Talking and walking Wales

 It was with some trepidation that I drove up to mid Wales a week ago - after depending on the internet for so long, how would an in-person workshop be once more? Well - it was wonderful. Zoom sessions simply can't replicate the experience of sharing a space with like-minded others, chatting over coffee and lunch, working in concert with one another. And the venue - Farmer's Lavender in the hills above Builth Wells - added to the pleasure of the day, though I admit I didn't take advantage of the natural pool in the grounds for a swim, as did some of the braver souls! But Helena Attlee and Emma Beynon facilitated a very interesting and thought-provoking day and it was fascinating to talk to the other participants about their current life writing projects - such a variety of biographies, travelogues, memoirs.

I was back in mid Wales again at the weekend, to at last complete our Wye Valley Walk. It had been a somewhat protracted one - we started it in 2009 and it's only 136 miles long! For a variety of reasons we had had long gaps in between stints. But finish it we have, covering the last seven and a half miles in intermittent downpours - which might explain why we met no more than a handful of other walkers all day! It's the sort of walking I love though - in spectacular wild country, with history beneath your feet (home to Celts, Plynlimon saw the Romans mining lead, Owain Glyndwr routing the English). No wonder artists and writers down the centuries have taken inspiration there.

Summer reading

It's only the first week of August but already it feels as if autumn is upon us - chilly mornings and the evenings drawing in. I'm often surprised and disappointed by August weather although I know I shouldn't be. The Welsh for July is Mis Gorffennaf - from gorffen, to finish, and haf, summer. So I suppose the dubious weather of August has long been recognised as autumn knocking on the door! But one thing that never disappoints over the summer is having a bit more time - getting back to some (non-research!) reading, seeing friends (which, at last, we can now do), taking stock before getting back into the usual September routine.

I've very much appreciated the opportunity to search out some new authors in the last few weeks and to catch up on my poetry reading. Angela France's new collection Terminarchy came out a few weeks ago with Nine Arches Press and that I have thoroughly enjoyed. She approaches the big questions, the serious issues, with a light touch that so effectively draws the reader into the natural world that is hers and ours; she shows us the urgent need to value and protect that world, she reminds us through her friend Sparrow that "no-one can mend / fractured land, no-one can replant ancient". Reading or hearing her work read always reinforces for me how fortunate we are to have her as mentor to our Women Aloud group; her support, suggestions and always constructive criticism are invaluable. 

 

Talks and walks

So, the Ledbury Poetry Festival has come and gone for another year - but very successful it was too. Next year perhaps normality will resume with more in person events, but a few of those at least took place this time and the on line ones enabled a very wide audience to enjoy some brilliant poetry. I particularly enjoyed the John Challis workshop I was able to participate in on Appearances and Excavations and the Gillian Clarke and Matthew Francis event in which they read from their recent publications. I have always loved the great Welsh Mabinogion stories and Matthew Francis has retold four of these in tremendous poetry; in Gododdin, Gillian Clarke has transformed the ancient accounts of the battle between the Welsh and Picts and the Angles in AD 600  with a hundred laments for named characters who fought. Word music indeed.

It's been back to the drawing board with the biography I'm working on. Following a couple of meetings in the last week or so, even more has come to light that demands space in the story. Two long treks last weekend - at the beginning of the Three Castles Walk - provided useful opportunities for a bit of reflection on things. To say nothing of prompting ideas for some poems too ...

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.