A Scottish interlude

 A long gap since that last post - a busy time! We've recently come back after a couple of weeks in Scotland - walking in the Trossachs in the first week and doing a lot of research on the west coast during the second. Late spring is always such a lovely time to visit north of the border - although this time the midges were out in force rather earlier than I've known in the past! But the weather was great and the wild flowers just stunning. I was delighted to be able to get back to Inchcailloch, the uninhabited island in Loch Lomond  I last visited forty years ago and to which I've always wanted to return. There's a magic there I've experienced nowhere else - the sense of history, the quiet woodland, the clear waters, the view from the summit of mountain range after mountain range. A very special place.

But I have come back with something of a dilemma. The trip garnered more information about the subject of my biography than I could have hoped for - but also a lot of information around his life and times, about significant others with a bearing on the story who I hadn't encountered in any way beforehand. I'm still mulling over whether I should change the whole thrust of the book or think about a second publication following on from it. Pros and cons to either approach! But Covid has delayed progress on the project for long enough so I'm anxious to move forward on it now.

But this coming week sees the start of the Ledbury Poetry Festival, one of the poetry highlights of my year. A mixture this time of on-line and face to face events. I'm very much looking forward to the poetry walk on the Malvern Hills next Saturday (and hoping the BBC weather forecast is wrong!). If you haven't seen the programme, do look it up - there are some great events to get to one way or another.

Inching forwards ...

At last! Libraries and archives are slowly re-opening. A major project (a biography) I had to put on the back burner at the start of the pandemic is being resurrected and something like normal service restored. Incredible though the internet may be, for so much research nothing can replace getting out there, talking to people, handling documents, walking the walks that your subject took. And a lot of my subject's walks were along Clydeside and then in the heart of Wales, so I'm looking forward enormously to following in his footsteps shortly.

It's great too that live literature events are beginning to surface once more. A lot of the Hay Festival and Independent Bookshop week events are still on line (some good things to look forward to there though) but I've been delighted to find several posts for upcoming workshops and readings actually in person again. Some are outdoors of course, so here's hoping for a kind summer!

The launch of Voices of the Grieving Heart on Sunday was a very moving event. In addition to reading their poems, the five British contributors and Mike Bernhardt, the Californian editor, told of the experiences that had led them to write - the loss of a child, a partner, a parent, sometimes in very traumatic circumstances. I felt very privileged to have work in such a publication, one that hopefully will perhaps bring something positive into the lives of people experiencing profound sadness. The event was attended by John Fox, the director of the Institute for Poetic Medicine in the States (to which all profits from the book will go); years ago I was at a workshop he ran on a rare visit to Britain and his contribution this time was as inspiring as ever.

Voices of the Grieving Heart

Here's the poster for the launch I wrote about in the last post. If you're free for an hour or so on Sunday May 23rd please do join us (registration details above). It promises to be a very interesting session on a a topic that affects us all at different times in our lives. The book's been very carefully curated by Mike Bernhardt and it's beautifully produced - it's well worth a look at.  
 

Launches here and there

 A lovely evening on Saturday saw a really good turnout for the launch of the two pamphlets whose authors had won the Cheltenham Poetry Festival Frosted Fire First Pamphlets competition last year. I had heard David Lukens reading with the Brokenborough Poets a few years ago and was very taken by his work then, but I hadn't come across Lee Potts before. One Brief Wave and A Drought Will Follow will definitely be on my reading list now. And I was delighted that my ex-Somewhere Else colleague, Iris Anne Lewis, was shortlisted for this year's award.

Also published this week, but in the States, was Voices of the Grieving Heart, an anthology edited by Mike Bernhardt, in which I have two poems. Nearly 30 years ago Mike turned to poetry after the sudden death of his young wife and a first edition of this book came out in 1994. The universal experience of loss and bereavement seen over the last twelve months however prompted him to bring out this second edition; in it 83 contributors speak movingly of many different manifestations of grief and healing in poetry, essays and images. All the profits from the sale of the book will go to the Institute of Poetic Medicine which does such tremendous work in promoting the therapeutic use of poetry in some very diverse settings. 

Looking forward

Time seems to have taken on some strange characteristics in lockdown - sometimes crawling, sometimes flying, then disappearing without a trace. Suddenly it's Easter, Spring has sprung (or at least it had yesterday, though today it may have changed its mind ....). But seeing the first bluebells in the woods yesterday certainly brought a sense of better things to come.

Over the last few weeks I've taken part in several interesting workshops and a couple of on-line launches (an especially enjoyable one last night with my Women Aloud colleague Belinda Rimmer, whose pamphlet with Stroud Poets has just been published). But I'm now itching to get back to face to face events! A year on Zoom has certainly kept us all in touch but nothing beats actually being at a reading, feeling the energy, the creativity engendered in a workshop. And I'd dearly love to resurrect a couple of projects currently sitting on the back burner - parked there pro tem until various archives reopen and I can finish the requisite research.

But a couple of new projects are emerging too, about which I'm quite excited. One involves the setting up of a new local radio station, writing and commissioning broadcastable material for a variety of programmes. I've always enjoyed radio work and really look forward to the challenges that venture will bring. Another centres on a possible collaboration with two other life writers and could be very productive. The writing life is certainly never a boring one!

International Women's Day - Raised Voices

What a great way to mark the United Nations 2021 International Women's Day - "Raised Voices", a poetry evening organised by Gloucestershire Poetry Society, in which eighteen local poets read one poem of their own and one by a favourite woman poet. Last year had seen a packed event at a church in Gloucester, but of course this year we had to join in from home - it was no less an occasion for that though. It brought into sharp focus the energy and creativity of women writers from all ages and all corners of the globe and was  a really inspiring celebration of their achievements.

Some of the "favourite" poems were by poets I know well - Helen Dunmore, Mary Oliver, Kim Moore - others were new to me. But some of the most memorable poems of the evening for me were ones written by the readers themselves. The contribution of Lucia Daramus - How I Cheat Myself, written in Romany, Spanish and English and centering on homelessness - was electrifying. Katherine Alderman's Widow's Dues was such a poignant tribute to an Irish grandmother. But my favourite had to be Cathy Baker's Borrowing A Mother, a remembrance of all the women involved in her growing up; it made me think of all the women who in so many ways made me who and what I am, and to whom I owe so very much.

Goodbye to a good writing friend

After the bitter cold of the weekend and then the howling gales of earlier this week, this morning seemed like Spring Incarnate! I've written before about the effect rivers have on me - both soothing and stimulating - and the Wye this morning, lined by catkins, snowdrops and wild daffodils, was lovely. I can't think of a better way to start a day's writing than walking for an hour or so in that setting; I'm always aware of how fortunate I am to have it almost literally on our doorstep.

Tomorrow I have a less welcome event in the day - the funeral of my Catchword colleague Richard Hensley. He was an immensely popular man with a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, but in the present circumstances attendance at funerals is so limited. I'm really pleased that I shall be able to be there to represent all his friends at Catchword, a group he belonged to and to which he contributed so much over many years. He was a constructive and generous critic, a great source of scientific information should you need help with a tricky plot, fun to be with - and a prolific writer. I'm so delighted that he was able to see his magnum opus, the Star Stone trilogy, successfully published; I heard him read extracts from all three books at several different events and I'll always remember his beautiful bass voice and his commanding delivery. He'll be very much missed by us all.