Standing with Ukraine

Last week I sat in on a Victoria Field workshop entitled Life's Alive!, looking at the dichotomy of the coming of spring at a time of such international turmoil. She spoke of the Seamus Heaney quote - "No lyric has ever stopped a tank" - but reminded us of the tremendous power poetry has to make us more fully ourselves, to prompt us to think, to question, to learn.

After the workshop I started to read some of the writings of Ilya Kaminsky, the deaf Ukrainian poet who now lives and writes in the States. He was a co-founder of Poets for Peace and his work has been a revelation to me. If you haven't read his poems - Gunshot, In a Time of Peace, so many more - do look them up now. They have so much to say to us.

And if you're free and in the area on Saturday, poets and musicians in Ledbury will be holding an all day event in The Barrett Browning Institute to raise money for the Disasters Emergency Committee Fund. I'm already committed to our own event here in Monmouth, but the Ledbury one features a Drop In Art Workshop, a Poetry Clinic, an open mic and a live performance evening. Here's to raising awareness and as much as we all can for such desperately needed assistance for millions of refugees.

A loss and a launch

 

                                                                                                         

Looking through a cupboard this morning I came across some of my children's books from thirty odd years ago - and amongst them was "Out And About" by the great Shirley Hughes, who died yesterday. She must have proved the introduction to reading for thousands and thousands of children. Her beautiful illustrations and wonderful stories captivated my two; she had tremendous talent and such an understanding of the young mind. Today is World Book Day and all over the world, in schools, libraries, bookshops and supermarkets, on YouTube and so many other platforms the aim is to involve today's youngsters, to "change lives through a love of books and shared reading". Shirley Hughes made a huge contribution to doing just that for so many in her time. 

When I lived in Cheltenham for many years, I often had the pleasure of hearing the local poet Alison Brackenbury read. But the reading I heard her give last night at the launch of her new collection "Thorpeness" (Carcanet) was stunning. Her poems ranged over time and place; they encompassed her grandmother's recipe book ("custard seas in which all puddings swam"), finding the shattered remains of willow pattern pottery ("smudged lovers soar unbroken"), the location she'd always wanted to visit but never reached (where "three swallows snatch a gust, a breath"). Fellow Cheltenham poet David Clarke interviewed her after the reading and it was fascinating to hear her speak about her method of working, about how important rhyme and meter are to her, about her admiration for young poets. Of all the sessions on Zoom I've attended in the last two years, yesterday evening's was head and shoulders above the rest.

And still on poetry - I've just booked a place on the Laureate's Library Tour, running over the week at the end of the month that includes World Poetry Day (March 21st), It's part of Simon Armitage's ten year project to read in UK libraries - he's approaching it alphabetically, so this time it's C - D towns and cities! There are sessions in England, Scotland and Wales (the Welsh one in Carmarthen, with the National Poet of Wales, Ifor ap Glyn, which I'm really looking forward to). The sessions are all free on line, and in person in some places. If you aren't aware of them, do look them up, they promise to be well worth attending. As the Director General of UNESCO wrote for World Poetry Day a year ago, poetry has "the power to shake us from everyday life and the power to remind us of the beauty that surrounds us and the resilience of the human spirit" - certainly words for our troubled world just now.

Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus!

Given that Wordsworth was visiting Whitestone in July 1798, he may well not have seen these daffodils trembling in a very chilly breeze as we did this morning! But we were on the Wordsworth Walk near Llandogo where he penned his famous "Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey", that great celebration of nature and its ability to calm the soul (and don't we all need some of that at the moment?). The walk up to the Cleddon Falls has been a favourite of mine for decades now and each year I look out for the three clumps of daffodils just below the viewpoint at the top of the track. And today, for St. David's Day, they seemed especially appropriate.