Nearly Summer
It's nearly Summer holidays time.
Where does it go? I’ve been promising to write a new blog for ages.
I’ve actually been writing poems madly, rewriting and re sorting, until I’m reciting them in my sleep. I’m coming to the end of my Creative Writing MA and I have to submit a portfolio of work. It’s the type of work that has you hesitating over commas, and endlessly swapping lines about. You have to make a final decision and stick with it, otherwise you faff on forever.
It’s also end of term for courses I teach on, so I’m looking at other people’s poetry too, but once you’re in the swim of it all, one process helps the other. Sometimes the more pressure you are under the more productive you become.
This Easter I finished my second novel-in-poems, working title Hom, about a troubled young lad growing up in the West End of Newcastle, with a missing grandfather and secrets at the heart of the family. I’ve had one or two friends look at it and make useful comments. I’ve now got it in my ‘poet’s drawer’ as Kathleen Kenny says; leave it and come back to it with a surprise in a few month’s time. Then I’ll send it out.
Wall is still out there doing its work: I got a good (three star) review in Books for Keeps, which, I am reliably informed by Lucy Shepherd (Library Supremo and Literary Promoter at Bristol Grammar School), is a quality mag and taken seriously by all.
I find it a very good read, and got Centre for Lifelong Learning to subscribe, so I have handy copies available at work, and for my students.
Aldeburgh have asked me to come and read from Wall at the 20th Aldeburgh Festival this November, which includes a free pass to the whole festival, and a second event where I have to crit an unseen poem onstage, on the spot, by somebody famous. Ever foolhardy, I said Yes. For a fee, I’ll do anything (in the literary sense).
I’m also reading this coming Wednesday 9th July at MIMA, the new art gallery in Middlesbrough, with some radical American poets, also published by Smokestack.
I’m looking forward to it, because I’m keen to hear them read, but I’ve not been inside MIMA yet. Come along if you’re in the vicinity.
I’m still planning for a Ropes website: that is slowly moving forward. We have been booked to read and do workshops based on the Ropes at this year’s Durham Litfest and next year’s Bath Children’s Litfest. Information on these events will be posted in due course.
I placed an advert in the current Mslexia (which also carries a lovely review of The Ropes by Jasmine Irving) and was blown over by the new look. That front cover in smart black and white is very arresting. I feel Diamond Twig is in sophisticated company. Plus I noted that Val Laws won Second Prize in the Poetry competition and Kathy Towers and Fiona Ritchie Walker were both Commended Runners Up.
Well done to all of them!
They have all previously been chosen for Diamond Twig’s ‘poem of the month’. Look at the archive to check them out.
Launch of the Ropes
When I was a girl, I got sixpence pocket money (six old pence). I could buy a Jamboree Bag - I think they’re called Lucky bags or sixpenny mixups now. It was always exciting anticipating what would be inside: Sweeties, yes, but which ones? sometimes there were also little toys,
I wanted The Ropes to have a similar appeal - a little package of surprises - Yes poems, but what kind? All Kinds. Funny, serious, one or two making you reach for the dictionary or google the internet.
I want to lure younger readers in, especially those who never read poetry outside school, and who think Poetry is Not For Them.
I want readers of any age to see that words are wonderful things and we can enjoy them in thousands of different ways - and even have a go at writing themselves.
I think the Ropes has achieved that allure - Brendan Kennelly wrote to me and said: “the actual physical book itself is a delight to handle and turn about.” he then showed it to a teacher friend who declared it one of the ‘friendliest’ books she has known. He also said the poems were really good. So I am delighted.
I thanked everyone at the launch but it was Melanie Ashby of Ashbydesigns who really helped put this book together - this is equally her vision, and she helped me enormously.
Also the poets were very generous, writing their poems and hunting out obscure photographs of themselves for the inside pages (I think these photos plus the 50 words that go with them are one of the favourite things about the book)
It is thanks to Seven Stories for hosting the event and all their behind the scenes work - it all makes doing this easier, rather than doing on my own.
My next plan is to get the ropes website up and running with some workshop ideas from poets so those writers out there can get some ideas how to go about writing their own poems.
Please any of you who read this diary, please buy the book, tell your friends, teachers, librarians and young poetry lovers - get the book out there and talked about.
Any feedback would be welcome. Thanks - watch this space.
An old one, a new one
This is a time of year I don’t like.
You are either looking back on what’s gone and you’ve failed to do, or looking ahead into gloomy weather and what you still have to do.
At the turn of the year many strange things happened.
My old car gave up on a long drive from the south; luckily I was in Shieldfield by the time it stopped going, so it managed to get me back to Newcastle. My garage said it wasn’t worth repairing so I felt very grown up and bought my first car all on my own (with help and advice from friends and my brother).
A metallic blue Peugeot 206 diesel (2002).
When we were little, my brother and I called them PewGots. It’s very comfy and goes fast and easily - unlike my old Fiat that shuddered when it got to 50 mph.
I arrived home to an email from an old friend who I hadn’t seen or heard from for 26 years who was trying to contact me. I emailed back and received a long communication about what he was up to and his plans. The next day I was told he was dead. I said ‘No he’s not, he’s just emailed me!’
It turns out that he sent me the email at 10.00 at night and then died half an hour later, completely unexpectedly. I felt somehow implicated and responsible. My sister, who believes in Fate, said he was saying Goodbye. It was very unsettling.
There was a wake for him at The Cumberland - and I went there from Chrissie Glazebrook’s memorial at the Quaker Meeting House. A sad start to 2008.
I share a birthday with Robert Burns, so I always have that to look forward to in the bleak weather of the early year. This year, on Thursday 24th January I was walking down my street and a cat miaowed behind me. I look down at this sleek black and white cat - it was following me - I said ‘Vince?’ and he miaowed back, then I picked him up and ran home.
This was our cat that had disappeared the March before - he’d been missing nearly a year and here he was, looking well fed and in good fettle and he just wandered back in as if he’d never been away. He stayed for my birthday on the Friday, then he went off that night into the dark, and was gone again.
He’s a real Six Dinner Sid, everyone in the street knows him, but the funny thing is, no-one saw him around in all those months, and I keep looking, but I haven't seen him since.
People say put a collar on him - but when he had one, I would be phoned at all hours of the night and day by people saying ‘I’ve got your cat, he won’t leave my house, come and get him.’ So I’d trek all over the place to bring him back, and as soon as he was out the door the next day, he’d be gone again.
I think Vince is teaching us a Buddhist lesson in detachment.
My oldest son has given up university and is back home to concentrate on playing music with his band. It’s lovely to have a full house again, but we both want to use the bike at the same time. So I said my son should have it exclusively - it was his dad’s after all - and I went and bought myself a new one.
Strangely, that made me weep.
Christmas Again?
Christmas Already?
Christmas is often a time tinged with sadness - I’ve just heard that Chrissie Glazebrook has died. She was such a great supporter of Julia and I in the early days, first when we were the Poetry Virgins. And then, when we blithely asked for money to publish our work in a book, Chrissie was part of the Northern Arts Literature team that saw fit to give us some funding on the basis that we became a publisher. So she was an initial instigator of Diamond Twig. What wonderful support and encouragement for two publishing virgins. A great role model.
I seem to be getting more and more behind myself - not much of a blogger, me.
I don’t think I’ve got the mental approach right, as in Little and Often - which works for all sorts of things - eating, drinking, taking exercise? (Little and Often sound like a comedy team).
However, I digress.
In an effort to be right on and an all-round good egg, I am telling my family that some of my presents will be recycled. Books from charity shops sort of thing. I find it very hard to resist Christmas altogether, and giving presents is fun - but quirky, individually made or obscurely-hunted-out are the sort that show thought has gone into them. A bunch of smelly soaps and bath salts - what message does that send out? Happy Christmas - you stink ?
One Christmas, as a poor ex-student, I was working for a mail order firm (Britannia Records - it foisted vinyl onto unsuspecting people who then couldn’t get rid of them). It was all women, tearing open envelopes and dealing with orders, tedious but pressurised, in a grim basement somewhere in Shepherds Bush. Our female supervisor’s one festive gesture was to buy everyone a small gift. I think it was either a bottle of eau de cologne or chocolates - but she confessed when she came to me, that she was completely stumped. She couldn’t decide whether I was an eau de cologne woman or a chocolate woman. I can’t remember what I finally received. it was obviously forgettable. But I was delighted that I was uncategorisable.
I must now get on with various tasks before the world shuts down and goes comatose in front of the telly/roaring fire/groaning table/round of drinks in the pub.
Festive Greetings - and Peace in the New Year.
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