Sunday 24 December 2017

Christmas greetings


Whether or not you hung up a stocking last night, whether or not you celebrate Christmas, after a year that has seen so much national and international tragedy and sadness I hope that this season brings us all what we need the most - peace, friendship, comfort and companionship, and the determination to make them last.


The Writer's Room


I always find it's good in the run-up to Christmas to have some other things to take your mind off the  the turkey, cards still not written, presents not yet bought! This has certainly been a busy week, with an interesting session on Thursday at Corinium Radio, being interviewed by Rona Laycock about "Digging Up The Family" for an edition of The Writer's Room to be aired on New Year's day. If you're in the land of the living after your New Year celebrations, you can hear the programme on-line (www.coriniumradio.co.uk) at 2pm, with repeats on January 3rd and 5th at the same time.

Now, however, it's 10pm on Christmas Eve, so if the turkey doesn't get some attention and the presents don't get wrapped ...


Tuesday 12 December 2017

In the bleak midwinter?

As I said in my previous post, I could do without winter - and quite happily hibernate from autumn to spring!  But I think even hibernating animals wake occasionally, and I'd certainly rouse myself for Christmas get-togethers - it's good to have the opportunity for catch-ups with people you rarely see during the rest of the year.

One Christmas get-together we've already had this year was last Friday's New Bohemians party night. I haven't been able to make many of their sessions this year and it was a most enjoyable evening. Seasonal music, mulled wine and mince pies and some hugely entertaining limericks about poets written and performed by Robin Gilbert and Roger Turner really got us into the mood; David Clarke's poetry quiz both amused and floored us - OK, we all knew the author of the excerpt from "A Child's Christmas In Wales", but would you recognise a picture of Sharon Olds wearing a Father Christmas outfit?! Some great contributions in the open mic as always. New Bohemians goes from strength to strength and next year's programme sounds really promising too. 

Robin limericking

A seasonally decked Alison Brackenbury

The weekend brought my pet hates of the winter through - thick snow and freezing temperatures. Perhaps you heard Helen Mort on Radio 4 yesterday talking about seasonal poetry and why snow in particular has inspired so many poets (myself included - see below!). After the coldest night of the year here and pavements like ice rinks outside this morning, I think I'm hunkering down for the day; there's more than enough work on the desk. 

Child's Play

Mouldering leaves beneath
fog smothered lamps,
snow shrouded streets, 
ponds in rigor mortis - 
winter is trigger-happy,
a small boy pointing a stick,
"Bang, bang - you're dead!"

But, come the spring,
it's time to go home for tea.
His victims jump up, resurrected,
laughing at the absurd game
he won't play again
until next December.

(Copyright Gill Garrett 2015)

Friday 8 December 2017

"It was a dark and stormy night ..."

For a variety of reasons I'm rarely able to perform with our local Community Players these days, but I do miss "treading the boards" and I always try to support the group's productions. Each December they have a seasonal revue and raise funds for local charities; the event has been running for nearly twenty years now and is a highlight in the Charlton Kings calendar. Last night's was terrific - a full house, an appreciative audience and a great line up of acts.

Once upon a time ...

Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed the music that was played and the poems that were read, it was the stories that really caught my imagination. And they started me thinking of all the people who, over centuries, have sat around on cold winter nights, weaving magic with tales of ghosts and griefs, love and longing, heroism and homesickness. Last night we were sitting in a dark church hall with rain lashing the windows; I don't doubt that our ancestors, probably sitting by fires in caves, predators prowling in the blackness outside, were equally enthralled, moved, frightened and amused by the story-tellers of their time! There's something very special about the tradition of oral story-telling.

Whilst I've been typing this, it's started to snow quite heavily. Again this year my garden has seemed confused by autumn and the onset of winter - I've had primroses out since November and a fine crop of buds on the tree just outside the study window. Winter isn't my favourite season and a bit of a spring preview certainly cheers me along, but I just hope that these premature visitors will survive through the worst of what's to come!


Thursday 30 November 2017

Out into the world ...


What an amazing evening it was on Tuesday - I was surrounded by so many friends and writing colleagues for the launch of "Digging Up The Family"; New Brewery Arts in Cirencester is a great venue and we celebrated there with wine, cakes and nibbles and, as always, a good open mic session afterwards. Nearly everyone read poems or prose inspired by family - I'd obviously touched a chord!

My family, both past and present, have given me so much in the way of inspiration for poetry and fiction as well as for the social history I've just published - I have a lot to thank them for. Through my research I learned so much about my forebears and the worlds in which they lived - and a lot about myself too. Time consuming and frustrating as it was at times, I'm so glad that I pursued the project and I'm delighted that readers are telling me how interesting they're finding the end result.

Before I launch into another major undertaking though, I want to tidy up and complete some smaller ventures I've been working on. Today of course is the last day of NaNoWriMo and the exercise I set myself for the month - the 1000 words a day of memoir - has provided some good (if somewhat disorganised!) material to incorporate into one of them. "Fragments", my people watching poetry collection, is nearing completion too. Perhaps the New Year will see a new direction - I've got several ideas but they all need some careful thinking through before I commit to anything!

My thanks to everyone who made Tuesday
such a great evening!

Monday 27 November 2017

"Digging Up The Family"

Rudyard Kipling wrote "If history were taught as stories, they would never be forgotten." Unfortunately, that was certainly not the way I was taught history during my school days. Then there were lists of dates to learn, battles to memorize, treaties to understand. And it was definitely "his-story" - accounts of famous men and their military exploits, their political intrigues and conquests of far-flung places, none of which I could relate to. It was many years before I learned that real history is also "her-story"; it's the exploration of how ordinary people were born, lived and died against a backdrop of their wider society. And as such, it has come to fascinate me.

Tomorrow my very modest contribution to history writing is published. Whilst the stories in it - of conflict and romance, crime and retribution, economic hardship and personal triumph - are based on my own family, they are also universal. For the Carters and the Garretts from whom I come are not the great and the good about whom biographies are usually written or television programmes made. They are ordinary people of their time and place, their lives woven into the fabric of the everyday world. They are the people behind the statistics, the individuals who make up our common history.

You can join my quest to unearth the reality of life for so many of the working classes, from the farms of Dorset and Pembrokeshire to the mines, foundries and dockyards of Monmouthshire, from the days of George III to the aftermath of the Second World War. "Digging Up The Family - A Lesson In Social History" is published by Matador (ISBN: 9781788038997); it's available from Troubador Publishing Ltd at £7.99. I hope you find it as interesting to read as I did to research and write!





Wednesday 22 November 2017

Stop the world - I want to get off!

Sometimes I think it would be nice if the world could slow down for a couple of days, just to let everyone catch up with themselves. Certainly this past week has been helter-skelter from start to finish, with little time to draw breath - some very enjoyable events but no time to get a real grip on things. The NaNoWriMo challenge doesn't help! That's a full time job in itself.

The evening event in Droitwich, at which a group of us read poems inspired by the recent art exhibition at Hanbury Hall, went very well indeed, despite the venue owner and several attendees getting caught up in the aftermath of an accident and arriving in a rush only minutes before the start! As we had been unaware of which pictures other poets had chosen, a few of us found we had written from the same ones - for example two of us had chosen "Malvern Hills", a landscape by Peter Hawkins. Far from being a problem, this was fascinating; the resulting poems could not have been more different and prompted some discussion on the highly individual perceptions we have of identical situations or experiences. Many thanks to Nina Lewis, the Worcestershire Poet Laureate, for inviting me to take part in the project.

Nina Lewis

Yesterday saw an interesting workshop with Angela France on the unexpectedly poetic topic of shopping - I'm certainly no shopaholic but I can now see the value of a good bit of retail therapy as inspiration! My two favourites of the poems discussed were "The Fat Black Woman Goes Shopping" by Grace Nichols and "The Seed-Shop" by Muriel Stuart - if you don't know them, they're certainly worth looking up. The workshop preceded a most enjoyable poetry lunch, hosted by my friend and colleague Kathy Alderman - lovely food and a great chance to catch up with what people are up to.

But the highlight of my week had to be the arrival of the first copies of my book, "Digging Up The Family - A Lesson In Social History". It's being published next Tuesday, November 28th, and I shall be launching it at Writers in the Brewery in Cirencester - if you're in the area, I'd be delighted if you joined us, 7 - 9pm in the New Brewery Arts Centre. The book has had a long and at times eventful gestation, so its final delivery is more than welcome!

Tuesday 14 November 2017

Having the occasional break ...

Well, the NaNoWriMo challenge that I set myself is certainly proving time consuming but I am now 13,000 words in, so I'm beginning to feel that the memoir I thought was dragging its feet is now properly on the move again. But I did allow myself an evening off yesterday to go to hear a reading by my friend and colleague Belinda Rimmer in Waterstones, an event organised by the Gloucester Poetry Society - and I'm so glad that I did. All the poems Belinda read were new to me; many were based around memory and it was fascinating to hear her talk of their genesis. It made me ponder on how much of ourselves and our background we reveal in our poetry, if only our readers / audience have the key to unlock it. Thank you for a really lovely evening, Belinda.

Belinda Rimmer

I shall be speeding on with today's word allocation this afternoon so that I can justify another evening off tonight - with my colleague Kathy Alderman, I shall be going to Droitwich for the poetry reading arranged by the Worcestershire Poet Laureate, Nina Lewis, further to the art exhibition on show last month at Hanbury Hall. The reading will be illustrated by slides of the original paintings, all the work of a local art group. It's open to the public and we'd love to see you there if you're in the vicinity - 7.30pm  at Parks Cafe, Victoria Square, in Droitwich.

Monday 6 November 2017

A saving grace

I've been very fortunate in the past to have the experience of reading and writing poetry with people, vulnerable for a variety of reasons, in many different settings; I've seen so many examples of the benefits that it can bring. But if you've ever wondered at the practical value of poetry, do go to this site today -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/magazine-41852073/poetry-touched-the-still-alive-part-of-me

I found this immensely moving, to hear how the experience of creative writing has changed the life of Alex, a man homeless for 30 years. Hear him read his poem "In the worst of times ..." and find out how poetry reached what he terms "the still alive part of me."

In a similar vein - I was delighted on Friday to find out that a poem of mine will be included in the Carers UK anthology "Not In The Plan" which comes out at the end of the month. It was written for the Jo Cox Prize, in recognition of the contribution of young carers, and I'll be reading it at a celebratory event in London on November 30th. Our health and social care services in this country would collapse were it not for the huge input of family and informal carers and each year Carers UK provides a platform for poetry and prose celebrating their contribution. It's a real privilege to take part in it. 


Wednesday 1 November 2017

Two nights out and thirty days in!

I've had a couple of very enjoyable nights out in the last week - at a "Dylan Thomas dinner"  organised by the Penallt Art Group in the Wye Valley for what would have been the poet's 103rd birthday, and at Writers in the Brewery in Cirencester with the very much alive and kicking Matthew Caley. Matthew read from "Rake", his fifth collection, which contains - in his own words - many "back handed love poems." Covering everything from time travelling to misery memoirs, his reading was both amusing and thought-provoking. But actually, to use the term "reading" is quite incorrect; the poems were very skillfully performed - not in the flamboyant manner of some performance poets (which I often find quite off-putting), but with great verbal dexterity and precision.

Matthew Caley

And now here we are into November - NaNoWriMo for those brave or foolhardy enough to tackle the first draft of a novel in 30 days! I wish them all well - it's certainly not a challenge for the faint-hearted. But I've decided on a challenge of my own this year to keep them company as they slog through their 50,000 words. I've always been a slow, methodical writer - a practice that has served me well enough in the past, but one that I might take leave of absence from for a month to experiment with some other approaches. A recent article by the writer Jenny Alexander on "Free Range Writing" - essentially breaking out of your box - caught my interest. I've got two projects underway at present (a memoir and the completion of my people-watching collection); I'm aiming to make substantial progress with both by the end of the month, writing at least 1000 words a day of the memoir and having the poetry all set to go out into the world before Christmas. To achieve that, I think the rest of my life goes on hold from here on in!

Tuesday 24 October 2017

Poems from pictures

I've always enjoyed working from other art forms - paintings, music, photographs - and an exhibition currently on display at the National Trust's Hanbury Hall near Droitwich provided plenty of inspiration for poems when I visited last week. Local artists have a tremendous variety of work on display in the Long Gallery there; along with some other poets, I was invited by Nina Lewis, the Worcestershire Poet Laureate, to create some poems in response to it. We'll be reading a selection of the resulting poems on November 14th at Parks Cafe in Droitwich (see the poster below for details) - if you're in the area, do come along and join us, it should prove a very interesting and enjoyable session.


Wednesday 18 October 2017

The GWN at the Cheltenham Literature Festival

This year's GWN winners and runners-up

What a great evening on Sunday! This year the Gloucestershire Writers' Network event at the Cheltenham Literature Festival saw a packed venue, with a very appreciative audience supporting the winners and runners-up in the annual poetry and prose competitions and listening to fantastic readings by Lania Knight and Roy Macfarlane, our two judges. Sorry as I was to part with the Poet's Hare (who had graced my writing desk for the last twelve months), I was delighted to present him to Frances March, the winner of the poetry section with her evocative "1956 : Sheltered". And Nastasya Parker's short story, "The Maze", was a well-deserved prose winner, beautifully and poignantly exploring the "Who do we think we are?" theme of the Festival.

From the work that they both read - Lania from her novel "Three Cubic Feet" and Roy from his collection "Beginning With Your Last Breath" - it was obvious that we could not have chosen better writers to judge a competition based around perceptions of identity.  We'd presented them with no small task; we'd had a bumper crop of entries, all of a very good standard. We're immensely grateful to them for the big commitment of time that the work entailed and for the care with which they approached the task.

With Frances March














Nastasya Parker


With Lania and Roy and my GWN committee colleagues
Penny Howard, Kathryn Alderman and Judith Dijkhuisen

Friday 13 October 2017

Parting company with old friends


Today I started a job that has been on my "To Do" list for ages - but that I've been putting off and off. We have books in every room in the house (yes, every room!); if we come to downsize in the not too distant future, that library has got to be rationalised somehow. But where to start? How to choose what stays and what goes? This is not going to be achieved in a hurry ...

As I scanned the bookcases I found my whole life encapsulated there - the hardback classics I'd read in childhood, books that had belonged to my parents, all the Tolkien and C. S. Lewis stories I'd read with my children. Books I'd had as prizes at school, books given to me as presents over the years, books written and signed by friends - all there and reminding me so much of people and places important to me over the years. There were books I'd read and reread, ones that had made me laugh and ones that had seen me through difficult times - and so many that I couldn't possibly part with!

But on the first cull I have ended up with three large bags to contribute to our local Red Cross bookshop. Good to think that a worthwhile charity can benefit from them - and if I can feel that the people who buy them will get half as much enjoyment out of them as I have, I shalln't regret it.




Tuesday 3 October 2017

Leaves and lines



I always enjoy watching summer sliding into September, with the leaves beginning to turn, the subtle alteration in the light; I love to sense the change in the air when I walk the dog in the mornings. But this year circumstances got the better of me - having spent a fortnight hardly leaving house or hospital, I emerged blinking at the weekend to find autumn, my favourite season, already firmly established. A timely reminder that, whilst our lives may be on hold with personal traumas, the world moves on and life elsewhere continues.

But now there is much to look forward to, especially on the poetry front. I was interested to read in the Guardian on Saturday that Nielson Bookscan had reported a 10% year on year increase in poetry sales, and last week's National Poetry Day was a resounding success, with events not only in the usual venues but in all manner of unexpected places. Far from being a now neglected art form as it's sometimes portrayed, poetry is not just alive and well but thriving in this country.

And it certainly thrives in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire! This month sees the Swindon Poetry Festival (October 5th - 9th), the Cheltenham Literature Festival (at which I'll be introducing the Gloucestershire Writers' Network event) running from 6th - 15th, the Mere Literary Festival (at which I'll be reading two of my poems shortlisted for the Poetry Prize) from 9th - 15th and the first ever Gloucester Poetry Festival (October 26th - 29th). We're certainly spoiled for choice in this neck of the woods! All the events promise to be interesting and enjoyable so do join us at some of them if you can - there are details on all the relevant websites.

Friday 22 September 2017

The Pity Of War


Ever since studying their works for A level English, I've been interested in the poets of the First World War. More recently I've read quite a bit of poetry from the Second World War too - and women's poetry from both conflicts, so often overlooked and so much worth the effort to unearth and to read. There's also some excellent prose out there, which looks at the actual and imagined lives of the war poets - such as Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy, which I've reread several times.

But last night it was a stage production that fascinated me - Flying Bridge Theatre Company's "Not About Heroes" by Stephen Macdonald at the Savoy in Monmouth, which traced the development of the relationship between Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. The play is set during their time at Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh, where Owen had been sent with "shellshock" and to where Sassoon had been shunted after his "Finished With The War" letter (sent to his commanding officer but picked up by the press and read out in Parliament). The emphasis in the play is very much on the development of the two men's poetry but it also examines other aspects of their relationship, including its probable homosexual nature. It's a brilliant and very powerful piece of work; last night was only the second night of the current tour, which runs until the middle of November, so there's still plenty of opportunity to catch a performance. You can find all the details at www.flyingbridgetheatre.co.uk 

Saturday 16 September 2017

Form and Fragments

In interesting morning earlier this week - a tutorial with Angela France looking at less common poetic forms. I was very taken by the "decima" - of Spanish / Portugese origin, it has ten lines of eight syllables and a tight rhyming scheme. Having attempted one or two somewhat unsuccessfully since, I have high regard for the "decimistas" in Latin America who apparently have fast moving "battles" to improvise the form on stage!

Most of the week, however, has been spent by the hospital bedside of a family member. I had thought that my "Fragments" people watching project was coming to a close, but the experience has certainly re-ignited it. Whilst the physical hospital environment has changed dramatically since I began my nursing career many years ago, so much of what goes on within it has not changed at all - dramas great and small are played out, hopes are raised or dashed, families come together or fall out in the highly charged atmosphere that illness imposes. The observer in a hospital ward has a ring-side seat; what more could a writer ask for?

Tuesday 5 September 2017

The year moves on ...

The last couple of weeks have passed in a rather manic blur and suddenly autumn seems to be upon us - chilly evenings, mist hanging low over the river in the mornings and the leaves definitely beginning to turn. And, as usual, autumn brings the Gloucestershire Writers' Network event at the Cheltenham Literature Festival - for which we now have our competition winners lined up. I was responsible for collating the entries but didn't read them until after the judging - and then I realised what an onerous task we had set our judges! Not only did we have a very healthy number of entries this year, they were of really excellent quality. But Roy MacFarlane did stirling work with the poetry entries and Lania Knight did a great job on the prose ones. They'll both be reading at the Festival event too, on Sunday October 15th, so it should be a great evening.

Yesterday "Chasing The Horizon", the anthology from our Catchword group in Cirencester, arrived from the printers. Ten of us have contributed a mix of poems and short stories and it makes an interesting and entertaining read. It's available locally and from members of the group. We meet weekly in the hall of Ashcroft Methodist Church, which will be open to all on Saturday as part of the national annual Heritage Open Days event; the anthology will be on sale there too, so, if you're in the Cirencester area, do call in, meet some of us over a coffee and maybe treat yourself to a copy.



Thursday 24 August 2017

What is truth?



In the immortal phrase - what is truth? Events are remembered in such different ways by those who took part in them. The above photograph was taken at a children's party at the Dry Dock in Newport to celebrate the Queen's coronation in 1953; sixty four years later I'm sure that if you asked any of participants about what happened on that day, you'd get as many different responses as there were children there and many would contradict one another.

Yesterday an old school friend - who is also a writer - came to lunch and we were amused to find that we are both working on a memoir which will in part cover the same time and many of the same events in our lives. I shall be fascinated to see how differently we recall and document those times and happenings, what different slants we put on them. And if we diverge widely on the actual "facts" - whose truth will be the truth?

I am reminded of work I did with older people with dementia a few years ago, helping them to write their life stories. Sometimes family members would question how the person described a time, a place or an event in their past - "No, that's not how it was - she's got that wrong."  But I firmly believe that truth is relative - relative to the person whose truth it is, especially in that situation. We all make sense of our experiences, integrate them into our personal and world view, in our own ways - which is what, for me, makes autobiographical writing such a fascinating genre.

Wednesday 16 August 2017

Journeying in words

Until I became interested in writing creative non-fiction a couple of years ago, I was not a great reader of travel writing - by which I don't mean the guidebooks that sometimes purport to be travel writing, but the works of writers such as Jan Morris, Rory Maclean and Justin Marozzi, books that take you into other places, into new experiences, that alter and enlarge your view of the world. Now they form a substantial part of my reading.

At the moment I'm lucky enough to be reading a manuscript for a friend, an account of an extraordinary journey that will hopefully be published in the next year or so and which will attract, I'm sure, a wide readership. To me it exemplifies the three components which I believe make travel writing so compelling - encounters with the landscape and the natural world, encounters with other people and - most importantly - encounters with the self. Because in making and recording journeys writers inevitably face up to their own strengths and weaknesses, have to deal with new, perhaps unexpected, situations, are in some subtle way changed by what they experience.

My own journeyings have been modest, but for all the long distance walks I've done in recent years (the Severn Way, the Holst Way etc) I've kept journals, supplemented by photographs which my husband has contributed. Several poems have had their genesis in these walks, but I'm now looking back over the journals to identify other areas of potential - and in itself the activity is providing a great opportunity to relive some thoroughly enjoyable experiences!


A stretch of the
Wye Valley Walk

Friday 11 August 2017

A Festival and "Fragments"

I'm sure we all have times when life "bites us in the bum" as a friend so elegantly puts it, and that certainly describes things here over the last couple of weeks! But today has been a good day with the style proofs arriving for "Digging Up The Family" (I'm delighted with them) and advance publicity arriving about the Cheltenham Literature Festival; full details of the programme are due out tomorrow but you may already have seen previews in today's Times. Our Gloucestershire Writers' Network event is scheduled for the evening of Sunday October 15th. It promises to be a really good evening - not only do you get to hear poetry and prose from our brightest and best local writers, our two competition judges, Roy MacFarlane and Lania Knight, will be reading from their latest publications.Tickets go on sale in the first week of September. Our event has been a sell-out in recent years, so don't miss your chance!

What with family, health and other personal issues taking up inordinate amounts of time and energy, writing has made slow progress lately. But the odd half an hour has seen a couple of "fragments" for my people watching project, which I'm hoping to illustrate with some of my husband's photographs. The project started a while ago now and has grown sporadically over the last couple of years, but it may actually be coming to fruition at last!



Moving into care
She turns out drawers,
prospecting, sifting
a life nearing completion.
What to keep,
to let go?
Specks of gold
  glisten in the mud.


Sunday 30 July 2017

Deadlines

Perhaps most writers are like me - galvanized into action by a looming deadline! The Gloucestershire Writers Network Competition closed yesterday and I was inundated with last minute submissions. We have certainly had a bumper crop of both poems and short stories this year, so my weekend has been wall to wall collation. Now I'm facing a deadline with some proof reading and also a submission of my own ... hence the paucity of recent posts and the brevity of this one!

Friday 21 July 2017

"The Hill"

We have walked on Leckhampton Hill, just outside Cheltenham, countless times with the dog - but only yesterday evening did I get a real feeling for "The Hill" in all its manifestations. We were at the launch of Angela France's new poetry collection (published by Nine Arches Press), a wonderful almost encyclopaedic examination in poetry of  the flora and fauna, the geology, the history and the people of this amazing area which has held a special place in the hearts of locals since protesters stood up for their rambling rights over a century ago when faced with an intransigent landowner who tried to enclose the hill.

Angela's readings were accompanied by film and voice-overs based on verbatim archive material - the speech by the "King of the Common", Walter Ballinger, who led the protesters, letters to the local paper, solicitors replies. It was a fascinating tour around time and place. As Claire Crowther puts it in her review "This magical book shows poetry can still perform its ancient task of recording history memorably." And even if you're not local and not conversant with the protesters' story, there is so much to enjoy in the poems - you'll meet foxes and farm workers, Good Friday revellers and Roman snails, dry stone wallers and teenagers up to what teenagers get up to away from adult eyes. Well worth a good read.


Angela signing copies of "The Hill"

Monday 17 July 2017

Words, words and more words ...

At the moment I feel I'm drowning under a deluge of proof-reading! I'm still working my way through the copy edit of "Digging Up The Family" and at the weekend an anthology to which I'm contributing arrived in my in-box too. So there's little progress being made with any new work just now.

But by way of diversion I've had two interesting evenings out. On Thursday I was at a fascinating talk in Monmouth by Bella Bathurst, the author of Stories of Hearing Lost and Found, in which she describes her personal journey from hearing to deafness and back again. If you haven't read the book, I can highly recommend it; it gives tremendous insight into the realities of living with so common an impairment. And yesterday evening I was at Buzzwords here in Cheltenham for a workshop and readings by the poets Anna Saunders and John Row - very different styles and approaches, but both stimulating and enjoyable.

But now it's back to the proofs ...

Friday 7 July 2017

Hearing voices

I was reading an article about Jodi Picoult yesterday in which she talked about her inspiration and her approach to writing fiction. No, it wasn't the plot that came to her first, she said - it was the characters. And she "got to know" those characters by living with them for a while and listening to them; from that a plot would fall into place.

It was something of a relief to read of other writers "hearing voices"! For both fiction and poetry I often find that voices "speak" to me in different settings. Products of a fertile imagination they may be, but it's from "listening" to them that I get both ideas and enthusiasm.

A few days ago I was walking in Bishop's Knoll in Bristol. Now owned by the Woodland Trust, this area was the site of a large house with extensive gardens well into the twentieth century; the grounds are now slowly being opened up again, although the house was pulled down some time ago. But during the First World War it was owned by a man who had made his fortune out in Australia. Many Anzac troops were fighting in Europe alongside their British counterparts and, in gratitude for what Australia had done for him, he decided to open up a hospital in his home for their wounded who were evacuated back to this country. More than 2,000 passed through the house in the four years of the conflict. And I "found" a couple of them walking in the gardens, wanting their story told a hundred years later ... and very insistent they've been too. How could I not oblige them?! Great material from which to write.

Woods still echoing with
Aussie voices ...

Thursday 29 June 2017

A launch and a deadline

I haven't been able to make the last couple of New Bohemians evenings at deepspaceworks but I'm very much looking forward to tomorrow, when David Clarke is launching his new pamphlet "Scare Stories" there at 19.30. He'll be reading to a backdrop of film made by Helen Dewbery and Chaucer Cameron of "Elephant's Footprint" and it promises to be an interesting evening. David's poetry is certainly thought-provoking and his readings are always well worth attending. Do join us if you're free - tickets are £6.50 on the door and include wine, canapes and cake. The venue is an interesting one too if you haven't been, in Hamilton Street, Charlton Kings in Cheltenham; it has wide use by the local community and Su Billington does extraordinary work there on no external funding.

I'm busy at present collating entries for the annual Gloucestershire Writer's Network competition as the deadline rapidly approaches. If you're eligible to enter the poetry and prose competitions (by living or working in Gloucestershire) and you haven't done so yet - you only have four weeks to go! You can get all the information by e mailing me on gillgwn@gmail.com - we'd love to hear from you. The prize money has been increased this year to £200 each for the poetry and prose section winners, who, along with the runners-up, present their work at the prestigious Cheltenham Literature Festival in October, with hospitality in the Writers Room beforehand and publication afterwards. Definitely worth having a go at it! We are delighted to have as our judges this year the poet Roy McFarlane and writer Dr. Lania Knight, a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Gloucestershire and they too will be reading at the Festival.

Thursday 22 June 2017

National Writing Day

Do hope you didn't miss National Writing Day yesterday. There were events all over the country to encourage creative writing, especially among young people. The initiative was led by First Story, the organisation that works with teachers and pupils in secondary schools in low income communities to promote writing as a important and valid means of improving literacy and confidence. With the emphasis in schools these days so often put on non-creative, exam based subjects, I'm certain that it's more important than ever that young people have the opportunity to play with words, tell their stories through them, gain confidence in their ability to communicate in writing - with spelling and grammar appropriately learned but not squeezing the pleasure out of every written encounter!!!

If you haven't visited it already, do go to the National Writing Day website. Especially if you're a teacher or have children of your own you're hoping to interest in creative writing, there are loads of ideas there and some very useful downloadable resources.

Sunday 18 June 2017

A time apart

Radio silence for the past week. I was staying on Exmoor; whilst there I rarely had a phone signal and the internet connection was intermittent to put it mildly! And we are all so dependent on technology these days ...

But the positives definitely outweighed the negatives. From my window I looked out over the Bristol Channel to Wales and the evening skies and sunsets were stunning; the coastline with its steep cliffs and hidden bays is fantastic; Exmoor itself - so wild and empty - has a really haunting beauty. All very conducive to thinking and writing - no wonder so many poets and authors have found their inspiration there. I was delighted to get a poem together at last; I'd been carrying around some lines in a notebook and some ideas in my head for it for at least two years, so it had a lengthy gestation. But the time and the place were obviously right last week and then it almost wrote itself.

And simply having some space in my days gave me the opportunity to consider what's to be my next "big project" now that "Digging Up The Family" is with the publishers. Again, I'd had the kernel of an idea in my mind but it's now taking root - watch this space as they say!


"I must down to the sea again ..."


Thursday 8 June 2017

A stiff challenge!

This week I've got a family commitment that leaves only occasional short slots in the day free - certainly no opportunity for any concerted writing. I somewhat misguidedly thought it might be an opportunity to experiment with some short restrictive poetic forms, not usually my preferred approach. So the odd half hours have seen early attempts at cinquain, tanka etc. - with some salutary results! The form that has completely defeated me is the englyn, the Welsh tradition with its strict syllabic counts, set rhyme and half-rhyme patterns: an incredibly difficult challenge.

The experience has, however, served to prompt my interest in more formal styles. But I think I shall postpone any further attempts until I have the time and energy to give them the concentration that they undoubtedly require!

Wednesday 31 May 2017

"The Habits Of Wannabee Highly Effective Writers"

This month's Writers In The Brewery in Cirencester featured my Catchword colleague Pam Keevil as guest speaker. She gave a very interesting presentation, using the principles outlined in Steven Covey's "The Habits Of Highly Effective People" as a springboard from which writers can work. The principles have definitely worked for Pam, whose new novel "Virgin At Fifty" will be published by Black Pear in September. She's mastered several genres in the past - including such disparate areas as children's fiction and erotica! - and she continues to write prolifically.

Two of Pam's principles that struck chords with me related to Covey's "syngergize" and "sharpen the saw". Under the practical aspects of synergizing, Pam spoke of the value of checking out what you are doing with other people; I've written before about the value I place on my writing groups but I would re-iterate how incredibly helpful I find the constructive criticism from my fellow members. "Sharpening the saw" Pam exemplified by looking at keeping up to date, studying what's being published, what's selling well, what's winning competitions, to challenge ourselves, to prompt us to try new avenues in our writing.

Pam is a very good and entertaining speaker. It was certainly an enjoyable evening - and one that left the audience with plenty of food for thought.




Friday 26 May 2017

Seeing the wood and the trees


The Cheltenham Poetry Society Awayday was blessed with amazing weather on Wednesday - and its participants were extremely well fed! Dumbleton Hall certainly proved a good venue with a pleasant conference room and excellent food. Seventeen of us spent the morning working firstly on poems about wooden objects and then on ones about the trees from which they came. That second session reminded me that a year or so ago I was writing a lot about myths and legends - woods and forests play a major role in so many of those of course, and I was prompted into thinking more about what I wrote then and how and what I could add to that collection.

Our afternoon session was led by Stuart Nunn and focused on landscape poetry. There were diverse opinions on the validity of a quote used that "We can no longer indulge in the simple pleasures of the 'retreat and return' approach to nature" (as perhaps exemplified in the Romantic poets). I'm all for realism in poetry; nature can most definitely be "red in tooth and claw" and, of course, the physical environment is always characterised more by change than stasis. The urban landscape - often raw or bleak - provides enormous food for thought and huge opportunities for poetry. But I'm firmly of the opinion that there's space for all sorts of poetic approaches to landscape, with so-called "radical landscape poetry" simply being part of a continuum. I believe that individual poets may quite legitimately choose any point on that continuum from which to write - but I'm well aware this is not a currently fashionable viewpoint to hold!

The idyllic landscape at Dumbleton

Sunday 21 May 2017

Pictures and poems

I've spent an interesting couple of days choosing illustrations for "Digging Up The Family". It's taken longer than I anticipated, as going through piles of family photos sidetracked me with monotonous regularity. And of course the eternal cry went up - "Why didn't they write names and dates on the back?"! Trying to identify the woman in the boiler suit in a WW1 munitions factory photo and the naval rating on board a converted minesweeper - when everyone who knew them has been long dead - proved quite a challenge. I just have to hope now that the publishers will find the photos are of a high enough specification to print acceptably.

I'm very much looking forward to the Cheltenham Poetry Society Awayday on Wednesday this week. It's being held at Dumbleton Hall Hotel near Evesham, a beautiful Cotswold stone 19th century country house with excellent facilities. And with John Betjeman having been a regular visitor there back in the day, it can't fail to provide plenty of poetic inspiration!

Friday 12 May 2017

Fitting it all in

I'm just clearing the decks after a busy and interesting few days, in the hope that I can actually make some writing time today! There seem to be so many activities that are in some ways peripheral but in other ways integral to the writing process and so little time to fit them all in ...

But the Cheltenham Poetry Festival Players event at the Playhouse on Monday evening went well and we read to a good, very appreciative audience. I'm sorry to be missing several other promising Festival events because of other commitments, but I'm looking forward to the John Heggley workshop next Sunday morning. And then, before we know where we are, the Ledbury Poetry Festival will be upon us; if I had the time and the money, I think I could happily spend my days swanning around the countryside immersing myself in dawn to dusk poetry and all the accompanying activities that make these events so enjoyable.

Wednesday saw a very informative visit to Troubador Publishers in Kibworth, where I went for what was billed as a "self-publishing experience day". Matador, one of the company's self-publishing arms, had been recommended to me by a writing colleague and the team that I met and talked to about publishing "Digging Up The Family" certainly impressed. As most of my previous publishing experience has been with major conventional publishers such as Macmillan, I had a lot to learn. But at long last the manuscript is complete (although illustrations are still outstanding - they've now risen to the top of the ever-expanding "To Do" list so will probably account for most of the weekend!) - I'm anxious to get it out into the world.

Monday 8 May 2017

Weekend highlights

The difficulty with so wide ranging an event as the Cheltenham Poetry Festival is always deciding what to go to - neither time nor finances will stretch to doing everything, much though I might like to. But I thoroughly enjoyed the two sessions I'd chosen over the weekend - a workshop with Ben Parker and a talk by Professor John Goodby of Swansea University on recent "finds" relating to Dylan Thomas. Ben ran an excellent afternoon looking at different forms of list poems by Don Paterson, Joe Brainard and several others, and setting an exercise using one of these forms to write about abstract nouns such as failure or ambition. We were only a small group but there were certainly some interesting results.

Ben Parker and some of the workshop participants

Tonight sees the Festival Players presenting readings on the theme of "Time" at the Playhouse Theatre. I shall be performing alongside Robin Gilbert, Frances March and Peter Wyton, with a programme covering works by John Milton, Robert Browning, Rainer Maria Rilke, Emily Dickinson, Percy Bysshe Shelley and many more great poets. I have to admit that my two favourites are by U. A. Fanthorpe - "Now What?" and "Half Past Two". I only came across them when I was researching material for the evening and you may not be familiar with them, but they are well worth looking up!

Friday 5 May 2017

And we're off ...

A great start yesterday evening for the seventh Cheltenham Poetry Festival: Smokey Joes was full to bursting point for an event with a difference. Tyler Keevil and Mike Johnstone, two lecturers at the University of Gloucestershire, are themselves prose writers rather than poets but they brought along a number of students from various Creative Writing courses to read flash fiction inspired by poetry. From lines by Alice Walker, Jenny Joseph, Pablo Neruda, W. H. Auden, Maya Angelou, Emily Dickinson and many more came 150 word gems that moved to laughter, tears and reflection. The students put on a thoroughly good show.

The student readers

Preceding the students, we were treated to an amazing double act by Tyler and Mike. Having worked together for a decade, they are very familiar with each others writing and tailored readings from their novels into a seamless performance - in fact quite an electrifying one, as Anna Saunders, the Festival Director, remarked. I was interested to hear that Keevil's prose PhD had been supervised by a poet - and I'd say that poetic influence is definitely apparent in his writing.

Mike and Tyler

Day two sees an interactive poetry appreciation class, a workshop on list poems with Ben Parker and a reading by Ben and Matthew Sweeney this evening. Over the next ten days there's a tremendous variety of events in Cheltenham - if you are in the area, don't miss out on the opportunity to hear some really good poets and to have a very enjoyable time. There are still tickets available - do check the website and hope to see you here!

Wednesday 26 April 2017

Poets on page, stage and screen


It's been poetry right, left and centre this week, starting with a friend lending me the wonderful "Beginning With Your Last Breath", the debut poetry collection by Roy McFarlane. We are hugely delighted that Roy - one time Birmingham Poet Laureate and poet in residence at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust - has agree to be a judge for the Gloucestershire Writers' Network competition this year. The theme of the competition is "Who do we think we are?" and, as this collection of Roy's is an exploration of identity, I don't think we could have had a more appropriate person taking up the challenge.

Then, at Writers in the Brewery, Dominic James was the guest speaker. He read from "Pilgrim Station", his tremendously diverse collection which has poems on subjects as varied as deserters in the Middle East to Granny in her coffin ("She's much improved"!). It was a thoroughly enjoyable reading and fascinating to hear of his development as a poet. He spoke particularly of the importance of mentors and the value of a supportive group in which to work; reflecting on this later, I was very aware of how blessed I have been on both of those counts, having had tremendous encouragement and guidance from two excellent mentors (Rona Lacock and Jennie Farley) and much constructive criticism from my Catchword and Picaresque colleagues.

Dominic James

Finally this afternoon a group of us went to the Roses in Tewkesbury to see the Terence Davis film "A Quiet Passion". If you haven't seen it - do try to do so. The photography is terrific and the characters so well portrayed. I have long been an admirer of Emily Dickinson's poetry and will be reading some with the Cheltenham Poetry Festival Players at the Playhouse on May 8th. It's not an easy film to watch but I wouldn't have missed it. It's very true to the details of her life and death and the voice-over use of her poems is very effective - the final scene, to "Because I could not stop for death", being especially moving. I can thoroughly recommend a visit to see it.

Sunday 16 April 2017

Festival ahoy!

We're gearing up here in Cheltenham for the Poetry Festival, now only a couple of weeks away. And the advertising certainly isn't exaggerating when it says that this year's Festival is the "most diverse and exciting we've yet produced"! There are special student offers on selected sessions and workshop offers too; the workshops (this year to be run by John Hegley, David Clarke, Michael Scott and Ben Parker) are always a popular feature of the festival and are usually oversubscribed. Do look at the website to see what an amazing breadth of poetry is on offer and join us if you can. The Guardian once called the Festival "a poetry party with a healthy dose of anarchy" and it should definitely live up to that next month. 
I'm particularly looking forward to hearing Roy McFarlane (who has kindly agreed to be the poetry judge for the Gloucestershire Writers Network competition this year) and the John Goodby talk on Dylan Thomas. I'm event managing some sessions and I'll also be performing myself, as part of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival Players; with Robin Gilbert, Frances March and Peter Wyton I'll be doing a series of readings on the theme of "Time" in the Lounge at the Playhouse Theatre on Monday May 8th at 20.30. We're covering a broad span, era and style-wise - it promises to be an interesting evening.  

2017 brochure cover
  






Friday 7 April 2017

When it's Spring again ...

Spring always brings out a childish excitement in me; walking in the woods and on the hills these last few days has been so invigorating.The lovely weather probably won't last for long, but I'm making the most of it whilst it's here! We saw our first bluebell out in Crickley Hill country park on Monday; by Wednesday the woodland floor was carpeted with them. Our first cowslip was on the foothills of Cleeve on Wednesday; singly they never look impressive but en masse they are beautiful and I'm so looking forward to the lemon-yellow haze that will follow there in a few days time.

Violets in the woods
at Crickley

And spring is such a great time for people-watching! At this time of the year they seem to emerge blinking into the sunlight after the long winter's hibernation - pavement cafes are busy again, the gardeners are out in force and children are playing in the parks. I've just started a series of very short poems - snapshots really - inspired by glimpses of people in all sorts of settings. I've always built stories in my head around the man opposite me in the train, staring mournfully out of the window, or the married couple sitting in silence over their meal in a restaurant, and many have made it on to paper. I sometimes wonder what on earth the subjects would make of them if they were ever to read them!

Young Couple At Bristol Parkway 

Stations bookend their loving,
open and close each chapter.

Stranded on a draughty platform
thirty years on,
she'll re-read the romance.  

(Copyright Gill Garrett, 2017)


Saturday 1 April 2017

Gloucestershire Writers' Network

It's been a busy and an interesting week here. A small group of us have taken over the organisation of the Gloucestershire Writers' Network from Rona Laycock, who has run it very competently for the past six years. The annual highlight is the competition, which feeds into the Cheltenham Literature Festival; in addition to receiving monetary prizes, the winners and runners-up in the prose and poetry categories read at a special event at the Festival, one of the most prestigious on the national circuit. I've benefited hugely from my successful association with the competition over the last five years; it has opened up so many writing opportunities for me, so I'm delighted to be able to do something in return.

This week we've been talking about the competition on BBC Radio Gloucestershire and featuring in the Gloucestershire Echo. We're very anxious to have as wide an entry as possible from writers who live or work in the county - so if you're reading this and are Gloucestershire based, how about a poem or two or a short story on the theme of "Who Do We Think We Are?" by July 29th?! You can interpret the theme as widely as you like. Poems can be up to 50 lines, prose up to 750 words. The entry fee is a very modest £2.50 per item. A very generous donation has enabled us to offer two prizes of £200 this year, one for the winning poem, one for the winning prose - so it's worth having a shot at it!

The anthology of last year's
winning entries

You can find further details about entering on the following link - www.facebook.com/groups/GlosWriters

Friday 24 March 2017

Readings and Records

It was a really good evening at Smokey Joes on Wednesday at Poetry Cafe Refreshed. Jennie Farley read beautifully from her collection "My Grandmother Skating". Her poems are alive with lovers and wolves, cousins and monkeys, riding in horse-drawn carriages, seeking sanctuary in churches, playing with peg dolls in allotments - closely drawn characters in richly imagined landscapes as disparate as pre-revolutionary Russia and the family home territory of Lincolnshire. But I particularly enjoyed a preview of her new "gymslip" poems about her boarding school days; I look forward to hearing, and eventually reading, many more of those.

Jennie Farley

Then yesterday morning saw a group of us examining material from the Gloucester archives - a fascinating exercise. The documents (including court records, school logbooks, county asylum admission registers) are invaluable resources for historians, of course - but have so much potential for creative writers too. In the prison and asylum records from the early Victorian period - the days before photography and the "mug shots" with which we're all familiar - physical descriptions were carefully noted down. These added "flesh" to the names - the Josiahs and Felicias, the Malachis and the Emmelines - and a small leap of the imagination took you into their worlds of truanting, petty theft, acute mania or "moral danger". Rich pickings indeed for poets and story-tellers!

Tuesday 21 March 2017

World Poetry Day

Happy World Poetry Day! Irina Bokova, the Director General of UNESCO, which nominated March 21st for the annual celebration back in 1999, writes that "Poetry is a window into the breath-taking diversity of humanity". Certainly every culture on the planet has its poetic tradition and practice, oral or written. Sadly, in Britain we seem to be less concerned with poetry in our everyday lives today than were our predecessors; perhaps days like today, appropriately acknowledged in the media, in our schools and community centres could go some way towards redressing this?

A small step yesterday was Radio 4's broadcasts of short poems at intervals throughout the day to celebrate the spring equinox. Perhaps someone turning on the news caught a few lines that made them think - maybe Philip Larkin's "The recent buds relax and spread / their greenness in a kind of grief" or Alice Oswald's "Birch, oak, rowan,ash / Chinese-whispering the change". You can hear all of the poems there were broadcast at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3yfnHlQT7vscVl7N2Zl9nYm/four-seasons-poetry-for-the-spring-equinox

And tomorrow evening at Smokey Joes in Bennington Street here in Cheltenham, Jennie Farley will be the guest poet at Poetry Cafe Refreshed. A really atmospheric venue and the promise of some great poems - 7pm if you can make it. Come and celebrate poetry with us!


"Can I believe there is a heavenlier world
than this?" Charlotte Mew

Thursday 9 March 2017

International Women's Day 2017


Yesterday saw women unite worldwide for International Women's Day. In many places this was to protest, to strike - against economic inequality, domestic violence, withholding of reproductive rights and so many more gender-based issues - but it was also to celebrate female achievement in all spheres of life. Events great and small brought women together and to the fore - in Italy they were given free access to all museums and cultural sites showcasing art by and about women; on a more local level, here in Cheltenham women gave a celebratory poetry reading at the University of Gloucestershire.
I was very struck by a quote from Malala Yousafzai: "I raise up my voice - not so I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard .. we cannot succeed when half of us are held back." It seems to me that women writers have a particular responsibility here, to use their skills and opportunities to bring out those voices that will not otherwise be heard. We may think that it's hard enough sometimes in countries that do boast "equality" to get our own voices acknowledged (even if they are heard!), but finding ways to help others speak, to raise their profile too, is surely a duty we should be only too pleased and ready to shoulder.
 Image result for international women's day