Swanwick 2016

I've just found out that I've won second prize in the short story section of the Swanwick Summer School competition so I shall be off to Derbyshire in August for the second year running - and I'm really looking forward to it.

If you don't know about Swanwick, do look it up. It's now in its 68th year and the longest running residential summer school for writers in the world. The surroundings are beautiful, the atmosphere is so relaxed and friendly and the food delicious. Then, of course, there are the courses .... the specialist ones that run over four days, the short ones that change daily and the hour long ones on a whole variety of writing-related topics. Every evening sees a different after-dinner speaker and there are open mics and short dramas to join in with. Certainly worth thinking about if you're planning to invest in your writing this summer!

"Learning by heart"

Having re-read some Coleridge last week, I've been rediscovering some other classic poets such as Longfellow. That followed some family history research when I was looking at my grandmother's childhood in Stackpole in Pembrokeshire. She and her siblings were at the village school there in the early 1890s; when I visited the school a couple of years ago I was lucky enough to find records of the curriculum from her time there and they made fascinating reading. Reading books included a series entitled "The Royal English History Readers" (of which I can now find no trace) and there were "object lessons" on items such as postage stamps, the forge and coal, taught to combine elements of literacy and numeracy - pretty much like present day project work.

But it was the poetry teaching that really caught my imagination - I could almost hear the children reciting in turn the weekly poem set for learning by heart. Favourites seem to have been "The Wreck of the Hesperus" by Longfellow, "The Forsaken Merman" by Matthew Arnold and "Somebody's Mother" by Mary Dow Brine - all good, "improving" stuff! But woe betide the children if they failed to commit the poems to memory and to regurgitate as required - corporal punishment was very much the order of the day. My grandmother had a life long stammer and must have found recitation before her peers a nightmare.

I have known many people put off poetry for good when it was badly taught at school, but I know others who have developed an ongoing love of it when it was introduced in an interesting and sympathetic manner - I'd include myself in that group. I'm always so pleased when I hear of schools in which poetry is still an important feature and delighted when we have young people taking part in our local poetry events. Not that we hear a lot of "The Wreck of the Hesperus" these days though ....

Stackpole School staff and pupils c. 1891

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan .....

Over the last couple of days I've spent time re-reading some Romantic poetry. Although I have always loved "Frost at Midnight", I have to admit that the last time I read much Coleridge I was probably still at school! But, having been visiting the Somerset area where the poet lived for a while, where he wrote several of his best known poems and gained inspiration for many others, I felt duty bound to revisit his work.

The house where Coleridge spent three years in the late 1790s is in Nether Stowey; now looked after by the National Trust, it's an interesting place to visit. But not only do you find there a lot about Coleridge, there is so much too about his wife, Sara.  And I found myself full of righteous indignation at the lot of so many male poet's wives! I've always felt for Helen, the wife of Edward Thomas, given such a bad press by Robert Frost after her husband's death in France. At Nether Stowey my heart went out to Sara Coleridge. She was burdened with total responsibility for all things domestic whilst her husband pursued grandiose and unworkable projects, she was left unsupported by him during their second child's illness and subsequent death, only to be written off by Wordsworth's sister (who gladly ate her food, spent long hours walking with her husband and even borrowed her clothes) as "a sad fiddle-faddler"! How many strong, intelligent women, talented in their own right have sacrificed themselves in the past to enable their partners to shine? And, sadly, how many continue to do so today?

Statue of The Ancient Mariner
in Watchet Harbour

When is enough enough?!

When I began my project that should (eventually!) result in a comprehensive family chronicle I was convinced that I had at least the bulk, if not all, of the research under my belt. How wrong I was. The more I write, the more I find I still have to follow up.

Family history is by its very nature an endless quest. The story I am writing is in part the story of my personal quest to pursue my forebear's lives and to put them into their social and political context. Even though I am sticking religiously within my defined parameters, avenues keep opening up which cry out for exploring if I am in any way to do justice to the saga. But there has to come a point where the line is drawn! Something I think I recognized in a  poem I recently wrote ...

Needlecraft

(“At fifty one wants forebears almost as much as heirs” James Lasdun)

I have stitched you a life,

a patchwork of shades and shapes,

of textures and tones,

remnants pulled from the ragbag

of memory, snippets of hearsay,

embroidered at the edges

to neaten off your days.

But would its pattern

perplex or please?

Would you recognize

the contours of your years,

lie comfortable beneath this quilt?

Forgive my inept needlecraft -

this is all I have in which to wrap you.

(Copyright Gill Garrett 2016)

Poetry Promenade

Anna Saunders, Robin Gilbert, Marilyn Timms,
 Annie Ellis, Howard Timms and myself

A very pleasant afternoon on Thursday; as part of the cultural exchange between Cheltenham Poetry Festival and the Winchcombe Festival of Music and Arts, a group of us from Cheltenham took part in a "Poetry Promenade" at the Methodist Church in Winchcombe, each of us reading poems inspired by the town and the beautiful scenic area that surrounds it. We were made extremely welcome and thoroughly enjoyed our visit.

One of my own contributions was inspired by Winchcombe Hospital, a much loved local facility that closed in 2008. Like so many other small units around the country,  it was a casualty of centralisation of resources and (in my view, having spent my whole working life in health care) the misguided belief that bigger is always better.

Cottage Hospital

Listen. Between neat maisonettes with close cropped lawns

the ghosts of birth and death hover in the midnight air;

a hoarse, consumptive cough, a fretful, febrile cry

vie on the wind with carbolic stench

by the hawthorn hedge and memorial bench where 

pyjama'd patients smoked and tea leaves fed the roses.

Harsh street lights mirror the shaded lamps where nurses,

capped and cloaked, wrote notes, sipped Horlicks,

stifled yawns and watched till dawn their charges

blanketed against the chill in balcony beds

between Sister's torchlit rounds, her footsteps 

grating gravel in the shadowy grounds.

But few now recall this previous incarnation;

only the wide-eyed cat, silently stalking suburbia's streets,

scaling a wicker fence, perceives with some sixth sense

a rustle of starch and the absent beat of a long-still heart.

(Copyright Gill Garrett 2013)

Normality restored

Well, it's back to earth with a vengeance after a magic time at Ty Newydd. I didn't actually get a lot of writing done whilst there, but the week gave me the space and the opportunity to rethink various projects I'm working on, to prioritise and to do some planning. Now comes the reality - the hard work of putting all that into practice!

Despite being snowed under with work lately, my good friend and Picaresque colleague Kathy Alderman found time to make a couple of very successful appearances at the recent Cheltenham Poetry Festival and she's now very kindly agreed to guest on my blog this week. I'm a great admirer of all Kathy's writing but, perhaps because we share some of our heritage, her poem below has to be my real favourite. Thank you so much, Kathy, for letting me use it here.


Old As Hills

I remember you - just. Old as hills, still
as Snowdon with rain in your pocket,
quiet as mist, clothes a grey mountain scree,
mind crow-flown back to the land of our fathers.
Your family loved you in the time before I knew,
their best of Dadis, in those green valley days
before night came. Full of Celtic brooding he was,
a marriage aunt said and Mam was cross
but the mist was enveloping her. When you'd gone
the crows stole her voice away and left
an imposter behind. They came back for me;
once. Then I longed for you Tadcu,
to tell my tormentors, my mizzle was true
as the crows that surrounded them too. 


My writing evolved from my career as an actress and a love of language. I wrote this experimental sonnet for a creative writing degree module and it won the Canon Poets "Sonnet Or Not" competition in 2012. I had a strong childhood memory of my Grandpa Hughes and of my mother's deep love for him. At its heart, the poem is about family bonds and how we take strength from them in times of need.

Kathryn Alderman.

Never mind the rain ...

Weather apart, the week at Ty Newydd gets better and better. I spoke about the sense of privilege I feel at being here; in addition to the excellent quality of the tuition, I find I get such a lot from the other people encountered and worked with. There are eight of us on the course this time, each with our own area of interest. The personal writing projects we are pursuing are very disparate but all fascinating in their own ways. If you are free to listen to Radio 4 at 3pm this afternoon, you can hear one of our course members, Ursula Martin, discussing her project on "Ramblings".

Ursula was diagnosed with ovarian cancer five years ago and has since done an enormous amount of work raising awareness of the condition and money for research and care.To do so she has "walked Wales", completing 3718 miles in 538 days. Her routes have included Offa's Dyke Path, the Glyndwr Way, the Cambrian Way and the Rivers Conwy and Dee from source to sea. On these walks her website (onewomanwalkswales.com) informs us that she has fallen over 10 times and had 37 close encounters of the bovine kind! Now she is writing up her experiences as a book and hence is here with us for the week.

Yesterday evening has to count as a highlight of the week, with the visit of that most prolific and wide-ranging author Jan Morris as guest speaker. I had heard Jan speak before, on my visit here five years ago, but she was as interesting and entertaining as ever. What tremendous gifts, to be so blessed both as a speaker and as a writer! A thoroughly enjoyable evening.

Justin Marozzi, Jan Morris, Leusa Llewelyn, Rory Maclean