The blog that never was – December 27th 2018

Here’s some of a blog I started in October and never posted, with additions. I can’t remember why I stopped.

October was a month of protests; against the appointment of Judge Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court, the people’s march for a second referendum and, nearer home, the continuing anti-fracking protest at Preston New Road.

I wrote a poem in celebration of the protest in the USA against the appointment of Judge Kavanaugh. The poem was an experiment in the form known as the Golden Shovel that I had read about in Mslexia magazine. Others in my writing group have taken up the challenge with some amazing results.

Looking back on my notes for the blog in October I had written down the words from one of the banners at the big march for a second referendum ‘Stop! You are ruining everything!’ They haven’t stopped yet.

And at Preston New Road, the faithful protesters go every day of every week to log activity and Mother Nature has intervened with earthquakes that have given pause to the fracking.

So My writing life trundles on and my time has been spent recently working with Mike Barlow of Wayleave Press editing my new pamphlet to be published early in 2019.  I sent in the final proof last week.

There were two readings the first at Kendal Poetry Festival in September where I read at Afternoon Tea with the Brewery Poets and then in November I organised and took part in a reading with four other Lancaster poets to raise money for refugees.

My resolution, or promise to myself, for 2018, in terms of writing (I don’t even make any about anything else) was to write a poem a week. The total so far is 32, not bad if you discount holidays etc. but a little short of the target. However there are still three days of the year to go. The thought of writing 20 poems in three days… no perhaps not!  I am still pondering my promise to myself for 2019, it could be more regular blogging?

Hare in the Headlights. Well there are a few lined up; a New Year reading in Ireland at my friend Yvonne’s invitation, the launch of my pamphlet in February, a day at the Poetry School in London in late February, in March a week’s residential at Ty Newydd.and a reading for Brewery Poets in May.

So the world is in a worse mess than it  has ever been in my life time.

And yet …

One October Saturday we went to hear Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion the English Touring Opera with local choirs and a baroque orchestra at a local parish church. The music itself is wonderful and uplifting, but so was the occasion, for the skill and creativity of the soloists and orchestra, for the exhilaration of the singers in the local choir, for the intense silence in which we, as audience, were held. This was the work of a European composer sung and played by people from many countries and described by the vicar who introduced the evening as ‘the pinnacle of human achievement’.

Rays of light in pervasive darkness!

Happy New Year!