Category Archives: Places

Small Press – Big Celebration – Iron Press and 40 Years of Good Books

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They came in their droves, not deterred by the journey, the rain and the floods – they came to the small seaside fishing village of Cullercoats on the North East coast to celebrate 40 years of Iron Press – in poetry, prose and music. And even the man himself, founder of the original Iron magazine and the Press, Peter Mortimer, was stunned by the response; ‘We can all say we were there…’ he told a packed audience on Saturday evening after a breathtaking set by Bridie Jackson and the Arbour, followed by Iron’s most famous son David Almond - (Iron published two collections by David before he became a national figure) who read with a power and lyricism that I’ve just never encountered before; a reading that was as much music as prose.

Stormy Sea at Cullercoats – John Falconer Slater

David made clear his debt to Iron – he has dedicated his collection of stories – Nesting – (if you’re serious about writing buy this book for the introduction alone ! ) published by Iron for the festival – to Pete and Kitty. Where would writers would be without the small presses he asked? Where indeed?  My first novel would probably not have been published without Flambard Press who after Arts Council cuts are sadly no more. But I’m glad to say Iron Press is alive and well, due in no small measure to the indefatigable spirit of Peter and to the lovely and hard working Kitty Fitzgerald who on Saturday afternoon enchanted the room with her reading from her soon to be published collection Miranda’s Shadow.

The Salt House provided an excellent watering hole for festival goers- coffee and cake, panninis, fries, wine, comfy sofas, as well as music and poetry, while on the beach the band played Beyonce and Dody Clutch made a symbolic flat iron birthday cake in the sand around which  band and followers duly processed. The atmosphere was all celebration and carnival – it felt like a festival should, not like the Lit fests we have come to know and shun. No flaunting of celebrity, just a wonderful gathering – I’ve barely scratched the surface here there were lots of other events: readings, pool tournaments, a two and a half mile run, haiku workshops, and to top it all Melvyn Bragg on Sunday evening – like I’ve said, just folk out to enjoy themselves, and didn’t we have fun!

Congratualtions to all at Iron Press for pulling off the literary coup of the festival year – long may you publish!

SORRY – I failed to take any photos but my companions did – for some great words and pictures see Life Twice Tasted!

Back in the B.A.T.H.

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Tomorrow evening I’ll be reading, once again, from the Iron Press anthology Root, this time alongside writer John Price.

For me reading at B.A.T.H. – Bishop Auckland Town Hall - is like coming home. It’s where my serious writing began one inspirational weekend, in a workshop led by Wendy Roberston and the late Julia Darling. It’s where my first book, The Sweet Track was launched and, long before any of this, it was the place I gravitated to in Bishop Auckland when I first came to live in the North. It was stylish; full of art, music, writing and books – it was not just a library. It was an arts centre conceived and manged by leading light Gillian Wales, who I’m delighted to say is now a great friend.

If you come along I really hope you enjoy the evening and I’d like to thank you in advance as I won’t be posting here for a while. On Thursday I’m having an operation on my right eye – not too serious I hope – I expect to be writing again soon but maybe not on the screen. It’s sooner than expected, but the sooner the better – then on to the left!

Root – from Corbridge to Bishop Auckland

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I had a great time on Wednesday evening in Corbridge (see previous post). For one thing it’s just so good to meet readers and for another the enthusiastic response they gave to the extract from my story Tough Love took me quite by surprise and was very gratifying. Mostly they wanted to know what happened to Dennis! Had he been buried in a hole along with the birds? What about his wife? Did I have a husband? And if you get to read the story you’ll see why they asked after my spouse!

The venue was perfect -Tea & Tipple cafe – and I was full of admiration for Helen of Forum Books who organised this packed event. I’ll definitely be back to browse the Forum bookshelves.

Meeting other writers like Beda who was also reading from the Root antholgy, was a huge part of the enjoyment- also via Twitter – writers : Mari Hannah, Hazel Osmond, Chris Marples - it was great to meet, have your support and share stories and a glass of wine – such a bonus. Also great to see Ian from my prison days

Of course Peter Mortimer and Kitty Fitzgerald from Iron Press - were behind the whole event – without them the book would not exist – they are just amazing at what they do – if you don’t believe me take a look at the programme for their forthcoming festival in May.

If you didn’t make it to Corbridge but you can make it to Bishop Auckland Town Hall this Wednesday 10th – 7pm – we’ll be doing it again. This time John Price and myself will be reading  HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE !

Good Things for Monday

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The Poetry Project brightens my Mondays – and let’s face it the days could certainly do with brightening given the snow and icy winds that have wound themselves around us. So, what is it?

The garden Saturday

‘A poem for a Monday morning…What better way to start the week, wherever you are in the world? Every week, from January 1st 2013, we will be uploading a poem and accompanying video artwork, in celebration of Ireland’s literary and visual creativity.Week by week, over six months, you’ll be able to follow the work of leading, and emerging artists and writers, and discover Ireland through different eyes.Be moved, inspired, enthralled.The Poetry Project is absolutely free, and is presented as part of the Culture Programme of the EU Presidency’

You can sign up to recieve this on the website. This week’s poem is ~ Derek Mahon’s beautiful, Everything Is Going to Be Alright ~ which begins:

How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?

 Also brightening my Monday is the way my new 3,ooo word story is shaping up, (finished but not edited ) working title (I think there’s a better title in there somewhere) – Behind the Curtain, Behind the Wall and I’m especially happy because at one point over the weekend I thought the computer had swallowed it! It begins:

Sometimes it was the place he blamed. If they’d never come to live in Paradise his son Aaron might not have died and he might not have taken against Fergus, Aaron’s twin. He tried never to show it but it was there in his heart, like a weight that couldn’t be dislodged; a son he no longer knew or wanted. A world poisoned, the air suffocated with the dust from a lifetime of bricks …

In New Writing North’s newsletter this morning ~ Iron Press’ Root anthology launch: Forum Books at the Tea & Tipple Cafe, Market Place, Corbridge: Wednesday 3 April, 7pm

Forum Books and Iron Press present a launch event for the Root anthology with readings by Costa Short Story Award winner Avril Joy and Northumberland poet Beda Higgins. Free entry, no booking required. For full details about Root and further readings across the region, see www.ironpress.co.uk

I’m looking forward to reading in Corbridge very much and also reading closer to home in Bishop Auckland Town Hall on Wed April 10th.

Finally  – a friend pointed me in the direction of this review - I was bowled over!

Happy Monday!

 

Friends

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Not quite warm enough to be outside – definitely not for 3 hours!

It was almost but not quite warm enough to sit outside. To me the Durham University Botanic Gardens (which if you’ve visited these pages before, you will know is a favourite place of mine) appear to exist in their very own micro climate. It’s a particularly sheltered spot, the sun shines more often here, or perhaps it’s just the way the great yew hedges trap its warmth and the glasshouses offer up the dry heat of the desert and the steamy, humidity of the tropics.

Today we sat inside in the café and enjoyed scones and gluten free brownies, coffees and teas. It’s a great place to meet friends, especially if as we did, you need to talk for at least three hours. We had a lot of catching up to do and were only finished as the café closed and even then we weren’t really done. But that’s the gift of special, long-held friendships; friends who are there for the bad times and the good. Friends who celebrate what you do.

On my way home I think how  friendship is a recurring theme in my writing and how I need to be better at it.

Now after that lovely midday break, back to writing – I’m pleased to say I’m very close to finishing my current Millie and Bird collection.

For Jackie Kay’s excellent advice on writing short stories and also my tips, sign up on the right for my Monday newsletter – it’s FREE no strings attached.

What’s in Your Notebook?

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How many notebooks does a writer need? In my case at least three, usually four to five on the go at any one time, which is highly dangerous as I can end up writing anything anywhere and putting it in any one of my book/hand bags.

Consequently I have an ever increasing stack of used notebooks filled with stories, novels in progress, poems – whatever I’m working on, although once deep into a novel I do try to keep these notebooks separate and I try for the most part to keep poetry separate too. It’s just that I’m not always sure what I’m going to write.

Entries also include  the random pieces written on the hoof in cafes, gardens, new and old places, lists, notes to myself, blog posts, workshop ideas, doodles and drawings, plans and lists of chapters, word counts, research notes and of course the odd shopping list. Most of these pieces I have transcribed or used in some way but if I take a trawl through any old notebook, I can usually find one or two pieces to take me by surprise. Pieces I might not even remember writing.

Looking for something I do remember but that was written some time ago can be tricky. So I was lucky yesterday, when I went rooting around in my stack of notebooks, to put my hands on the very notebook I was looking for, the one I’d used the last time I was in Agde in the south of France and had drafted a story in. It was a story I hadn’t forgotten, about a strange stone head and a woman and a pharmacist on a feast day, and tomorrow I’ll start on the job of transcribing it.

Soon it will be new notebook time.Now that is exciting!

You can read about my time writing in Agde HERE

Are you a notebook fetishist  – I wonder?  And what’s in your notebook?

Snow Country

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Sidney Sussex College Cambridge is a good place to be in a cold snap -  the generous sized rooms are warm day and night and Patisserie Valerie is barely a couple of minutes away (and there are many more wonderful coffee and tea houses.) We spent one particularly mellow lunchtime in a wine bar, which I’d first spotted from my window, sat near a blazing fire with plates of olives and pate and the obligatory glass (or was it two?) of Merlot.

The air in the city was thin and icy and the lawns and trees of the Master’s Garden were frosted white. I took a spectacular walk along the Backs, through Trinity’s immense iron gates and up its tree-lined path, crossing the Cam where punts idled slick with ice, skirting the college and making my way back, along Trinity Lane.

Even the Fitzwilliam was hosting, ‘Snow Country,’ an exquisite exhibition of Japanese woodcuts printed on paper whitened in the japanese snow bleaching fields.

Mostly we did what we’d come to do which was write. We were also thinking and talking writing, and in this wonderful space, free from any domestic concerns it was possible to make great leaps forward, not just in the number of words achieved but in the creative planning and decision making that is so necessary to any work of fiction. Writing is about so much more than just writing. And going somewhere new and different inspires new and different ideas. It also offers up some great new locations and I will definitely be using Cambridge – I’ve got my notes and lists – in one my new stories.

Read Wendy’s account of our Cambridge days here: Playing Truant in Cambridge

Writing in Cambridge

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On Sunday I’m off to Cambridge and Sydney Sussex College for four days of writing with my writing buddy Wendy - hooray, can’t wait ! Eating, breathing sleeping writing. We did the same last year when we stayed at Balliol in Oxford and it was wonderful – you can read all about it here.

I’ve got more to say about, writing buddies, counteracting doubt and writing on, as well as information about paid opportunities for writing online in my free weekly newsletter which is scheduled for Mondays. If you’d like to receive it just fill in the form on the right – (your privacy respected, no spam and you can unsubscribe whenever you wish) See you next week……..

 

Holy Island Spell

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Last week due to the kindness of two great friends and fellow writers five us (the Famous Five indeed – it was definitely the sort of place they would have adventured in or got marooned on) stayed overnight on Holy Island.

What touched me most about the Island, was not its Christian heritage but the history of the land and its people, who like the bone pillar (in my poem below) struggled for survival on an island where sands shifted with every tide; a place of isolation, migration, erosion, sand and wind blown, at its best when visitors depart with the tide and the swifts take possession, darting in and out of the great priory ruins.

The sea was indigo that late afternoon and the sky was vast, a blue vault of billowing cloud. I thought I saw the island’s shape mirrored in the sky. I looked for ghosts but saw none. I heard none and wasn’t fortunate enough to catch the seals singing. What I did catch was the drift of a pagan cry which found its way into my poem – here are the first two stanzas..

Holy Island Spell

Bone pillar, Viking thigh,
or some such foreigner undiminished
by the wind, always the wind, wearing
stone, colour of herring’s eye.
No one bound your fingers in cloots to
keep out salt; cured you in smoke.

Cuddy’s bead, seal meat
spineless holed to see the sky
under moon devil’s stone, wind,
always the wind whispering by, in the cold
bents of the Snook, no hiding in the dunes
to escape the grasping tide.

 

 

We also visited the beautiful Howick Hall Gardens which were full of flowers and colour still. It was a great adventure – many, many thanks to Erica and Anne.

Reading At the Poetry Garden Market

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I had a wonderful day last Saturday at Inpress books Poetry Garden Market on the Southbank ‘lawn’, outside of Foyles. The sun shone, in true Indian Summer fashion, on an afternoon of readings by great new poets, including some of my personal favourites, Hannah Lowe and John Wedgewood Clarke.  Come seven o’clock when it was time to read my poem, ‘September After Rain’, which won second prize (it was a Clean Sweep for the North East!)  in the Indian Summer competition, I’d been through a lot. I’d been through the ‘what am I doing here, my poem’s not good enough, I’m not really a poet,’ to – bouyed up by my lovely, kind daughter and wonderful words from the judge  Steve O’Brien, Editor of The London Magazine, – my poem is good enough its been chosen, this a great occasion, I’m a poet  and I’m going to enjoy it.

The reading felt intensely public: out of doors, on the Southbank, people in nearby cafes and passers by listening in – it was like telling your poem to the world. Thankfully there was a microphone and London threw its beautiful evening sky at me. I think I managed OK, I certainly found a friendly face in the audience, but my legs turned to jelly and shook as I read and that’s never happened to me before.

Afterwards there were flowers and much needed wine. Inpress and Foyles staff made it a great evening with a truly celebratory feel – so many thanks to all -  I had the best time!