Soon after I wrote my last blog, Storm Goretti devastated the west of England and the south of Wales, with connected severe weather in Scotland. Where I live, so close to the Irish sea coast, we seem to have escaped the worst of it. However, yesterday I saw footage showing the devastation on St Michael’s Mount off the Cornish coast. They have lost a hundred trees. Hearing this made me feel angry and sad.
Today as I write we are hearing of the great ice storm traveling across the United States while the president says it proves the earth is cooling not warming, because the storm has ice. In truth the Arctic vortex has moved and the warming in the Arctic has caused the storm.
I have turned, as ever, to poetry for consolation. It was great to hear this week that Karen Solie’s Wellwater (Picador 2025) has won the TS Eliot Poetry Prize for this year. I read the collection through at the end of last year and now I am returning for a second more attentive reading. The title of this month’s blog is the last line of the first poem in the collection Basement Suite.
I decided to put aside the environmental horrors on screens of every kind, despite the imminence of storm Ingrid. I looked around me this morning and spent a little time in the back garden. I noticed that the bulbs are up early and we have our first yellow crocus. It is, of course a joy to see it, but it is also a bit scarily early to see a crocus in January.
Looking around is about noticing what is actually happening and also imagining what is to come. To quote Solie:
The trees are grand hotels, closed for the season.
But underground, social life is taking place.
(from The Trees in Riverside Park)
My reading life
This last month has included of course the books I received as presents over Christmas. I am still reading Domination by Alice Roberts (an account of the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity), another slow read, and waiting for my wife to finish her book about the Neanderthals (Kindred, by Rebecca Wragg Sykes). Something about the remote past and imagining how people lived is endlessly fascinating for me.
We are just beginning to resume our poetry at the kitchen table after a break while we had guests, and assumed perhaps mistakenly that they would not necessarily enjoy it. More of that next time when we are back in the swing of it
My writing life
Honestly, not much poetry has got written although I did start today with one for the forthcoming stanza on the 5th February. However, I have been sorting out my books and came across Judy Reeves’ A writer’s book of days, published in 1997 and probably purchased by me early this century as I returned to my writing life after retiring. I have used it in the past as a source of prompts, but this time I have paused to look more closely at what it has to offer.
Although the book offers a prompt for each day it is actually about encouraging daily writing practice and much of Reeves’ wisdom is relevant now, especially since, having finished the draft of my collection, I hit a bit of a blank spot. Each chapter contains lots of good ideas for getting your writing going and keeping at it with a daily practice session in response to the prompt, not just free writing but actually making you write to the suggested topic. I am not religious about it but I try to be faithful and do it as often as my life allows.
Hare in the headlights
No headlights coming up this moth but who knows what may drop into my inbox. I am reviving my submissions to magazines chart starting tis week. I will let you ko how it goes.
That’s it for now ..