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.
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| "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.
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| 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!
