The last Saturday of the month; Exactly six months since my last blog. On my Google calendar a reminder today is blog day! So much for my resolution, last time I wrote a blog was in April, to try to keep up the monthly blog. It just doesn’t happen!
However that means that my life is full of other things, unfortunately some of them less interesting and more time consuming than writing.
So rather than beat myself up, I’ll recount some of the more writing related bits of the last six months in
My Writing life
Well the much anticipated reading for Brewery Poets came and went in May. It was well attended and I enjoyed the chance to read with Jennifer Copley and Carola Luther. I reciprocated by going to Jenny’s pamphlet launch in Ulverston and reading there.
The first of my workshops took place as planned on the 29th June but the workshop on 7th September was postponed and will take place on Saturday November 16th
In September I went back to Ty Newydd for a week of political poetry with Katrina Naomi and Deryn Rees Jones. It was absolutely fantastic. I am still working on material and ideas gathered there. Perhaps most useful for me was the session on preparing for publication with both tutors offering expert advice. That hardly seems fair given how good the poetry workshops were too.
I am in touch with other participants and we are hoping to meet again at the Kendal Poetry Festival 2020 (18th to 21st June). More details next time.
After Ty Newydd came the holiday in Spain: time necessitated we flew there, but we came back overland; by train Malaga to Madrid to Barcelona to Paris to London over two days. It was a fabulous trip but this is not a travelogue so back to the writing.
One of the commitments I have kept is writing poetry regularly, motivated, cajoled and guilt tripped, by weekly writing group and monthly Brewery Poets workshops, (the Brewery is an arts centre in Kendal. I say this because recently my mention of ‘the brewery’ was greeted by someone I know with horror, as in ‘you write in a brewery every month!’) So far in 2019 have written 22 poems, well short of the target of 42, I should have written by now at one a week, but not too bad all the same.
My Reading (6) Month (s)
Currently reading, and recommending widely, as does Katrina Naomi in her current newsletter Short and Sweet, Deryn Rees Jones’ Erato and I just heard last week it is short listed for the T.S Eliot Prize.
In August and September I plowed my way through Overstory by Robert Powell, well worth the effort and it has changed my way of looking at trees and inspired a poem or two. I have also enjoyed The Second Sleep by Robert Harris, well known for his historical novels but this is very different (no spoilers).
Hare in the Headlights
Workshop: the second one on Memories on November 16th at Ambleside library for Learning Plus.
I now have three reviews of ‘Testimony’ including, one in Envoi by R.V Bailey. I will put quotes and links for them on the website when I get them organised.
Now November is nearly here and the time is coming to start to put my collection together and send of some more poems to magazines. Oh yes, in December I’m off to the poetry Carousel in Rydal .
Till soon.