Friday 24 December 2021

Nadolig Llawen i chi!

From a wet and windy South Wales on a Christmas Eve afternoon, I wish you all Nadolig Llawen, a Happy Christmas  - wherever you are, whatever you may be doing over the festive period. It's been another year of problems and uncertainty for so many of us, but perhaps there's a glimmer of hope now that 2022 could see a less stressful, happier and healthier path ahead. 




Tuesday 14 December 2021

Back on track

Radio silence for a month further to Covid, I'm afraid. But how thankful I am that both my husband and I were fully vaccinated and escaped lightly. I've been left with some lingering after effects but overall we're both back in the land of the living and have much for which to be grateful. Needless to say, I'm way behind with projects and deadlines, but it's a case of "make haste slowly" at the moment I think

Last week saw the publication of Cheltenham Poetry Society's latest anthology "Inspired By Music" (Eithon Bridge Publications) in which I'm delighted to have three poems. There are contributions from seventeen poets and the anthology has had a couple of excellent reviews, one of which describes it as "an eclectic mixtape from a friend. Tosca gives way to Tool, Mahler to Mama Cass, each track taking you by surprise, stirring memory with a little bit of magic ..." (Oz Hardwick, Professor of English, Leeds Trinity). I always enjoy being involved in joint projects and, with poetry and music having so much in common, this was a fascinating one to take part in. 




Tuesday 16 November 2021

Poets and poems


And it certainly was better late than never! A thoroughly enjoyable evening, made special by sharing it with Susannah White, our guest poets Rona Laycock and Derek Healy and such an appreciative audience. Many thanks too to Somewhere Else for hosting us - a really good venue with helpful staff and a great atmosphere.

And talking of accomplished poets - I was delighted to get my copy of Belinda Rimmer's new pamphlet today, Holding On (New Walk Editions). It's been such a pleasure to work with Belinda over the last few years in our Women Aloud group. I look forward every month to her contribution to our meetings. The poems in Holding On are about the experience of being female; they encompass not only Belinda's own experiences but those of other women in other times and of "the damaged and the defiant" too as one reviewer puts it. They certainly make for compelling reading. 

Thursday 4 November 2021

Better late than never!

When my collection "Waymarks" came out last December I wrote that there would be a proper launch as soon as restrictions were lifted and life was a little more back to normal. Well, eleven months later it's actually happening! My colleague Susannah White is joining me, launching her collection "Suncatcher", at Somewhere Else in Castle Street in Cirencester at 19.30 next Wednesday, November 10th. The event will be hosted by Derek Healey of Graffiti Books and he and Rona Laycock will also be reading as our guests. Do join us if you're free that evening - it would be lovely to see you there.

Thursday 7 October 2021

National Poetry Day

                               

Where else to spend National Poetry Day? You couldn't beat a walk in Cwmdonkin Park, the childhood playground of Dylan Thomas, the inspiration for some of his most famous words, where "the memories of childhood have no order and no end". I spent most of today in Swansea on the Dylan Thomas Trail, visiting the Dylan Thomas Centre, the park and the house in which he was born. From a very early age I've read and reread his poetry and his prose, listened to his recordings, visited the places with which he was associated. I can never tire of his work - I find more in it at every visit. And on my desk I have a postcard with his photo and words that cheer me immeasurably as I'm struggling with draft after draft of a poem : "I write a poem on innumerable sheets of scrap paper, write on both sides of the paper, often upside down and criss cross ..."

I do hope you've had the chance to take part one way or another in National Poetry Day too - there have been so many nationwide events, in person this year (thank goodness) as well as on line, or perhaps you've been reading some favourite old or some recently found new poems. Which ever - happy National Poetry Day!


Monday 20 September 2021

Pilgrims and poets

Looking back over the past month the first thing that comes to mind is the old Fleetwood Mac song, "Who knows where the time goes?" Hopefully, as we now settle into autumn, life might slow down a little and some sort of normality return.

At the end of August we spent a lovely week in North Wales that allowed me to achieve a long held ambition - a trip to Ynys Enlli, Bardsey Island, the island of 20,000 saints. I'd recently read Fflur Dafydd's great book of the same name and that had redoubled my determination to visit the tiny island just off the tip of the Llyn Peninsula, the reputed burial place of Merlin, perhaps even the Arthurian Avalon. It's certainly magical, but a brief four hour visit can't possibly do it justice - I'll be back there as soon as I can be. 

"Far beyond the rushing tide ..."


Since getting back there seem to have been wall to wall poetry events - about which I'm certainly not complaining, having missed out on so many over the past eighteen months. One event in particular - although still on Zoom for obvious reasons - was really affirmative. Mike Bernhardt, the editor of Voices of the Grieving Heart, was running a workshop for the American National Association of Poetry Therapy. To hear how valuable therapists have found the book, in which I have some work, was so heartening - to know that poems from one heart can so meaningfully engage with the hearts of others at some very traumatic times.

Another great afternoon was that spent in Ledbury at the Elizabeth Barrett Browning Institute, now home to the Ledbury Poetry Festival. I'd been invited to take part in a project run in conjunction with West Midlands Railways called Poetry on Platforms, a celebration of the lines used by the Dymock Poets a century ago. Along with fellow poets Lesley Ingram from Ledbury, Moya Oatley from East Anglia, Ann Morgan from Ross on Wye and Karen Antoni from Brighton I was filmed reading extracts of Edward Thomas, John Drinkwater and Lascelles Abercrombie's poems. I'm not sure when the film will go live but watch this space.

Poets reading poets

And on Saturday afternoon, after a very long hiatus, Rik Hool's "Poetry Upstairs" resumed in Abergavenny. A new venue - the Trading Post Cafe - welcomed four quite different writers, two performance poets and two "page" poets. I was very taken with the work of Alicia Stubbersfield; she focuses on such mundane, everyday experiences and illuminates them with such insight, especially those based on her extensive teaching experience. I'm very much enjoying her collection "The Yellow Table" at the moment. And of course looking forward to more Saturday afternoons in the coming months - Poetry Upstairs has had a thirty year run so far and certainly isn't running out of steam!

Friday 20 August 2021

Talking and walking Wales

 It was with some trepidation that I drove up to mid Wales a week ago - after depending on the internet for so long, how would an in-person workshop be once more? Well - it was wonderful. Zoom sessions simply can't replicate the experience of sharing a space with like-minded others, chatting over coffee and lunch, working in concert with one another. And the venue - Farmer's Lavender in the hills above Builth Wells - added to the pleasure of the day, though I admit I didn't take advantage of the natural pool in the grounds for a swim, as did some of the braver souls! But Helena Attlee and Emma Beynon facilitated a very interesting and thought-provoking day and it was fascinating to talk to the other participants about their current life writing projects - such a variety of biographies, travelogues, memoirs.



I was back in mid Wales again at the weekend, to at last complete our Wye Valley Walk. It had been a somewhat protracted one - we started it in 2009 and it's only 136 miles long! For a variety of reasons we had had long gaps in between stints. But finish it we have, covering the last seven and a half miles in intermittent downpours - which might explain why we met no more than a handful of other walkers all day! It's the sort of walking I love though - in spectacular wild country, with history beneath your feet (home to Celts, Plynlimon saw the Romans mining lead, Owain Glyndwr routing the English). No wonder artists and writers down the centuries have taken inspiration there.




Saturday 7 August 2021

Summer reading

It's only the first week of August but already it feels as if autumn is upon us - chilly mornings and the evenings drawing in. I'm often surprised and disappointed by August weather although I know I shouldn't be. The Welsh for July is Mis Gorffennaf - from gorffen, to finish, and haf, summer. So I suppose the dubious weather of August has long been recognised as autumn knocking on the door! But one thing that never disappoints over the summer is having a bit more time - getting back to some (non-research!) reading, seeing friends (which, at last, we can now do), taking stock before getting back into the usual September routine.

I've very much appreciated the opportunity to search out some new authors in the last few weeks and to catch up on my poetry reading. Angela France's new collection Terminarchy came out a few weeks ago with Nine Arches Press and that I have thoroughly enjoyed. She approaches the big questions, the serious issues, with a light touch that so effectively draws the reader into the natural world that is hers and ours; she shows us the urgent need to value and protect that world, she reminds us through her friend Sparrow that "no-one can mend / fractured land, no-one can replant ancient". Reading or hearing her work read always reinforces for me how fortunate we are to have her as mentor to our Women Aloud group; her support, suggestions and always constructive criticism are invaluable. 



 

Thursday 15 July 2021

Talks and walks

So, the Ledbury Poetry Festival has come and gone for another year - but very successful it was too. Next year perhaps normality will resume with more in person events, but a few of those at least took place this time and the on line ones enabled a very wide audience to enjoy some brilliant poetry. I particularly enjoyed the John Challis workshop I was able to participate in on Appearances and Excavations and the Gillian Clarke and Matthew Francis event in which they read from their recent publications. I have always loved the great Welsh Mabinogion stories and Matthew Francis has retold four of these in tremendous poetry; in Gododdin, Gillian Clarke has transformed the ancient accounts of the battle between the Welsh and Picts and the Angles in AD 600  with a hundred laments for named characters who fought. Word music indeed.

It's been back to the drawing board with the biography I'm working on. Following a couple of meetings in the last week or so, even more has come to light that demands space in the story. Two long treks last weekend - at the beginning of the Three Castles Walk - provided useful opportunities for a bit of reflection on things. To say nothing of prompting ideas for some poems too ...




Sunday 27 June 2021

A Scottish interlude



 A long gap since that last post - a busy time! We've recently come back after a couple of weeks in Scotland - walking in the Trossachs in the first week and doing a lot of research on the west coast during the second. Late spring is always such a lovely time to visit north of the border - although this time the midges were out in force rather earlier than I've known in the past! But the weather was great and the wild flowers just stunning. I was delighted to be able to get back to Inchcailloch, the uninhabited island in Loch Lomond  I last visited forty years ago and to which I've always wanted to return. There's a magic there I've experienced nowhere else - the sense of history, the quiet woodland, the clear waters, the view from the summit of mountain range after mountain range. A very special place.


But I have come back with something of a dilemma. The trip garnered more information about the subject of my biography than I could have hoped for - but also a lot of information around his life and times, about significant others with a bearing on the story who I hadn't encountered in any way beforehand. I'm still mulling over whether I should change the whole thrust of the book or think about a second publication following on from it. Pros and cons to either approach! But Covid has delayed progress on the project for long enough so I'm anxious to move forward on it now.

But this coming week sees the start of the Ledbury Poetry Festival, one of the poetry highlights of my year. A mixture this time of on-line and face to face events. I'm very much looking forward to the poetry walk on the Malvern Hills next Saturday (and hoping the BBC weather forecast is wrong!). If you haven't seen the programme, do look it up - there are some great events to get to one way or another.


Thursday 27 May 2021

Inching forwards ...

At last! Libraries and archives are slowly re-opening. A major project (a biography) I had to put on the back burner at the start of the pandemic is being resurrected and something like normal service restored. Incredible though the internet may be, for so much research nothing can replace getting out there, talking to people, handling documents, walking the walks that your subject took. And a lot of my subject's walks were along Clydeside and then in the heart of Wales, so I'm looking forward enormously to following in his footsteps shortly.

It's great too that live literature events are beginning to surface once more. A lot of the Hay Festival and Independent Bookshop week events are still on line (some good things to look forward to there though) but I've been delighted to find several posts for upcoming workshops and readings actually in person again. Some are outdoors of course, so here's hoping for a kind summer!

The launch of Voices of the Grieving Heart on Sunday was a very moving event. In addition to reading their poems, the five British contributors and Mike Bernhardt, the Californian editor, told of the experiences that had led them to write - the loss of a child, a partner, a parent, sometimes in very traumatic circumstances. I felt very privileged to have work in such a publication, one that hopefully will perhaps bring something positive into the lives of people experiencing profound sadness. The event was attended by John Fox, the director of the Institute for Poetic Medicine in the States (to which all profits from the book will go); years ago I was at a workshop he ran on a rare visit to Britain and his contribution this time was as inspiring as ever.


Sunday 2 May 2021

Voices of the Grieving Heart



Here's the poster for the launch I wrote about in the last post. If you're free for an hour or so on Sunday May 23rd please do join us (registration details above). It promises to be a very interesting session on a a topic that affects us all at different times in our lives. The book's been very carefully curated by Mike Bernhardt and it's beautifully produced - it's well worth a look at.  
 

Thursday 15 April 2021

Launches here and there

 A lovely evening on Saturday saw a really good turnout for the launch of the two pamphlets whose authors had won the Cheltenham Poetry Festival Frosted Fire First Pamphlets competition last year. I had heard David Lukens reading with the Brokenborough Poets a few years ago and was very taken by his work then, but I hadn't come across Lee Potts before. One Brief Wave and A Drought Will Follow will definitely be on my reading list now. And I was delighted that my ex-Somewhere Else colleague, Iris Anne Lewis, was shortlisted for this year's award.


Also published this week, but in the States, was Voices of the Grieving Heart, an anthology edited by Mike Bernhardt, in which I have two poems. Nearly 30 years ago Mike turned to poetry after the sudden death of his young wife and a first edition of this book came out in 1994. The universal experience of loss and bereavement seen over the last twelve months however prompted him to bring out this second edition; in it 83 contributors speak movingly of many different manifestations of grief and healing in poetry, essays and images. All the profits from the sale of the book will go to the Institute of Poetic Medicine which does such tremendous work in promoting the therapeutic use of poetry in some very diverse settings. 

Thursday 1 April 2021

Looking forward

Time seems to have taken on some strange characteristics in lockdown - sometimes crawling, sometimes flying, then disappearing without a trace. Suddenly it's Easter, Spring has sprung (or at least it had yesterday, though today it may have changed its mind ....). But seeing the first bluebells in the woods yesterday certainly brought a sense of better things to come.

Over the last few weeks I've taken part in several interesting workshops and a couple of on-line launches (an especially enjoyable one last night with my Women Aloud colleague Belinda Rimmer, whose pamphlet with Stroud Poets has just been published). But I'm now itching to get back to face to face events! A year on Zoom has certainly kept us all in touch but nothing beats actually being at a reading, feeling the energy, the creativity engendered in a workshop. And I'd dearly love to resurrect a couple of projects currently sitting on the back burner - parked there pro tem until various archives reopen and I can finish the requisite research.

But a couple of new projects are emerging too, about which I'm quite excited. One involves the setting up of a new local radio station, writing and commissioning broadcastable material for a variety of programmes. I've always enjoyed radio work and really look forward to the challenges that venture will bring. Another centres on a possible collaboration with two other life writers and could be very productive. The writing life is certainly never a boring one!

Tuesday 9 March 2021

International Women's Day - Raised Voices

What a great way to mark the United Nations 2021 International Women's Day - "Raised Voices", a poetry evening organised by Gloucestershire Poetry Society, in which eighteen local poets read one poem of their own and one by a favourite woman poet. Last year had seen a packed event at a church in Gloucester, but of course this year we had to join in from home - it was no less an occasion for that though. It brought into sharp focus the energy and creativity of women writers from all ages and all corners of the globe and was  a really inspiring celebration of their achievements.

Some of the "favourite" poems were by poets I know well - Helen Dunmore, Mary Oliver, Kim Moore - others were new to me. But some of the most memorable poems of the evening for me were ones written by the readers themselves. The contribution of Lucia Daramus - How I Cheat Myself, written in Romany, Spanish and English and centering on homelessness - was electrifying. Katherine Alderman's Widow's Dues was such a poignant tribute to an Irish grandmother. But my favourite had to be Cathy Baker's Borrowing A Mother, a remembrance of all the women involved in her growing up; it made me think of all the women who in so many ways made me who and what I am, and to whom I owe so very much.


Thursday 18 February 2021

Goodbye to a good writing friend

After the bitter cold of the weekend and then the howling gales of earlier this week, this morning seemed like Spring Incarnate! I've written before about the effect rivers have on me - both soothing and stimulating - and the Wye this morning, lined by catkins, snowdrops and wild daffodils, was lovely. I can't think of a better way to start a day's writing than walking for an hour or so in that setting; I'm always aware of how fortunate I am to have it almost literally on our doorstep.

Tomorrow I have a less welcome event in the day - the funeral of my Catchword colleague Richard Hensley. He was an immensely popular man with a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, but in the present circumstances attendance at funerals is so limited. I'm really pleased that I shall be able to be there to represent all his friends at Catchword, a group he belonged to and to which he contributed so much over many years. He was a constructive and generous critic, a great source of scientific information should you need help with a tricky plot, fun to be with - and a prolific writer. I'm so delighted that he was able to see his magnum opus, the Star Stone trilogy, successfully published; I heard him read extracts from all three books at several different events and I'll always remember his beautiful bass voice and his commanding delivery. He'll be very much missed by us all.  


Sunday 17 January 2021

In the right direction


Out walking the dog early this morning I came across the first snowdrops I've seen this year, and lots of daffodils not far from opening. Last week I saw some early lambs in the fields. The first signs of spring always raise my spirits tremendously but this year doubly so. We may have a fair bit of winter still to go before temperatures rise and the sun makes a concerted effort, but just to know that we're moving in the right direction now cheers the days along no end.

It's been an interesting week with two great workshops alongside the wonderful poets Ben Ray and Anna Saunders. Ben's was entitled "Journeys Into And Out Of Ourselves" and Anna's "Our Imagined Futures"; both fitted the current situation perfectly and both produced some fascinating work. I was also able to attend the Gloucestershire Poetry Society's Crafty Crows evening where David Clarke was headlining, supported by my Women Aloud colleague Cathy Baker. On the page Cathy's poems, with their fantastic richness of language, always move me greatly, but to hear her reading them takes them to another level. A really special evening.

Friday 1 January 2021

New Year, new book!

 After nine months of lockdowns and restrictions, I think we've recognised that we can't defer all our hopes and plans. They may need reappraising, they may need adapting, but we have to drive them forward one way or another, we have to keep our momentum going. So much hope rests on the vaccines now becoming available but life as we knew it won't reemerge overnight and living can't be put on hold indefinitely. 

So - new year, new book! I'm delighted that Waymarks, my poetry collection published by Graffiti Books, is available as from today. The current situation precludes the launch originally planned of course, but as soon as a suitable degree of "normality" resumes, there will certainly be a more appropriate celebration!

You can find my books for purchase at http://gillgarrett.blogspot.com/p/buy-my-books.html.

Wishing you all the very best of luck with your ventures in 2021. Here's to a brighter time ahead for us all.