Category Archives: Poetry

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!

 

In Between Writing…

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It’s cold, there’s snow on the ground and I can’t go out far as I have a poorly post operative patient (nothing too serious thankfully)  to look after, all of which means that between chores I’m getting a fair bit of writing done. I’ve also been spending some time on the net looking at what people are doing – finding inspirational projects, blogs, websites, etc.

I love this about the internet – the way there’s always something intriguing out there, something to enrich your day. As a break from prose I often look to poetry, art and music for this. Here are some of the thing I’ve been looking at:

The Poetry Project (sign up here) Poetry and art from Ireland. 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.’

I loved this week’s video, music and poem, they really made me smile…and want to dance…it’s an uplifting thing to have land in your in-box on a Monday.

Esther Morgan’s website – she’s one of my favourite poets and her website is full of goodies – like the Journey of a Poem – a wonderful insight into how she works and how a poem develops and also Beat the Blank Page with lots of workshop ideas to get you writing.

Susan Rich – on being honoured as a writer – I keep coming back to her blog.

This wonderful piece on insomnia in Granta, by Chloe Aridjis. (Found via Twitter)

Eliza Carthy singing Whispers of Summer – ‘all in my mind.’

Stunning photographs – Kirk Palmer: Hiroshima, at Minimal Exposition

Poet and translator George Szirtes ‏on Twitter, just an hour ago -  ‘ Snow, dense as a swarm of bees, the sky dense grey-white. Settling.’

Enjoy!

 

Nice Idea Honey…

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After Saturday’s book group – see Wendy’s great review of our unusual choice  – we  got talking with Judith about France and about a french themed poetry event planned at NeST (a great venue) in Barnard Castle for March 2013.

I started blogging when I went to Agde in the South of France to write for two months (four years ago now) and fell in love with the place. I was especially captivated by the Canal du Midi which runs alongside this ancient town. The NeST event will have an open mic. I’ve never done open mic before but as there’s a first time for everything  I’m planning on having a go and reading some of my french poems – they were written some time ago now – early poems – but for me they have a certain charm that brings back that very special time and place which seemed so full of possibilities. Here is an extract from Nice Idea Honey – a poem which came to me when I was walking along the canal

Nice Idea Honey

If I asked you to
come and live with me 
on the Canal du Midi,
in a boat past sailing,
under plain trees dappled with age
come…and live with me
among pale flowers
irises and bankside washing,
in the distant clunk of freight
if I asked you, would you say
nice idea honey, but…
If I asked you to
come and live with me 
on the Canal Du Midi
by the vineyards of summer
with the nightingales, fishermen,
dogs, and mad-eyed young men
if I asked you to buy a bicycle and flee
would you still say nice idea honey but...

Ink Sweat and Tears, the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival and the Voices of Survivors

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The 2012 Aldeburgh Poetry Festival runs for the 2nd-4th November, and for the next week, Ink Sweat & Tears will be featuring poems on the theme ‘Poetry as a Lifeline’ which is the subject of the IS&T-supported Discussions and Short Takes at the festival this year – (the link will take you to the first of several ‘Short Takes on Poetry as a Lifeline,’ supported by IS&T)

I’m delighted to say my poem Migration – After ‘Katherine and Millie,’ Barbara Skingle has been accepted by Ink Sweat and Tears for publication in their ‘Poetry as a Lifeline,’ week, on their  webzine – and it will be posted HERE tomorrow (Monday) at midday.

Last week, in the wake of the Savile revelations, writer Kathleen Jones wrote a brave post on her blog, about sexual abuse. At last women’s voices are being heard. Survivors (men and women) are finding a voice and are being believed. As someone who worked with sexually abused women through the 1980s and 90s at HMP Low Newton and who encountered huge  resistance to the work we were doing I can only hope that the climate has changed irrevocably. I trust that finally we are ready to face up to what has been called ‘the best kept secret,’ – the sexual abuse of children in our families, our communities and our institutions.

A Troubled Skirt

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This is a detail of it in its early stages, simply laid out, nothing sewn down

The troubled skirt is a piece I’m working on for next years exhibition where much of the work and the poetry is inspired by my relationship with my mother who was a dressmaker.

It seemed important to make something in the form of a garment. I found a skirt in my wardrobe. I bundle died it by filling it with stones and hedgerow flowers: ragwort, campion, chicory, sorrel, all found growing along the railway track, then tying it up and boiling it. But I had to stop boiling because the house was filled with a noxious smell, so I left it outside for a week in the sun, the water turned an iron brown. When I untied the bundle the flowers had become a mess of vegetation, the skirt was the colour of tea. I hung it out to dry. I began to think of a poem. I wrote the first draft of a poem Made of Leaf, while the skirt was drying and it was this that inspired me to a final vision of the skirt laid on a sewing machine which I’m working towards.

Its leaves are cut from paper and cloth – both our mediums: hers being textiles, mine words. It was difficult to write directly on, but I wanted to take my pen to it..the poem begins

Made of leaf
this dress of awkward things
bundled round stone
tied with string, in its seams
our lives indelibly inked.
Stitched in skin
this sleeve of folded wings...

I’m still experimenting with it

Poems For Pussy Riot

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To imprison a woman is an extreme act. Most women are imprisoned for minor crimes – it is their lives not their actions that on hinge on extremeties.* All prison sentences are political but when a woman is sentenced for her political beliefs she is openly and anti – democratically denied the right to freedom of speech. As writers it is our duty to defend this our most precious gift. I urge you therefore please download your copy of Poems for Pussy Riot and donate however small to the cause.

PEN ‘are delighted to announce the publication of CATECHISM: POEMS FOR PUSSY RIOT, edited by Mark Burnhope, Sarah Crewe & Sophie Mayer…The book is distributed on the ‘Pay What You Think It’s Worth’ model popularized by Radiohead and others.all revenue will go to the Pussy Riot Legal fund, and the English PEN Writers at Risk Programme

DOWNLOAD LINK HERE http://www.englishpen.org/poems-for-pussy-riot-ebook/

* I spent twenty five years working inside a women’s prison HMP Low Newton – Durham

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!

Poetry Garden Market

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Basil Bunting quote – chiselled in stone – Durham Botanic Gardens

I love the idea of a Poetry Garden Market - like the one being held this weekend by Inpress books in London on the Southbank. What do you think?

I think we should have one in the North, but perhaps not just for poetry – maybe a Fiction Market. I really do think it’s a good idea but the trouble with good ideas is they often entail a lot of hard work to bring to fruition…

I wonder what a hand-tied poetry bouquet is? Whatever it is I like the sound of it.

 

And talking of sound because the music seemed so popular on Monday here’s Bob Dylan again – from Blood on the Tracks – If You See Her Say Hello

If you see me early next week it’s likely to be in  Northumberland and in particular on Holy Island (staying overnight -can’t wait, it should be magical)  back on Wednesday with some good news!

Looking Like Jackie Kennedy

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Looking Like Jackie Kennedy
You wear the suit you made: apricot mohair, Chanel jacket
tailored skirt, to meet me from school.

Stand at the corner by the ironmongers looking like Jackie Kennedy
minus the hat, waiting to tell me you’ve passed your driving test,
hair immaculate black.

Out of factory uniform, a stolen afternoon you take me
to the Bluebird café for melt–in-your-mouth shortbread
and coffee that smells  nothing like Nescafe.
They serve you in fine china not bone; their
jungle cat in the yard, pearl in grit, 
non-porous itch on the skin of a small town.
Your shadow prowls through porcelain.
I share your delight, you’ve proved it you say –women
are better drivers than men.
I nod, eat my shortbread and watch the light
dance on your wedding ring.

 

Collage ideas inspired by poetry….

and yes my mother did meet me from school in her Chanel suit of apricot mohair -