A Festive Evening Out

A hugely entertaining couple of hours yesterday evening hosted by St. Mary's Priory Church in Monmouth - "A Thousand Years Of Christmas", songs and readings performed by the soprano Sally Bradshaw and Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury and an outstanding poet. Richard Burton apart, I have not heard anyone read Dylan Thomas's prose so well - his Conversation About Christmas and Ghost Story had to be my favourite parts of the evening. Although I must say that "Christmas Cards" by Keith Watkyn amused me no end too - if you're struggling with writing the interminable annual updates to people you haven't seen for years (some of whom you haven't minded not seeing for years!) and could do with a break, do look it up, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

Two good reads

I have just finished reading two excellent books - "Another World" by Pat Barker and "A Perfectly Good Man" by Patrick Gale. I rarely dissect novels in the way I remember having to do for A level English Literature at school (that approach almost put me off for life!) but I have spent some time in the last day or so identifying what it was about these two books that so intrigued me. In the Pat Barker I think it was the plot that carried me along, eager to see how a difficult family situation could resolve relatively harmoniously. In "A Perfectly Good Man" it was the characterization; the author had created characters about whom I came to really care. For me he achieved this by only gradually revealing their backgrounds and life events; he built up their complex natures not in a chronological fashion but by interspersing chapters on other periods in their lives with the basic narrative. I found it incredibly effective. If you're not familiar with Patrick Gale's writing, do check it out.

Jennie reading from
"My Grandmother Skating"

New Bohemians on Friday evening was certainly a good setting for the launch of Jennie Farley's poetry pamphlet, and musical interludes provided  by Geoff March and David Butcher and the busker Jodie added to the festive atmosphere. Thank you to Su Billington yet again for providing such a super venue! Another venue that lends itself well to poetry is Smokey Joes in Bennington Street in Cheltenham - if you're free at 7pm on Wednesday evening, December 14th, Anna Saunders, the Director of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival, is the guest poet there for Poetry Cafe Refreshed. No doubt another fun, and interesting, evening.

Geoff and David

A Christmas Extravaganza

There's such a lot happening in the run-up to Christmas - and an awful lot of work that needs doing before then. It's definitely business before pleasure here if my first draft is going to meet the Christmas deadline. One thing I won't be missing though is the New Bohemians Christmas Extravaganza on Friday evening at which Jennie Farley will be launching her new poetry collection "My Grandmother Skating" (published by Indigo Dreams). Jennie certainly lives up to her reputation as a master story teller and the stories in this collection, based on myth and legend, family recollections and fancies, carry you effortlessly both to other worlds and to some surprising places in this one.

If you're free on Friday evening (December 9th), do join us at 7.30pm. at deepspace in Hamilton Street, Charlton Kings, in Cheltenham - £6.50 on the door for drinks, nibbles, music, friendly conversation and some seriously good poetry!

Musings on a walk

A bitterly cold walk by the river this afternoon with my dog, just as a wintery sun was going down. It was very atmospheric and started me thinking about how weather and surroundings become characters in their own right in fiction, and how they interact on the page with their human counterparts.

This was very evident in the book I have just finished reading, "Nightmare in Berlin" written by Hans Fallada. If you haven't come across it, it's well worth having a look at. It was published in German in 1947 but has only recently been translated for the English-speaking market. Based on the author's own experience at the end of the Second World War, it recounts the hellish situation in which a writer, Doctor Doll, and his wife find themselves on returning to Berlin from a small town in the country. The devastated social and physical environment and the freezing winter weather with which they must contend assume the role of aggressors, effectively thwarting any attempt at getting life back on the rails there. The couple sink into total despondency and apathy, living only for the morphine addiction they have both developed. That there is a ray of hope at the end of it all speaks volumes for the ability of humans to overcome even the most adverse of circumstances. A fascinating read.

"Such things as dreams are made on"

If I thought life was out to get me last week - it definitely was this! Car problems, a nasty bout of some viral infection and an overlooked and rapidly approaching deadline. Fortunately the car is now sorted, the infection is clearing and I've managed (by a very tight margin) to write the monologue for a Christmas revue in which I'm taking part.

The very vivid dreams I had a few nights ago were probably a result of the high temperature from the infection. At Swanwick earlier this year I took part in a fascinating workshop entitled "Poetry From Dreams" and I've been keeping a dream diary intermittently since. One or two of the entries in it have yielded some interesting ideas for poems but a lot of my  dreams seem very mundane. I couldn't get last week's dreams down quickly enough though - surreal images were coming so thick and fast even in a half-waking state, trying to make sense of them from my bedside note book is an interesting challenge!

Onwards and upwards ...

A disconcerting week on so many fronts - certainly on the international one, and, on home ground, illness and a bereavement making for family difficulties. So when my IT kit decided to present major issues too, I was beginning to feel that life was definitely getting the better of me! But I've spent some time this evening reviewing the situation with the family chronicles and have pleasantly surprised myself by finding that I'm actually not too far off target with the first draft. Six weeks and probably another 10,000 - 15,000 words to go though, so no resting on the laurels! But evidence of progress is certainly a great motivator.

The Quakers of Painswick

On Monday I was touched and also very humbled to be invited to the Friends Meeting House in Painswick by a long standing Quaker, Dr. Jim Hoyland. He had found a poem I had written after a visit to the town last year; wandering around the lovely old streets there, I had come across the Meeting House and looked out over the valley to the old Quaker burial ground on the hillside opposite. The story of the early Friends struck a chord with me and a couple of weeks later I wrote the poem.

At the Meeting House I found a framed copy of my poem on display - and to know that a piece of mine had resonated so much with those about whom it had been written was a very moving experience.