Poems from pictures

I've always enjoyed working from other art forms - paintings, music, photographs - and an exhibition currently on display at the National Trust's Hanbury Hall near Droitwich provided plenty of inspiration for poems when I visited last week. Local artists have a tremendous variety of work on display in the Long Gallery there; along with some other poets, I was invited by Nina Lewis, the Worcestershire Poet Laureate, to create some poems in response to it. We'll be reading a selection of the resulting poems on November 14th at Parks Cafe in Droitwich (see the poster below for details) - if you're in the area, do come along and join us, it should prove a very interesting and enjoyable session.

The GWN at the Cheltenham Literature Festival

This year's GWN winners and runners-up

What a great evening on Sunday! This year the Gloucestershire Writers' Network event at the Cheltenham Literature Festival saw a packed venue, with a very appreciative audience supporting the winners and runners-up in the annual poetry and prose competitions and listening to fantastic readings by Lania Knight and Roy Macfarlane, our two judges. Sorry as I was to part with the Poet's Hare (who had graced my writing desk for the last twelve months), I was delighted to present him to Frances March, the winner of the poetry section with her evocative "1956 : Sheltered". And Nastasya Parker's short story, "The Maze", was a well-deserved prose winner, beautifully and poignantly exploring the "Who do we think we are?" theme of the Festival.

From the work that they both read - Lania from her novel "Three Cubic Feet" and Roy from his collection "Beginning With Your Last Breath" - it was obvious that we could not have chosen better writers to judge a competition based around perceptions of identity.  We'd presented them with no small task; we'd had a bumper crop of entries, all of a very good standard. We're immensely grateful to them for the big commitment of time that the work entailed and for the care with which they approached the task.

With Frances March

Nastasya Parker

With Lania and Roy and my GWN committee colleagues
Penny Howard, Kathryn Alderman and Judith Dijkhuisen

Parting company with old friends

Today I started a job that has been on my "To Do" list for ages - but that I've been putting off and off. We have books in every room in the house (yes, every room!); if we come to downsize in the not too distant future, that library has got to be rationalised somehow. But where to start? How to choose what stays and what goes? This is not going to be achieved in a hurry ...

As I scanned the bookcases I found my whole life encapsulated there - the hardback classics I'd read in childhood, books that had belonged to my parents, all the Tolkien and C. S. Lewis stories I'd read with my children. Books I'd had as prizes at school, books given to me as presents over the years, books written and signed by friends - all there and reminding me so much of people and places important to me over the years. There were books I'd read and reread, ones that had made me laugh and ones that had seen me through difficult times - and so many that I couldn't possibly part with!

But on the first cull I have ended up with three large bags to contribute to our local Red Cross bookshop. Good to think that a worthwhile charity can benefit from them - and if I can feel that the people who buy them will get half as much enjoyment out of them as I have, I shalln't regret it.

Leaves and lines

I always enjoy watching summer sliding into September, with the leaves beginning to turn, the subtle alteration in the light; I love to sense the change in the air when I walk the dog in the mornings. But this year circumstances got the better of me - having spent a fortnight hardly leaving house or hospital, I emerged blinking at the weekend to find autumn, my favourite season, already firmly established. A timely reminder that, whilst our lives may be on hold with personal traumas, the world moves on and life elsewhere continues.

But now there is much to look forward to, especially on the poetry front. I was interested to read in the Guardian on Saturday that Nielson Bookscan had reported a 10% year on year increase in poetry sales, and last week's National Poetry Day was a resounding success, with events not only in the usual venues but in all manner of unexpected places. Far from being a now neglected art form as it's sometimes portrayed, poetry is not just alive and well but thriving in this country.

And it certainly thrives in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire! This month sees the Swindon Poetry Festival (October 5th - 9th), the Cheltenham Literature Festival (at which I'll be introducing the Gloucestershire Writers' Network event) running from 6th - 15th, the Mere Literary Festival (at which I'll be reading two of my poems shortlisted for the Poetry Prize) from 9th - 15th and the first ever Gloucester Poetry Festival (October 26th - 29th). We're certainly spoiled for choice in this neck of the woods! All the events promise to be interesting and enjoyable so do join us at some of them if you can - there are details on all the relevant websites.

The Pity Of War

Ever since studying their works for A level English, I've been interested in the poets of the First World War. More recently I've read quite a bit of poetry from the Second World War too - and women's poetry from both conflicts, so often overlooked and so much worth the effort to unearth and to read. There's also some excellent prose out there, which looks at the actual and imagined lives of the war poets - such as Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy, which I've reread several times.

But last night it was a stage production that fascinated me - Flying Bridge Theatre Company's "Not About Heroes" by Stephen Macdonald at the Savoy in Monmouth, which traced the development of the relationship between Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. The play is set during their time at Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh, where Owen had been sent with "shellshock" and to where Sassoon had been shunted after his "Finished With The War" letter (sent to his commanding officer but picked up by the press and read out in Parliament). The emphasis in the play is very much on the development of the two men's poetry but it also examines other aspects of their relationship, including its probable homosexual nature. It's a brilliant and very powerful piece of work; last night was only the second night of the current tour, which runs until the middle of November, so there's still plenty of opportunity to catch a performance. You can find all the details at www.flyingbridgetheatre.co.uk 

Form and Fragments

In interesting morning earlier this week - a tutorial with Angela France looking at less common poetic forms. I was very taken by the "decima" - of Spanish / Portugese origin, it has ten lines of eight syllables and a tight rhyming scheme. Having attempted one or two somewhat unsuccessfully since, I have high regard for the "decimistas" in Latin America who apparently have fast moving "battles" to improvise the form on stage!

Most of the week, however, has been spent by the hospital bedside of a family member. I had thought that my "Fragments" people watching project was coming to a close, but the experience has certainly re-ignited it. Whilst the physical hospital environment has changed dramatically since I began my nursing career many years ago, so much of what goes on within it has not changed at all - dramas great and small are played out, hopes are raised or dashed, families come together or fall out in the highly charged atmosphere that illness imposes. The observer in a hospital ward has a ring-side seat; what more could a writer ask for?

The year moves on ...

The last couple of weeks have passed in a rather manic blur and suddenly autumn seems to be upon us - chilly evenings, mist hanging low over the river in the mornings and the leaves definitely beginning to turn. And, as usual, autumn brings the Gloucestershire Writers' Network event at the Cheltenham Literature Festival - for which we now have our competition winners lined up. I was responsible for collating the entries but didn't read them until after the judging - and then I realised what an onerous task we had set our judges! Not only did we have a very healthy number of entries this year, they were of really excellent quality. But Roy MacFarlane did stirling work with the poetry entries and Lania Knight did a great job on the prose ones. They'll both be reading at the Festival event too, on Sunday October 15th, so it should be a great evening.

Yesterday "Chasing The Horizon", the anthology from our Catchword group in Cirencester, arrived from the printers. Ten of us have contributed a mix of poems and short stories and it makes an interesting and entertaining read. It's available locally and from members of the group. We meet weekly in the hall of Ashcroft Methodist Church, which will be open to all on Saturday as part of the national annual Heritage Open Days event; the anthology will be on sale there too, so, if you're in the Cirencester area, do call in, meet some of us over a coffee and maybe treat yourself to a copy.