An excuse for a holiday!

Looking along the Mawddach Estuary to Barmouth Bridge

We may be taking a break from The Writer's Room over the summer but there's certainly no break from writing for the radio. I've just  started putting together a series of short programmes on travels in Wales. It's proving a really enjoyable project - the research especially! It's such a pleasure to revisit old haunts, explore new ones and unearth the photos, notes and diaries kept by previous travelers, my own family included. The great weather of recent days has definitely shown the country to advantage - because, o bod yn onest (to be honest) the odd damp day here is not unknown - how else are the hills to be so striking, the valleys so verdant?!

A few years ago the wonderful, now sadly late Nigel Jenkins really enthused me with his writing and teaching on psycho-geography. Perhaps you've come across Seren's "The Real .." series, books like Nigel's "The Real Gower", "The Real Port Talbot" by Lynne Rees or "The Real Newport" by Ann Drysdale; they're guide books with a difference, seeking out and investigating the oddities, the everyday, the unexpected places and people that conventional books ignore. I'm hoping that our radio series can take and present a similarly slant view, can surprise and interest those who don't know the country, can be celebrated by those who do.

So last week a visit to Aberdyfi took in the standard trips (Port Meirion, Cader Idris etc) and the "roads less taken" - listening to a talk on the work of the local branch of the National Search and Rescue Dogs Association (so often deployed in Snowdonia), watching fledglings make their amazing first flights at the Dyfi Osprey Project, investigating the history of Ballast Island in Porthmadog Harbour, trekking to the tiny church at Llandecwyn, part of the Small Pilgrim Places Network. Time and funds will only run to more local research in the next month or so, I'm afraid, but we're so lucky living here in south east Wales as well - with the Wye Valley literally on our doorstep and the Brecon Beacons and Black Mountains within the hour, I'm not complaining!

The nature reserve at Dol Idris

Poetry, pastries and projects

Unfortunately, life is too busy at the moment to manage more than two days at this year's Ledbury Poetry Festival - a real shame, as there are some great events I would have liked to have got to. But Sunday and Monday both saw really good sessions which I much enjoyed.

Our "Poetry Breakfast" (with some fabulous pastries) saw poets from all over the country and from as far afield as Vermont reading the "hill" poems selected for Ledbury's on-line project begun by Jean Aitken, the "Troubadour of the Hills". The event was held beneath Ledbury's famous black and white Market Hall; although the weather brightened up later, it was an early session and several of us almost lost contact with our toes - we had to repair to a coffee shop afterwards to warm up! Later I went to hear Hannah Swingler reading from her debut collection; although performance poetry is not really my thing, I was very taken with some of her work, especially "Mrs. Tiggy Winkle has fallen off the shelf again", a moving tribute to a grandmother living with dementia. Then it was a "Walking Workshop" with Phoebe Power after lunch, looking at walking and poetry - which definitely is my thing!

I loved this in a shop window display!

Hannah Swingler

As with last year, I really enjoyed yesterday's Community Showcase, with readings from members of several groups covered by Ledbury's poetry outreach programme - older people in residential care, members of "Rose Tinted Rags" (a social enterprise group), Hereford MIND, Segments (a group who work with historical artefacts) and my own Women For Women group. Then it was off to nearby Trumpet (great name for a village, isn't it?!) for an afternoon with The Malvern Writers Circle. It wasn't a group I'd met before but everyone was extremely welcoming and there was a very interesting open mic - to say nothing of the cakes provided by the Trumpet Tearooms! I don't know what it is about food and poetry but there's a definite connection ...

"We all have tales to tell..."

What are you doing for National Writing Day? How are you celebrating it? There are so many events on, all around the country, aimed at inspiring people in the UK to discover the pleasure and the power of writing. It's not just about the committed, the well known, the already converted - Michael Morpurgo reminds us that "We all have tales to tell. We just have to find a voice to do it. Find the voice, tell it your way, it's your story." Some of my best writing moments haven't been telling my own tales, but helping other people to tell theirs - in nursing and residential homes, in day centres, in supported living facilities - seeing the satisfaction and the pride that can come from putting together and setting down a story, a poem, a memoir on paper or screen.

National Writing Day is co-ordinated by First Story, the national literacy charity. There are loads of resources on line (www.nationalwritingday.org.uk) to use individually, in schools or in writing groups. There are prompts for scriptwriting, a "soundscape" exercise to fire the imagination, contact details for organisations and follow-up events. I'll be off this evening for a celebration in a community library in the Forest of Dean; I hope you enjoy whatever activities you're involved with today - and happy writing!

A sense of place

I haven't been a great one for North American literature in the past but yesterday may have been a turning point for me; at Penarth's Literature Festival workshop on "The Importance Of Place" Tyler Keevil, the Canadian author and lecturer from Cardiff University, introduced me to some interesting authors I'd not come across before. Extracts from the work of writers such as Joyce Carol Oates and Eden Robinson certainly whetted the appetite for more; the almost cinematic quality of their writing, creating worlds and placing their characters so effortlessly within them, was certainly impressive.

I've always been fascinated by place in a story or a poem - how it can drive a narrative, become almost a character in the piece. And I'm very aware of how much of my poetry these days is place based. I'm collaborating on two projects at the moment which will use photographs to compliment poems; over the summer I'm also hoping to work with the photographic group at Newport MIND, combining two art forms to create something quite distinctive from either. It should be really interesting - if fairly challenging.

Tyler Keevil

After Penarth it was on to Cardiff Castle for Tafwyl, the annual two day Welsh language festival held there. Saturday had apparently seen bright sunshine, record temperatures and record crowds - yesterday roedd hi'n bwrw glaw - it rained, solidly! But the learner's tent was packed anyway and there were some very inspirational speakers. The wonderful Cant a Mil bookshop had a stall there and I had to fight my urge to buy every level-appropriate book they had; my reading is far better developed than my speaking ability and I know I need to siarad, siarad, siarad (talk, talk, talk), rather than darllen, darllen, darllen (read, read, read) but I can't break the habit!
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"Homeopathic doses of poetry!"

.. that's a quote from Tony Curtis, the wonderful Dublin poet, talking about the series of pamphlets from Candlestick Press designed to introduce poetry to those who wouldn't usually read it. You may have seen some of the series in bookshops, museums or tea shops, "instead of a card" greetings, inexpensive but beautifully produced and a delight to read.

Yesterday evening saw the launch of "Ten Poems About Horses" edited by Alison Brackenbury, held in (appropriately enough!) Alison's Bookshop in Tewkesbury - appropriate too because it's Independent Bookshops Week this week and Alison's is an excellent independent one. A very appreciative audience were treated to wine, cake and some tremendous poetry, read by Alison and my old Cotswold colleagues Sharon Larkin, Iris Ann Lewis and Christine Whittemore. Tony Curtis opened proceedings with a musical setting of Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening" and closed them with more songs and his own poetic take on horses, both humorous and profound. A lovely evening.

We're taking a break ...

After a year of fortnightly programmes on NHSound - twelve months that have introduced me to some great Monmouthshire writers - The Writer's Room is taking a break over the summer. I've so enjoyed meeting and interviewing local poets, novelists and biographers, to say nothing of booksellers and librarians; as a relative newcomer to the area (or, more accurately, a returner after several decades), they've eased me in to the local scene and have been so welcoming. When we resume broadcasting in the autumn, I hope to see lots of them again - and plenty of new faces and voices too of course.

My final guest for the series was Sue Hatt, a member of the Caldicot Writers Group, who - like me - came rather later to creative writing after a career in academia. It was so interesting to hear about her current project, which had its origins in the war-long correspondence between her mother and her prisoner of war father; the remaining members of his battalion were captured after facilitating the evacuation at Dunkirk. Sue's meticulous research into events, combined with the intensely personal story of a young couple separated for years by war and hardship, is producing a fascinating story that should appeal to a wide readership - certainly one to watch out for.

Loud and clear?!

With Jean Aitken and Chloe Garner,
Director of the Ledbury Poetry Festival

Well, until yesterday I couldn't say that I'd ever done a poetry reading using a megaphone! But at Hellen's Garden Festival in Much Marcle our intrepid band of troubadour poets, led by Jean Atkin, the  current "Troubadour of the Hills", was issued with one to do battle with the elements and the clamour arising from several hundred (if not more) festival goers. Fortunately the awful weather of the previous day had abated - though  I was kitted out in wellies just in case - and the sun eventually deigned to come out as we read a variety of "hill" poems in the beautiful old gardens within sight of the Malverns. It was a very pleasant afternoon that hopefully saw a good amount raised for St. Michael's Hospice in Hereford.

This morning I was having coffee in the cafe at the Millenium Centre in Cardiff and was taken with the above Roald Dahl quote inscribed on the wall there. It struck me that you could put a lot of others words in place of "magic" - success, for example. It's all too easy when you're struggling with something - a piece of writing perhaps - to feel that you'll never achieve anything with it, the poem or the prose will never go anywhere;  I've learned that indeed it won't go anywhere unless you have a firm belief in it, a belief that gives you the determination to keep going, to put everything you can into it. On Wednesday evening this week I saw that exemplified a dozen times over. I was privileged to be a guest at the Inspire! Adult Learning Awards in Cardiff, where individuals and groups who had had the desire to challenge a variety of health, social and work difficulties, who believed that they could change lives for the better, were recognized for their achievements in doing so. My own daughter was among them; it was a moving and a humbling experience.