Trains and dust mites
Well, yesterday was the day. I handed in my MA portfolio and now just have to wait for the results. It was a strange feeling, after two years, realising that I won't be making the journey to university a couple of times a week. It's become so familiar that sometimes, when I'm supposed to be driving to the railway station, I've been on automatic pilot and headed to my usual parking spot.
Since my last diary entry, I've been to London and Reading as part of my "proper" job (i.e. the one that occupies weekdays and provides that essential pay packet). Both involved train journeys. I love travelling by train. In my teens I went on one of those Eurorail trips and became so addicted to the journeying that I can remember very little about the places that I visited. The trains and the people on them are the images that I brought home.
I am probably the worst person to sit next to on a long journey. For one thing, I must have a big notebook to write in, then something to read, book plus newspaper, and a cup of coffee.
On my train journey back from Reading on Monday night I used the time to work on a radio play. I'm doing the Ignite course on writing for radio which began with two weeks at Sunderland University in June - a fantastic experience and steep learning curve for me. The problem with dialogue is that you have to hear it, so it's probably just as well the carriage was almost empty as I mouthed the lines to myself, timing it with the stop watch on my mobile phone.
On my trip to London, I was trying to think about small things. Like Ellen I've got that task at the moment. I'd just read an amazing article on dust mites. This, and the realisation that I was sharing my hotel bed with so many creatures, set me not only scratching but writing. Then I became a bit worried. Would dust mites dream? Did that sound too ridiculous? Only one thing for it. I tracked down the author on the internet and sent him an email with the poem. No, I was ok - so thank you Robert Dunn in Australia for technical info and some of the images in the poem.
Still on the internet, I've downloaded the latest stories for the save our short story website to read, hopefully over the weekend, and also visited the new poetry magazines archive set up by the Poetry Library. This is a free access site to an increasing list of publications, including Magma, Smiths Knoll, The North and lots more. Is this a great idea? Well, I enjoyed reading some of the poems and I think it will be useful, but it's no substitute for sitting with your own copy of the book (or borrowing someone else's as there's a limit to the number of subscriptions we can afford). Also, mags depend on sales to keep going. I hope people will dip into the online archive and decide to subscribe to at least one of the titles, but it could work the other way.
Looking forward to the return of The Verb on Radio 3, Saturday night. If you're a regular listener, don't forget it's got an earlier start at 9.30pm. Happy listening!
Rabbits and Builders
Skids, our rabbit, lives wild in the back garden. I’m having to make sure he doesn’t get in the way while the builders are here: just one more distraction from my work. Generally he hides in the burrow he’s dug in my herb patch, only coming out to inspect the builders work once they’ve gone, like the Clerk of Works. But when they were laying concrete they said the lime would burn his paws, so in order to safeguard Skids, I managed to catch him and lock him in the shed.
He didn’t like that, and scratched me quite badly with his sharp claws, drawing blood. Then I noticed alarming pools of bright red, and realised it was coming from him; my bracelet catch had nicked his back paw. He licked his wound, it stopped bleeding and he didn’t seem much concerned. I was full of guilt, and also worry about my scratch: potentially half the garden bacteria was in my little wound.
My doctor advised a Tetanus injection. The nurse who gave it to me informed me that I was also getting an anti-diphtheria serum in with it because it’s on the rise again. Thus one small act leads to a series of repercussions, but I can’t think how to get a Small Poem out of it.
The Builders are breaking up the old back yard with sledge hammers, it resembles a scene from a southern chain gang, but with cups of tea. Skids is wisely deep underground. I am trying to block my ears at my desk. But I tell you, rabbit blood is strangely vivid.
Blackberries
Like Mary (see her diary entry below) I've been in blackberry mode. Went picking them at the weekend and was thinking about the Seamus Heaney poem about picking blackberries. Didn't fill a bath with them but then again, didn't leave them to develop the "rat-grey fungus" that he mentions in his poem. Mine were made into jam that evening - three jars. Thanks to David for picking all those beautiful berries that I couldn't reach (it's called not wanting to be stung by nettles).
In Norway last month we found tiny wild strawberries. Whenever I see guided walks advertised that will tell you what you can pick and eat in the countryside I always mean to book a place. Then I lose the leaflet in the toppling pile of magazines and books beside the bed, usually discovering it a week or so after the walks taken place.
I did an interview and read some poems for AIRS, Gateshead's talking newspaper. That was fun so thanks to everyone there.
I'm also coming to the end of my MA in Writing Poetry at Newcastle Uni, so am busy sorting out my portfolio. I keep changing my mind about which poems I want in it and then there is the order.... I have been looking at other people's poetry collections with this in mind, but then I get distracted and start reading their poems. This is a great way of spending an evening, but I've still got sheets of poems all over the floor.
At work I am suffering from seasonal confusion. This is because I have been working on harvest resources for Traidcraft supporters, writing material for Fairtrade Fortnight next March, sending out press releases and products for Christmas features in glossy mags and yesterday helped a colleague with a letter to go out in January. Only the fact that I was preparing a school packed lunch at 6am kept me rooted in September.
Have finished The Cutting Room - great. Got the poetry mags Coffee House Poetry and The Red Wheelbarrow in the post so am enjoying dipping into them.
Kites
Too cloudy to see Mars, even though we stayed up late in our chilly garden staring into space, some of us in pyjamas. British weather has a lot to answer for.
We were up at Shaftoe Crags flying kites yesterday. Very peaceful and calming. As I watched the pink, green and red triangles strain against the blue sky, metaphors and similes kept popping into my head: teenagers are like kites - the more you pull them to you the more they fly away, or sex: if there’s no wind, your kite wont fly, but then the gentlest little gust can surprise you, send it soaring. Met a couple who said they’d seen lots of people walking dogs before, but never walking a kite.
But my metaphors went nowhere, like my kite. I should be thinking Small, for a poem I’ve been asked to write for National Poetry Day in October. I’ve started a list, (small one) of ideas - small talk, my mother never could do that, small minds. Small things I’ve lost - teeth, tonsils, eyesight. That’s not such a small thing to lose, but once you’ve lost it, you can’t find small things.
The door bell has just interrupted my writing - it’s the builders. So, just as the boys start back at school, we have a new set of obstacles to mental peace.
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