Looking Forwards, Looking Back

This wonderful photograph of my paternal grandmother was taken on the eve of her marriage in 1891. I love the intent look on her face as she stands motionless in the photographer's studio; but what intrigues me more is what is in her mind - is she looking forwards to her new life or looking back on her old?

"Looking Forwards, Looking Back" is the working title of a section of the family history book I'm currently writing. But it also seems an appropriate motto for today - New Year's Eve, a time for planning ahead on the writing front but a time of reflection too. What has gone well over the past year, what (albeit small!) success has been achieved? I've learned a lot over this last twelve months and I'm very grateful to the poets and authors I've read and heard, to the tutors who have taught and challenged me on different courses, to my peers in writing groups who have commented on my work and supported me in it. 

But now to the future. I'm old enough and hopefully wise enough to avoid the "resolutions" trap (the tremendous initial burst of enthusiasm, the good intentions that bite the dust half way through January etc.) but some realistic planning before the odd drink later today may be in order - so watch this space!

Greetings

My idea of a perfect Christmas Day would be an early walk with the dog in crisp, bright sunshine, followed by a swift change into my onesie to spend the rest of the day by the fire with a liberal supply of chocolate, books and wine in the company of my nearest and dearest. However, as this doesn't appear to be a viable option in current circumstances, I am gearing up to do the necessary on a more traditional footing!

But wherever you are, however you choose to spend the day, however you celebrate whatever festival you celebrate - greetings and all best wishes for a happy, peaceful, enjoyable time.

What inspires us?

I have always enjoyed the novels of Kate Mosse ("Citadel" being my favourite); at the moment I'm reading her collection of short stories, "The Mistletoe Bride And Other Haunting Tales". In addition to the stories themselves, I'm very interested in the author's notes that accompany each one. I am always keen to know the "story behind the story" - what was it in the writer's mind that conjured up the characters, the setting, the plot?

We are told that there are only seven basic plots for all the stories in existence - overcoming the monster, rags to riches, the quest, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy, rebirth. But how do writers build on these foundations to create what enthrals or appals us? What sparks their imagination, what inspires them to take a theme and to weave magic with it? Perhaps something as mundane as the look on a fellow passenger's face on the bus, an overheard scrap of conversation in a cafe, a solitary walk in the woods with the dog. A rich seam that I have frequently mined has been my own family history, where fact has often proved stranger than fiction!

Worcester 1956

Recently, in my poetry group Picaresque, we each took as a starting point for a poem a female character from a myth or legend. Whilst the underlying stories might have been well known, to see how each person imbued that character with something of themselves was a revelation. I have spent a lifetime fascinated by the River Severn (witness the above photo of me on one of my early childhood visits!) and a few years ago walked the 210 miles of the Severn Way with my husband and two dogs. So who else could I have chosen as my inspiration for that poem other than Sabrina (or Hafren in Welsh), a human child vengefully drowned in the river but resurrected as a nymph

  "... in that slow, gentle spawning

between the windswept thighs

of ancient hills at the bounds

of the nightingale's song."

The infant "Sabrina" on Plynlimon

I have an "ideas book" that goes everywhere with me in the day, sits beside my bed at night. In recent years it seems to have filled up alarmingly quickly - no shortage of inspiration but a severe shortage of time to translate that into coherent, finished pieces! Perhaps most of us who are "amateur" writers are just too busy living everyday life to write as much about it as we would like to, but maybe with the advent of 2015 ....

National Short Story Week

"The Wish Dog and Other Stories takes you into the realm of the unknown, the ghostly and the gothic, in a colourful kaleidoscope of half-glimpsed shades" said the blurb; not my usual sort of bedtime reading but, with a story in it by Rona Laycock, my mentor and colleague in Catchword, I thought I'd give it a try in National Short Story Week. And, with some from historical perspectives, some sharply contemporary, a really good read the stories have proved to be.

Published by Honno Press 2014

I've always liked short stories and they fit well into my time-limited lifestyle  - compact tales that slot in to a bus journey or a coffee break, take you into a different world for ten minutes but leave that world embedded in your own for you to think about and enjoy during the rest of your day too. But I certainly haven't found them the easy option to write! To create enjoyable, credible scenarios with rounded, 3D characters within a tight word limit is a challenge; knowing where to start and where to stop, allowing the reader to fill in the backstory, the sequel - skills that take a fledgling writer time and practice to perfect!

Sunday Afternoon Tea and Tales

What better way to spend a damp and dismal November afternoon than in a warm and cosy teashop listening to an expert story teller and a great poet over a hot drink and a piece of ginger cake or a scone loaded with cream and jam? That's how I spent yesterday afternoon, at The Burrow Cafe in Sheep Street in Stow on the Wold. Nicholas John regaled us with tales on such unlikely topics as bored elderly gentlemen and recalcitrant recycling and Derek Healey read poems on everything from first love to cricket and fishing. A thoroughly enjoyable afternoon. Next month sees Chloe the Midnight Storyteller entertaining customers with her "adult tales" (sounds promising!) - make a date in your diary for Sunday December 14th at 3pm if you're free to come to hear her.

Remembrance

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow ..." John McCrae

Much discussion this week about the nature of "remembrance" - a lot of it centering on the ceramic poppies at the Tower of London. Are they a fitting memorial to a generation of "glorious dead" or simply a sanitized, sentimental representation of the British losses in a conflict that started a century ago, a conflict that would be better recalled with graphic images of the horror of those four long years? Do they downplay the universal nature of loss and suffering, ignoring the millions from other nations who died both as combatants and civilians?  Views are strongly held on both sides of the debate.

On Friday evening (November 14th) at DeepSpace in Charlton Kings here in Cheltenham poetry will be read and performed by a variety of local poets looking at all angles of remembrance and at the reality of wars past and present. Led by Jennie Farley, Eley Furrell and David Clarke, it should be a thought-provoking evening. I shall be reading the wonderful poem written by the American Sara Teasdale in 1917, "There Will Come Soft Rains"; to me it expresses a salutary truth which we would all do well to ponder.

"There Will Come Soft Rains"

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows calling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild-plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Sara Teasdale

If you are free on Friday evening, do please join us. We'd love to see you there.

The Art In The Everyday

Life has been rather fraught lately with extensive family commitments, but earlier in the week I managed to get to an evening workshop run by the Irish poet C. L. Dallat on "The Art In The Everyday". He spoke about using the minutiae of our every day lives - the things and people on our street, the remains of a meal on the table - as a basis for our poems. Definite food for thought there, as life at present seems nothing but minutiae!