Catching up before Christmas

If it hasn't been looking after someone else, it's been looking after myself since that last post! I hate being ill at the best of times but when life is as busy as it should have been ... Still, I'm back in the land of the living again now, and fortunately was in time for our Women Aloud Christmas lunch, which I would have been very sorry to miss.

But things have got very behind schedule with a couple of deadlines missed and a rush on now to get things done before the festivities are upon us in two weeks time. I'm working on a series of radio scripts for when I resume hosting The Writer's Room in the New Year, to which I'm very much looking forward now. The series is going to look at Welsh life past and present; I've had a very enjoyable couple of days working on a programme about Welsh folk tales, some of which I've known most of my life but several of which I've come across more recently. Fascinating stuff - and a welcome relief from current reality with this week's election business hanging over us! Although how much of that comes into the realm of fantasy ...

Fall asleep on Cadair Idris and you'll wake
up as a poet or a madman!

Life writing - who's it for?

Further to that last post - I've had rather more time to read than I anticipated. For the past fortnight I've been away looking after a very ill family member and late nights and early mornings have provided a surprising amount of reading time - not that I'd recommend it as a catching up strategy!

A couple of the books I've been reading have been memoirs, which, as some of you know, constitute a favourite genre of mine. Perhaps some of you also read Hadley Freeman's article in last Saturday's Guardian - it certainly struck a chord with me. "Some of my most beloved books are memoirs - but there's a subtle art to doing it well," she wrote. She was actually discussing a new publication by Will Self but her premise holds good for any published life writing; "One of the most common flaws in personal writing is forgetting that you're supposed to be writing for the reader's pleasure, not yours."

I'm in no way denigrating personal writing as a therapy when used appropriately; I hold LAPIDUS, the words for wellbeing association, in the highest regard and worked with older people in care for several years to promote healing and health through writing. But recently I've come across much published life writing that, whilst purporting to be for the enjoyment of other people, indulges the writer at the expense of those others. In doing so Hadley Freeman sees those writers as "self-cannabilising." Fortunately the books I've enjoyed over the last couple of weeks have been written by authors with far deeper insight into life in general and writing in particular. Antony Doerr's "Four Seasons In Rome" for example I couldn't rate too highly - do try it if you haven't already.

(And if you haven't seen this month's Snakeskin on-line poetry journal, do give that a try too; I'm delighted to have three poems in some excellent company there!)

Something missing ...

Life has been a bit out of hand for a couple of weeks - things going on socially, a major writing project underway  - and, of course, housetraining the new addition to the family! But I had a feeling that something was missing in all of it, something wasn't quite right. And, when I thought more about it, the missing item? Reading.

For the last few years I've kept a reading diary, noting down all the books I've read, my thoughts on them, why I've enjoyed them or disliked them, what techniques the writer has employed that have (in my opinion) worked or not. It's been a very instructive process and one I'd certainly recommend if you want to really get everything you can out of a book. But the diary pages have been tellingly empty over the last couple of weeks - apart from reference material to do with my current project, I've read very little indeed. And I don't see how writers can hope to write effectively without being readers too.

So - definitely a need to make time where I've been telling myself I haven't any. In recent years I've set myself writing goals for NaNoWriMo - never a novel I hasten to add, but different mini-projects to feel I'm at least in solidarity with those slaving away over their 50,000 word manuscripts. This year I'll be using the time though to catch up on the books sitting by the bed, waiting in my Kindle - and there's no shortage in either location; half a dozen by the end of November ...

A busy week

In a week that has seen a significant birthday, I've had much to be thankful for. I was joined for lunch on Tuesday by writing colleagues I've worked with over the past eight years and I was so aware of how much I owe them - for the inspiration they've provided, the constructive criticism they've offered when they've fed back on my work, the encouragement they've given me when the going's been tough. I free-lanced for many years in my professional life; much as I enjoyed the freedom that afforded, it could have been a comparatively lonely existence. However, I was fortunate then to have a network of peers to whom I could turn for support and I now value my writing groups for the same reason.

And, having been dog-less for the past eighteen months or so, this week also saw the very welcome arrival of Carys, a six year old Beagle. Having been a breeding bitch on an Irish puppy farm, I'm so glad to say that she's now in honourable retirement here with us. The poor girl has never experienced home life so certainly comes with her challenges, but she's already taken up residence in my writing room and listens very attentively when I read drafts of work in progress ...

...before snoozing in the sun!

Poems and Patients

A bit of a hiatus since my last post, largely due to seeing too much of hospitals over the last few weeks! However, with health issues hopefully looking to resolve now, it's back into harness and on with several waiting projects.

Sitting around in different wards and departments has given some food for thought though. Whilst most hospitals have a reasonable variety of art on their walls, brightening up otherwise cold and  clinical environments, and at least giving patients and visitors something to look at, few hospitals seem to use poetry in any significant way. I've found the odd poetry book or pamphlet in hospital chapels but only at Neville Hall in Abergavenny have I seen lines of poems used decoratively. In Neville Hall lines from Owen Sheers "Skirrid" greet you, painted on the walls in Reception; stand outside the hospital and you can glimpse the mountain itself across from the town.

In recent years so much work has gone into researching the therapeutic uses of poetry. You may be familiar with the work of the inspirational John Fox and the Institute of Poetic Medicine in the States, or practitioners such as Victoria Field in this country; you may have comes across the annual Hippocrates poetry competition for poems on medical topics. I was delighted a few years ago to have a poem in an anthology for medical students about to qualify as doctors. But the idea of using poems formally or informally in the wider hospital setting doesn't seem to have really gained much of a hold. In a week that's seen a very successful National Poetry Day with events all over the country, perhaps it's high time to work on changing that situation.

Ways To Peace

I don't know what it is about the Ways To Peace project at Tintern Abbey that does it, but the weather has it in for us every time! Last year our outdoor Festival readings took place in a spectacular downpour and last night's launch of the anthology invited similar conditions.... However, the event itself was a great success (indoors!) and the final product is a delight. Contributors come from all generations and many cultures; the writing encompasses peace in its widest sense - between peoples and cultures, with nature and the environment and inner peace. It was an enormous privilege to stand alongside a Palestinian refugee fleeing from Syria, a schoolchild desperate to preserve an intact world for his generation and older people whose memories of world conflict still haunt them seven decades on, to read and reflect. Thanks so much to Pascal Bidois, the custodian at Tintern Abbey, and to Val Ormerod, the driving force behind the anthology.

At the launch with Gloucestershire poet
Kathryn Alderman

Picking up where we left off ...

Part of my "getting straight over the summer" plan involved sorting out the filing cabinet - and that led to some interesting discoveries! Unearthing half-written poems, abandoned pieces of prose, some of which could be usefully resurrected. And they in turn reminded me of other sorts of projects which for one reason on another hadn't come to fruition but might still have some mileage in them - two quite literally.

Ten years ago I started the Wye Valley Walk and covered the ground from Chepstow to Hereford, well over half the total distance. Life got in the way and the project went into abeyance, but - especially as we now live not much more than a stone's throw from the river - it seems a good time to pick up on it again. We've only done two more days so far but they were both really enjoyable.

Another walk started but making only intermittent progress over the last few years has been the Wales Coastal Path. A real challenge that one - all 870 miles of it! So far we've covered about 170, from Chepstow to the far side of the Gower. But earlier this week I was in North Wales to undertake some research for a new writing project planned for the winter and I had the opportunity to do a few miles of the path just south of Barmouth on a glorious, windy afternoon, the Cadair Idris range soaring to my left and the sea pounding the shore to my right. I never fail to be inspired by such surroundings. Hopefully we'll be back on the trail there too before long.

The Mawddach Estuary