Back in action

Tobermory - between downpours!

It feels as if the summer is hurtling past here - life has been a real blur over the past month with a series of family health crises punctuated by a very, very wet trip to the Inner Hebrides. Pleasant though it (usually!) is to have some time away, at present I'm very pleased to be home and settling back into a familiar routine. There's definitely plenty of work to be catching up with.

Fortunately life had resumed some degree of normality by last week, in time for the Ledbury Poetry Festival - as wonderful as always. The Death Salon with Thomas Lynch, an American poet and undertaker, was fascinating, ranging over life, death and the poetic potential of everything between them. Polly Atkin and Hannah Hodgsdon's discussion on illness, health and death was extremely moving. Hannah's poems on her experience as a palliative care patient, interspersed with passages from her medical notes, made for salutary though uplifting listening. And I particularly enjoyed Dead Poets Society, Mererid Hopwood and Owen Sheers' take on the legendary Welsh poets Aneirin and Taliesin. Mererid's reading in Middle Welsh left me a little at a loss but I was delighted to find I could follow her modern!