eyes cast down, obedient to the Rule),

they guide from cell to sanctuary and shrine

to sing the office in their name.

de Warenne

de Peveril

de Ferrers

Polished by pilgrim's knees

in urgent supplication,

smoothed by prostrate penitents

craving absolution -

these symbols with which

the rich bought back their souls

perpetuate their claim

upon our cloistered lives.

Miserere mei, Deus,

secundum magnam misericordiam tuam.*

*“Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness” - the opening verse from the night office of Matins.

(Copyright Gill Garrett 2014)

Cheltenham Literature Festival

A great evening on Sunday at the Gloucestershire Writers Network event at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. The town is always alive with activity over the ten days of the Festival and the venues - largely in the Town Hall or in marquees in the Montpelier and Imperial Gardens - have a terrific atmosphere.

The Gloucestershire Writers Network event was held in the Drawing Room of the Town Hall and was sold out almost as soon as the public booking opened. The winners of the annual poetry and prose competitions and the runners up are entertained in the Writers Room before the event - where it's all too easy to get delusions of grandeur when you find yourself in the company of nationally, if not internationally, acclaimed authors! But it's the event itself which is really special - having the opportunity to read your work at such a prestigious Festival.

As last year's poetry winner it was my privilege to present the "Poet's Hare" to Sheila Spence, this year's winner (though I must say I was sorry to part company with him - he's been sitting on my desk, a real inspiration, for the last twelve months!). My ex-colleague in Somewhere Else, Iris Lewis, was unable to be there for the evening so I read her winning prose piece, "No Small Thing", on her behalf, before reading my own short story, "The Drop". It was fascinating to hear the variety of pieces that had been inspired by the theme of this year's Festival - "Brave New World". David Clarke, a local poet who was himself a winner at the event two years ago and who had judged this year's poetry section, then rounded off the evening with readings of some of his own work.

Many thanks indeed to Rona Laycock who once again organised both the competition and such a successful, enjoyable event as its culmination!

 

 

 

 

Presenting Sheila with the Poets's Hare

Remembering - a little early

Next Thursday (October 2nd) is National Poetry Day and the theme this year is "Remember". Perhaps I got a bit ahead of myself  on Wednesday evening at the Cheltenham Poetry Cafe, as my guest readings there were based on a series of poems I've written entitled "Bones Of An Older Landscape" - the inspiration for which came from people, events and places recalled from my past. But if you're interested in being part of National Poetry Day, do go to the website - lots of information on events and (brilliant if you're a teacher!) downloadable material you can use for a class.

At Smokey Joes on Wednesday

Back in action

A long gap since the last post - largely as life (and the minutiae accompanying it!) got the better of me for a couple of weeks. But I have just returned, refreshed, from a fantasic week on home territory again, South Wales this time, in the Vale of Glamorgan.

The week was a mixture of coastal path walking, in beautiful sunshine, and pursuing family history - very successfully - "up the Valleys". But I couldn't miss out on the obligatory pilgrimage to Laugharne in this centenary year of Dylan Thomas - to the Boathouse, his writing shed, his usual watering hole, his graveside.... Not my first visit to the town by any means but a fascinating day. On October 29th I shall be reading at a Dylan Thomas tribute evening at the Playhouse here in Cheltenham and it was good to get my shot in the arm in readiness!

         

"Do not go gentle into that good night ..."

       

The Boathouse and the bay

As always, there's no end to catch up on after getting back from time away but the first thing on the agenda is the Poetry Cafe at Smokey Joes in Bennington Street in Cheltenham tomorrow, 5 -7pm, at which I'll be the guest poet. The Cafe takes place once a month and is a pleasant, relaxed setting in which to hear other's poetry and to read your own - if you're free, do come and join us.

Warwick Festival of Writing

Unleashing our writing power with Judi Goodwin!

A big thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make last weekend's Festival of Writing such an enjoyable experience. The facilities at Warwick University are excellent and it made a good, central venue for the National Association of Writers' Groups annual conference. Even the weather perked up and I'm sure a good time was had by all.

Highlights for me were the talk given by Steve Bowkett, the workshops run by the poet Maggie Harris and "Tales from the Wireless" by the wonderful Paul Dodgson - he's been my favourite tutor on three Ty Newydd courses in the past and it was great to see him again. Steve - a hypnotherapist, teacher and writer - entitled his presentation "Boosting Self-Confidence For Writers" and it certainly boosted mine. Maggie's second session, "Love, Sex and Other Serious Stuff in Poetry" attracted a very appreciative audience and some of the poems generated by the workshop were amazing. A thoroughly worthwhile couple of days.

Paul Dodgson

 

Maggie Harris

Steve Bowkett

A Welsh Poetic Hero

A lovely few days last week visiting North Wales with my daughter; it's a part of the world where I feel completely at home (although a South Walean by birth) and tremendously inspired by the fantastic scenery and the welcome that is always accorded. This visit was special in that it included a morning at the cottage of the Welsh poet Hedd Wynn (Ellis Humphrey Evans), where we were enertained by his nephew Gerald, a delightful 85 year old who lived there alone - without the benefit of electricity or any other modern convenience - until a couple of years ago.

The parlour of the cottage contains the six bardic chairs won by Hedd Wynn at eisteddfodau at the beginning of the last century. The story of the most prestigious, that from the 1917 National Eisteddfod, is a sad one. At the chairing of the bard ceremony the winning poem was announced as Yr Arwr ("The Hero"), written under the nom-de-plume Fleur-de-Lis, and the winner was asked to come forward; no one came to claim the prize. For it had been written by Hedd Wyn, who had been killed at Passchendaele six weeks beforehand. The chair was draped in black and the Archdruid spoke of "the festival in tears and the poet in his grave". He had been thirty years old and at the peak of his creative genius.

"The harps to which we sang are hung / on willow boughs, and their refrain is / drowned by the anguish of the young / whose blood is mingled with the rain" War by Hedd Wynn

Update on the Unknown Soldier project

Further to my blog entry below - over twenty one and and half thousand letters were sent to the Unknown Soldier before the closing date of August 4th (the centenary of World War One's outbreak). So many different, thought-provoking messages - stories (true and imaginary), poems, memories of those who fought at the front and those who served on the home front, many written in the form of letters from wives, sweethearts, children. They make hugely affecting reading - do look at the website, they'll be displayed there until the centenary of the war's end in 1918, after which they will be preserved in the British Library.

Brave New World

... the theme of this year's Cheltenham Literature Festival, the complete programme for which is revealed today. I shall be scanning the pages and no doubt signing up for a lot when the booking opens later this month. A definite though will be the Gloucestershire Writers Network event on the evening of Sunday October 5th. The results of this year's competition (based on the Festival's theme) were announced this week. Iris Lewis, an ex-colleague from Somewhere Else, has won in the short story category with her superb story "No Small Thing" and my colleague Derek Healey from Catchword was a runner up in the poetry section. I was also a runner-up with my short story "The Drop", so will be reading at the Festival event. Last year's GWN evening proved a great, really exciting experience so I'm delighted to be taking part again.

Can't guarantee such super weather but can guarantee a terrific Festival!

Dear Alfred ........

... or Frank, Jack, Wilfred .... I have belatedly come across the national project to write a letter to the Unknown Soldier whose statue graces platform one at Paddington Station. The letters, of which there will probably be many thousands, are to form a written war memorial which will appear online. Submissions already received and posted make thought-provoking reading at :

www.1418now.org.uk/letter/

Reading the letter

I have passed by the statue on many occasions but have only occasionally given it any thought. A good opportunity now to reflect for a while in a more concerted fashion and put pen to paper - as that soldier's wife or sweetheart, mother or sister perhaps? Or as myself now, in the 21st century, looking back at what we have made of the world he fought and may have died for? Not much time I'm afraid - submissions close on August 4th - but do take a look at the website and maybe add to the soldier's postbag with a letter of your own.

Commemoration

With the centenary of the outbreak of World War One almost upon us, many thousands of events must be planned all over Europe and indeed beyond. Here I shall be involved in two - one at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham next week and one with the Charlton Kings Community Players in October. At both, in different ways, I shall be telling the story of, and paying tribute to, my uncle, my father's oldest brother, killed in action at sea in 1917.

The Everyman event takes place in Matchams Bar next Thursday evening, July 31st, at 6pm. The poets Jennie Farley and Eley Furrell will be reading poetry written by servicemen and - most significantly for me - by women, both those at home and those working at the front in various theatres of war as nurses, doctors, ambulance drivers and providers of other essential services. Several years ago now I discovered many of their poems in "Scars Upon My Heart" (ed. Catherine Reilly, Virago) - an incredibly moving and thought-provoking collection.  Thought provoking too will be poet David Clarke's contribution next week - he'll be reading some German poetry and his own translations of it. The second part of the programme will have poems, prose readings and anecdotes from a variety of actors and other poets.The venue, if you don't know it, is quite small and intimate - so if you're free to come, do get a ticket soon.

An outline of John's story -

In 1915 the reality hit home that it was not invasion but starvation that could bring Britain to her knees; U boats attacking merchant shipping had to be dealt with. Churchill's “decoy ship” plan was sanctioned; he wrote to the Commander in Chief “A small or moderately sized steamer should be … fitted very secretly with two 12 pounder guns ... concealed with deck cargo. She should have an intelligence officer, a few seaman and two picked gunlayers, all .. disguised. If a submarine stops her she should … sink her by gunfire. The greatest secrecy is necessary to prevent spies becoming acquainted with the arrangements”.

Thus when my grandparents received the telegram informing them of their oldest son John's death in January 1917 they had no idea of the detail of his demise. Only when a shipmate visited after hostilities ended did they learn the story.

John was the signalman on HMS Penshurst, known as Q7 and the most successful of all the decoy ships. Off Portland Bill on a winter's afternoon the ship encountered UB37. In accordance with the agreed policy, a “panic party” appeared to abandon ship, leaving on board the hidden skeleton crew. The U boat fired off a couple of rounds at the bridge before cautiously approaching the supposedly empty vessel. There was no sign of life.

But on board two men lay dead and two were severely wounded. This was the supreme test for a Q ship's crew – it took bravery and immense courage to maintain absolute silence until the order came to fire despite your own horrific injuries. Mercifully on this occasion the wait was short. Within ten minutes the U boat came into range broadside, the commander pressed the bell for action. The sides of the dummy lifeboat fell away, the false deck-houses collapsed. John, 21 the week before, staggered to his feet and ran up the white ensign. Their first shot spelt the end of UB37. Penshurst steamed back to Portland as fast as the commander could get her there but it was too late for John. 

When John's colleague visited my grandparents almost two years later he brought with him a canvas bag. In it was a brass shell fashioned into a dinner gong. He handed it to my grandfather with the words “This is for you, sir, for you and Mrs Garrett. We made it on the ship in memory of John, the bravest, the most conscientious one of us all”. 

That gong we still have in our dining room, a salutary reminder almost a hundred years later of the tragedy of millions of wasted lives. 

Pastures New

Yesterday saw my first morning with the Catchword writing group in Cirencester. Many thanks indeed to the group for extending an invitation to join them and for making me so welcome. It's a great privilege to work with such talented and accomplished writers and I look forward very much to learning a lot from them!

Lively Ledbury

Where better to be on a beautiful summer Saturday than Ledbury, with its floral displays, cobbled lanes and interesting shops, to say nothing of its tempting tea-gardens, the ideal place to sit and while away an hour over your book or the papers. And yesterday it was especially alive for the second weekend of the annual Poetry Festival - throngs of people, "poets for hire" on street corners, "The Emergency Poet" (billed as "the world's first and only poetic first aid service") and poems pinned to walls and posted in windows all around the town.

Church Lane, Ledbury

I had gone particularly for "The Shadow Of His Hand", a session chaired by Paul Henry with the Welsh poets Owen Sheers, Stephen Knight and Oliver Reynolds talking about the influence of Dylan Thomas on their work. It proved a fascinating discussion. Later in the afternoon Bernard O'Donahue was speaking on the life and work of Seamus Heaney - also an event not to be missed and indeed very well attended. Between times I was fortunate to get a returned ticket for a writing workshop with the young poet Joey Connolly; it had been a sell-out but one participant's husband was unwell and unable to come with her. Should he be reading this - I do hope you are now recovering but thank you for facilitating a very interesting afternoon!

At The Bend In The River

John Fox CPT

 An inspiring, thought-provoking day today at the beautiful Hawkwood College on the outskirts of Stroud. Eleven of us from a wide geographical area joined the American poetry therapist John Fox for a workshop entitled "At The Bend In The River", reading the work of very different poets from all points of the globe and writing some of our own. A good opportunity to focus on writing around one particular topic (rivers), but especially useful for really listening to other people's work - having the time and space to home in on words and phrases which were personally meaningful for us as individuals. A day was nowhere near enough, of course; I so hope that John will come back to the UK before too long and that I shall have another chance to learn from him and enjoy his company again.

From Park to Brewery!

Yesterday was wall-to-wall poetry, starting with Poetry in the Park in Worcester and finishing with our Picaresque performance at Writers in the Brewery in Cirencester. The morning session was part of the fourth Worcestershire LitFest, under the direction of Polly Robinson; the creative writing tutor Sue Johnson has run several workshops based in local parks over the last twelve months and participants brought along and read the poems and short prose inspired by their history or layouts. An enjoyable morning - especially as I discovered that I was sitting next to someone who had lived five doors down the road from me fifty years ago! A fair bit of catching up to do there ......

Polly Robinson with Sue Johnson and two "park poets".

Writers in the Brewery, run by Rona Lacock once a month at the New Brewery Arts Centre, is always an interesting evening with an open mic alongside a presentation from an invited guest or guests. It was a great pleasure for all of us in Picaresque to be invited last night - we had a lovely appreciative audience and thoroughly enjoyed reading for them. Between us we also managed to win three out of the four raffle prizes!

A Centenary To Celebrate

A busy week coming up with lots of writing related activity. I'm really looking forward to seeing Theatr Cymru's production of "Under Milkwood" on Tuesday and on Thursday Picaresque will be guesting at Writers in the Brewery in Cirencester (at 7.30pm, in the New Brewery Arts Centre Theatre if you're free to join us). This week also sees Worcester LitFest and I shall be at two poetry sessions there, my old home town - they certainly didn't have anything so interesting going on when I lived there in the 50s and 60s though!

Consequently I shalln't be able to participate in a formal event being celebrated by the Friends of Dymock Poets on Tuesday. A hundred years ago on that day the poet Edward Thomas was on his way to meet Robert Frost when his train drew up "unwontedly" at Adlestrop, prompting the penning of what has to be one of the best loved poems in the English language. I have always enjoyed it and have made a pilgrimage to the village on more than one occasion (the station no longer exists but the station name plate is preserved in the bus shelter).  A couple of years ago I read "Now All Roads Lead To France", the wonderful biography of Thomas written by Matthew Hollis, and I have started reading much more of the poetry since. So even though I can't be at the commemoration in person, I shall definitely be there with "all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire" in spirit.

                      

Adlestrop

Edward Thomas

Yes, I remember Adlestrop --
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June. 

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop -- only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

Edward Thomas

A Day Without Love .....

Our hosts for the evening

 
 "A day without love is a year without a summer ..." - the sentiment expressed at the opening of the lovely evening I spent on Friday at Deep Space Artworks here in Cheltenham. Jennie Farley and Eley Furrell were hosting an evening of Love Poetry which certainly caught the imagination of all those present. Jennie and Eley read a selection of their favourite love poems and then some of their own before inviting members of the audience to do the same, sharing another poet's work and then one of their compositions. The breadth was tremendous - from the amusing to the heartbreakingly sad - but my favourite had to be "A Woman To Her Lover" by Christina Walsh, superbly performed by Kathy Alderman. Almost impossible to believe that this was written in the late 1700s!

A Woman To Her Lover

Do you come to me to bend me to your will
as conqueror to the vanquished
to make of me a bondslave
to bear you children, wearing out my life
in drudgery and silence?
No servant will I be
if that be what you ask. O lover I refuse you!

Or if you think to wed with one from heaven sent
whose every deed and word and wish is golden
a wingless angel who can do no wrong
go! - I am no doll to dress and sit for feeble worship
if that be what you ask, fool, I refuse you!

Or if you think in me to find
a creature who will have no greater joy
than gratify your clamorous desire,
my skin soft only for your fond caresses
my body supple only for your sense delight.
Oh shame, and pity and abasement.
Not for you the hand of any wakened woman of our time.

But lover, if you ask of me
that I shall be your comrade, friend, and mate,
to live and work, to love and die with you,
that so together we may know the purity and height
of passion, and of joy and sorrow,
then o husband, I am yours forever
and our co-equal love will make the stars to laugh with joy
and to its circling fugue pass, hand holding hand
until we reach the very heart of God.

Christina Walsh (1750 - 1800)

Pictures and poems

Those were the days!

Under the auspices of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival, I'm running three workshops at an AgeUK Day Centre with service users who have  communication and / or memory problems. Our first session today centred on childhood holidays. Using photographs from the 1920s to the 1940s as memory prompts, it was aimed to work at several levels - a combination of reminiscence therapy, group interaction and language stimulation. But more than anything it was a fun afternoon! And the resultant poem covered everything from bad tempered boarding house landladies to the vagaries of the tide in the Bristol Channel ..... I don't know who enjoyed the session more, the service users or me.

"Mind Above Water 2"

Russell Partridge with Anna Saunders

This evening I was involved in a reading at the launch of "Mind Above Water 2", a new book of poems and prose by Russell Partridge, at the Muffin Man in Cheltenham. Anna Saunders, the director of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival, met Russell at a drop-in centre where she teaches creative writing and hosted the evening for him. It was a real privilege to take part in his special evening and I wish him every success with his publication!

Several other local writers took part in the evening, reading both Russell's work and their own - here Howard Timms and Jennie Farley add their contributions.

Another move into the 21st century ....

I don't know why I held out for so long against e books. I acquired a Kindle about a fortnight ago and it's wonderful - so portable, so easy to use. The first book that I've read on it, a free download, is Emmeline Pankhurst's "My Own Story" - not a book I would probably have picked up in a book shop but one that has absolutely fascinated me. A very different style of writing, of course, a hundred years ago, but such a moving and inspiring story, outlining the desperate measures women had to resort to in the fight for the franchise. As she predicted, much has been written on the struggle for equality since, but I wouldn't have missed reading her own account.

Emmeline Pankhurst 1858 - 1928

"Other histories of the militant movement will undoubtedly be written; in times to come when in all constitutional countries of the world women's votes will be as universally accepted as men's are now; when men and women occupy the world of industry on equal terms, as co-workers rather than as cut-throat competitors; when, in a word, all the dreadful and criminal discriminations which exist now between the sexes are abolished, as they must one day be abolished ..."  and a century later we still have such a way to go ....

Music on a Summer's Evening

I may be Welsh and I have certainly heard Cwm Rhondda sung a thousand times, in chapels and concert halls, at rugby matches and funerals. But I have never heard it sung with such joyous enthusiasm, such sheer musicality, as I did earlier this evening. The Caring Chorus, the choir I wrote about last Christmas, composed largely of staff from our local health trust, were giving their second recital in Gloucester Cathedral - and it was again an outstanding success. Their range is wide - under their superb conductor, they tackled everything from Czech mourning songs to 1960s pop via "Over The Rainbow" and "A Gaelic Blessing" - and to see the enjoyment they get from making music is just so inspiring. What a tremendous evening.

Getting ready to perform - Lucy Matthieson (founder) and the Caring Chorus

A Touch Of Summer?

It probably won't last, but today the weather is glorious, bluebells and wild garlic are carpeting the woods, my sandals came out for the first time this year - and I've heard that my story "The Parish Priest" was the runner-up in the West Country Writers Association Short Story Competition 2013! In truth I'd forgotten all about it; the closing date was last November and, as I'd heard nothing, I'd assumed I'd got nowhere with it. I haven't written much prose for a while and have been thinking it's time to get down to another story or two - so this will certainly spur me on!

A Useful Family!

After a two week Easter break, my Exeter University course in Writing Family History has restarted. So much of my family background - and especially the social history in which it's encapsulated - has proved fertile ground for writing, often fictionalised but also as the basis for factual articles and essays. A lot of my poetry, too, has sprung from recollections of people and places from my past; a recent example was rooted in my grandmother's strong Baptist faith.

Remember the Sabbath Day

Nan and Pop c. 1950

There was something about that hat she 

wore -

Bible black, with netted brim

to catch the alleluias,

a trinity of purple flowers

that graced its band,

a pin to skewer Satan.

Her chapel hat. She'd ram it on

with prayer-booked hands in tidy gloves,

check the oven for the Sunday roast,

raise high the cross

and sally forth

to hymn her way to Zion.

(Copyright Gill Garrett 2014)

Much to do at Much Wenlock

Victoria Field

Poetry events continue to come thick and fast. I was only able to make it for one day this year but, as always, the Much Wenlock Poetry Festival did not disappoint. This morning I was at a workshop run by the poetry therapist Victoria Field; having been on a course at Ty Newydd she had run a few years ago I knew it would be good. A quotation she used really struck a chord - that the therapeutic use of poetry should help with "healing the past, living the present, creating the future". That I shall keep very much in mind in my continuing work with older people in day and residential care.

This afternoon's workshop, entitled "Responses", was run by Gladys Mary Coles. Using poems by Mary Webb and Wilfred Owen as exemplars, we looked at the themes of remembrance, displacement, change and the human impact on the environment. Two hours is little time to get to grips with much concerted writing but I feel I certainly made a start on some work I'd like to pursue. Now - as always - it's a question of finding the time to do so!

A Stanza of Poets

I'm not sure what the collective noun is for a group of poets but I quite like "stanza"! And what a great stanza we had last week up in Cumbria. A diverse group, with very different writing styles but so interesting - and most encouraging to a fledgling like myself. Kim Moore and Jennifer Copley made excellent tutors, certainly working us hard (in fact, it felt like coming home for a rest on Friday!) but pushing forwards to get the most possible out of our five days together.

...and the sun shone on the righteous!

 We had the benefit too of a visit by two guest poets on the Wednesday evening. Carole Coates  (who was described by Peniless Press as "sharp and not to be messed with") read from "Swallowing Stones", her sequence of fictional monologues from the chilling world of Kor - quite an electrifying experience. Andrew Forster, the literature officer with the Wordsworth Trust, made good on his comment that "poetry should surprise" - I really enjoyed his work. I'm trying to resist the temptation to buy yet more poetry books but his pamphlet "Digging", so fantastically illustrated by Hugh Bryden (Roncadora Press), was a must.

Now, after a week of "Encounters" - with the landscape (see below), art, the past, the body and the dead - copious scribblings and the planting of many seeds, it's down to some work on it all here. Thank you so much, Kim and Jenny - I'm definitely signing up for next year!

Dawn over Morecambe Bay

Wandering with Wordsworth

Abbot Hall Hotel

... though his daffodils are past their best here now. But I have rarely seen the Lake District in such lovely sunny weather - long may it last! A beautiful day today at Kents Bank, just outside Grange-over-Sands, a comfortable place to stay and excellent company on the five day poetry course I've come for - two highly experienced tutors and twelve enthusiastic and very talented participants. I think I shall learn a lot this week.