A world away and nearer to home

Paradoxically, the lock-down has opened up the world in some ways. Having to use platforms such as Zoom to meet up with writing groups, attend workshops and generally keep in touch in the writing community, things have become much more international, with all the advantages that can bring. Last week I was in one workshop with participants from Uganda, Spain and Canada, earlier this week in another with poets from the States, Belgium and Ghana. I sometimes feel that groups can get more than a bit "cosy" and it's a breath of fresh air to meet and greet writers from very diverse backgrounds, with often very different approaches and viewpoints. Especially when they challenge your own!

Last Friday's Cheltenham Poetry Festival workshop with Rowan McCabe was fascinating. I'd not heard him read before and loved his perceptive but gentle take on everyday life. He's currently the poet in residence at Wordsworth's house in the Lake District, but Covid has obviously meant that's a bit of a sticky wicket at the moment. Undaunted, he's offering "poetry by post" in Cockermouth! Having been a "door to door poet" in the past (yes, that's just what it says it is!), he's now sending stamped addressed envelopes to random addresses in the town offering a poetry service by return - and getting a fair number of takers. If you've not come across his work, do look him up.

Now that the five mile limit has been lifted in Wales, we're properly underway again with our Wye Valley Walk project. Last week we were covering some of the ground so familiar from Kilvert's Diary. Rural life may have changed a bit since he was writing in the 1870s but the bones of the deep Radnorshire countryside have changed very little. No wonder it has inspired such fantastic prose and poetry - it really is exceptionally beautiful.

Builth Wells next stop ...

A different Ledbury 2020

We're getting used to having to "go" to festivals on line now, of course, but I shall miss a proper visit to Ledbury this year. I love the town itself - the beautiful architecture, the narrow streets and lanes, the shops with their festival contributions on display, the lovely old tea and coffee shops - and the poetry is never less than inspirational. This would have been the opening weekend in normal times; instead, this is it for this year, two days with nine events. But they should certainly be worth registering for - or you should be able to catch up on the Festival YouTube Channel afterwards.

There's a preview at ten o'clock this evening on Radio 3's The Verb, where you're invited to "celebrate the spirit of the Ledbury Poetry Festival".  Poet Laureate Simon Armitage will be opening the weekend itself on Saturday lunchtime. His session will be followed by the competition winner's event, Kim Moore celebrating European poetry, poetry films made by the Young Writers Collective, poetry of the lockdown and so much more. Do check the website and see what's on offer - and of course it's all free.

Independent Bookshop Week

In keeping with so many other retailers, bookshops have had a really tough couple of months. And re-opening isn't an easy exercise with social distancing a headache in small shops, often with confined space, and the tendency most of us have to browse through books before buying them meaning that items have to be quarantined before going back on the shelves. I've been so impressed by how some independent shops (such as Griffin Books in Penarth) have managed to keep a thriving, upbeat presence on line though, posting books out to customers and ploughing on regardless with launches, author readings and book clubs. Hopefully there will be lots of support all around the country for Independent Bookshop Week, which began yesterday.

Where would we have been without books over these weeks of lockdown?  With libraries closed, it's been interesting to see how communities have come together to ensure that anyone who wants a new book to read can access one. Yesterday we were walking a stretch of the River Wye and came across this in a bus shelter -

                                                           - a help-yourself-to-a-book stop, with a whole variety of 

genres to suit most tastes. Last week, walking by the Usk, we saw a book swap in a disused phone box. People have been nothing if not inventive through it all.

As you'll have gathered, walking has featured large for me recently. We're so fortunate to live in such close proximity to some stunning countryside. And, as always, the opportunity to walk has presented plenty of opportunity to think and plan. The main project on which I was working earlier in the year was derailed (temporarily I hope) with travel being out of the question and interviews and research I'd set up (not possible except on a face to face basis) having to be put on hold. But the time freed up has enabled me to pick up and run with an idea from a while ago that had never come to fruition - it's certainly making progress now and hopefully will see the light of day, initially on the radio and then in print, later in the year.  

Quick as a Flash

In haste! Just in case you 're not aware that today is National Flash Fiction Day. There are a host of activities going on on line this year including a Flash Flood (with a new piece being published every 5 - 10 minutes on the online journal), The Write In (a prompt every hour - use it to write on and you can then submit the piece until midnight tomorrow for a chance of publication) and the 2020 Anthology Launch (this evening from 7 - 10pm on the YouTube channel). There may be other more local activities in your area but these are well worth checking out. Enjoy!

Changes and chances

Today should have seen us off to Scotland, for a week walking in the Trossachs, a week pursuing some research for a biography I'm working on, a visit to old friends and a 70th birthday party. Needless to say, none of those will be happening in the present situation. Hopefully the visits and the walking can take place when life returns to whatever will pass as the new "normal" but the biography project will have to go on ice for the time being. This is particularly frustrating as it had a long gestation phase but has made significant progress over the last couple of months; most of that progress however has been based on historical records and others' accounts and memories. I really need to "walk the walk" and get a feel for my subject's original environment and experiences.

Looking at the positives, however - the Hay Festival this year is not as we have always known it but is freely available to everyone virtually. Do look at the programme if you haven't seen it. Starting today, I've booked for a dozen events to which I certainly wouldn't have had access in other circumstances. I'm really looking forward to hearing Mererid Hopwood and Ali Smith - favourite authors of mine - and I've also booked for a couple of sessions quite outside my usual sphere. A good opportunity to open up other horizons without feeling you've spent unwisely if they turn out to be ones you'd rather leave orbiting elsewhere!

Celebration or commemoration?

My father, Roland Garrett, in 1941

The period around the Second World War is one that interests me a lot and I've written a fair amount about it in both poetry and prose over the years. The war had only ended a short time before I was born and it was still having a massive residual effect on people's lives, both negatively and positively, throughout my childhood. So I'm perfectly happy that today, the 75th anniversary of VE Day, should be acknowledged and marked by present generations. But I see commemoration as a far more appropriate approach than celebration. .

Yes, our parents or our grandparents may have been celebrating that six years of hardship, separation, trauma and loss had come to an end, but more importantly they were looking forward to what they could now make of the world and their lives in it. Much of what we're seeing today, in the media and in the (socially-distanced!) street celebrations, seems backward looking, nostalgic, sentimental. We're dealing with our own crises at the moment and - with the evidence they've thrown up of so much inequality, mismanagement of services over a long period of time and so many other social injustices - we need to be looking forward, as our predecessors were in 1945, at what we can make of our world when they're all over. In no small part so that we can give the still-surviving veterans something much more tangible than the fleeting attention and praise they're getting today.

"April is the cruellest month ..."

What a strange month April was - in more ways than just having the unusually great weather! Our first full calendar month of lockdown and all that that entailed. Since writers so often bemoan their lack of time, you'd think we'd all be grateful for an abundance of it, but that's certainly not how it's felt. Dealing with all the additional on line activities the situation has generated seems to have kept me very busy, to say nothing of the NaPoWriMo challenge (thankfully now at an end, with several embryonic poems worth pursuing if not many completed). But the virtual workshops I have managed to make have at least kept me in touch with the wider writing community and a couple of acceptances of submissions for publication have cheered things along too.

What has really kept me sane in recent weeks though has been the availability of local walks  - within minutes of leaving the front door I can be on riverside or hillside, well away from the human world and very close to the natural. We are incredibly lucky to have all this on our doorstep and lucky that we can, in however limited a way, get out into it. My heart goes out to those in much less happy circumstances, in less conducive environments or confined completely to quarters for shielding, to say nothing of those personally affected by Covid-19. I realise every time I'm able to step outside how fortunate I am.

Light at the end of the tunnel?
A perspective on the Wye.