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!