A new venture and old favourites

A chaotic couple of weeks with domestic and family issues holding up progress on most items on the writing front. But there's now the odd glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, and there were two positives towards the end of last week too, the one being my first "Writer's Room" programme for NHSound. My thanks to Nathan and Jake who saw me through the unfamiliar technical bits, and to Bernard John who came into the studio as my first guest, to talk about his writing life and to read from his new poetry collection.

The second high point of the week was something of a blast from the past! A tremendous evening at Newnham on Severn on Saturday for a Fairport Convention gig. It was held in St Peter's Church - complete with bar, burgers and a big crowd - and it was great to see a church being used as a true community centre, as all churches were in the distant (medieval) past. Folk has always been my favourite music genre, I think because it tells stories and in many ways it's so closely akin to poetry; I loved hearing the old songs resurrected amongst more recent ones. And, seeing the vintage of most of the audience, I couldn't help thinking back to a brief poem of mine from a few years ago ...

Children of the 60s

Small the cordite in the air-
we're no spent fireworks, 
marching to overcome,
to make love not war.
Light our blue touchpapers
and retire; after a slow burn
we still give a dazzling display.

(copyright Gill Garrett 2015)

Still magic after all these years ...