This description of the way the Roman Empire’s expansion left devastation in its wake was quoted by Tacitus in his work Agricola from the  speech of a Caledonian leader rallying  his troops against Rome in what is now the borders of Scotland. It was quoted in an article in the Guardian after Trump’s peace deal in Gaza was announced.

Obviously all of us are preoccupied  with the continuing horrors in Gaza and the threats from Russia against Ukraine, all of us have been feeling helpless in the face of the horror. These wars fill the news headlines day after day. Always alongside them are the lies and half truths, the constant attacks from social media, a discourse of division and hatred, an attack on our concept of reality and democracy, and the unending public discourse about the failure of  politicians.

So in this month’s blog I set out to ponder on what the role of a poet might be in these times. I have been given lately to ranting about it, at the dinner table and when spending time with friends. Reading two poems made me realise that now is the time to to write not rant.

You may recall that after the Prime Minister’s use of the phrase island of strangers, about what our politicians choose to see as the problem of immigration, Michael Rosen wrote a poem celebrating the NHS, using that phrase as its title and describing how people from all over the world had saved his life when he had Covid. In his poem he embraced and celebrated the ‘strangers’ who helped him.

The second source of inspiration came only this week when it was announced that Abeer Amer, a Welsh poet of Iraqi descent, had won the Forward Prize for the single poem, with her poem, At Least. Abeer sets us an example in her beautiful lament for the children trapped in Gaza.

These two wonderful writers have given me a choice. I don’t need to rant, instead I can  write poems of celebration and lament. I can offer my own contribution to a discourse among poets and artists everywhere in the hope of being heard. I invite poets who read this blog to join me. Tell me what you want to celebrate and what you feel you need to lament in response to this blog.

The poem of the month this month is a celebratory poem Clapping, written in 2020.

My writing life

This month has seen a degree of progress towards preparing the my first full collection. After advice from Zoe (Brigley) and Rhian (Edwards) at their course in Ty Newydd in July,  I have sent poems to five magazine for inclusion. I have also spent time with my poems for the collection spread out on the dining room table in order to create the order which will give the best narrative of the work. I am now about to embark on the ‘fingertip’ edit and careful scrutiny. The above has not left a lot of time for the creation of new work, so that’s on the back burner for now. 

My reading life (poetry at the kitchen table)

We have finished the Elizabeth Burns posthumous collection the Lightkeepers and Iris Lewis’ Amber. After a short break to visit friends, we are about to embark on TS Eliot’s Collected Poems (well why not?) starting with The Waste Land  from my copy published in 1974 as a ‘Faber paper covered edition’ purchased for the princely sum of £1.20 and no doubt worth every penny! I will let you know how we get on next time…  

Hare in the Headlights  

Much to tell. Having read at the local King Street studio with members of my Stanza group in September, the next reading was in Kendal on the 14^th of October at an event organised by Joy Howard to raise money for Save the Children in Gaza. I read at an open mic slot and the event raised £250 for the charity.

In November on the 27^th I shall be reading as part of the Lancaster Stanza Group in a Stanza Bonanza with Blackpool and Fylde group. The event will be on Zoom and I will send the link out the day before when we receive it from the National Poetry Society.

And finally I heard yesterday that Mslexia have accepted a poem for their December edition which I submitted to their poetry challenge.      

That’s it for now..

It is the 4^th of May 2019, a lovely sunny day here for our local City Council elections. I am volunteering at a local church community centre, where we are welcoming approximately two hundred newly arrived asylum seekers who have been accommodated in a local budget hotel.  I am walking down to the local hygiene bank to collect donations of toiletries for  them, as they have nothing with them and no money to buy anything.

I am accompanied by a young man from Eritrea who had arrived about a week previously. His English is good and as we walk he asks me about the local elections, what they are, what they mean and how they are different from general elections. I explain who we can vote for and what they do and he listens intently.  On the way back when I have finished explaining, he smiles and says ‘I love this country’. He is so happy to be here, to have escaped the tyranny and conflict that is destroying his country, to have found somewhere where there is freedom.

Things have changed a lot since then. The hotels in our city are no longer used as accommodation for asylum seekers. A couple of weeks ago a young man from Eritrea was refused asylum and returned to France because he came across the channel in a small rubber boat.

I too still love this country, but then I am one of the lucky ones who has a right to stay. I also weep for it, as we see so much division, fear and  hatred between us and our fellow human beings fleeing war and  persecution. For me it is important, and my way of trying to p the record straight, to talk about the many people I met over more than eight years of working with asylum seekers and refugees. They were ordinary people with families and lives they wanted to live in the freedom our country has to offer. Therefore my poem of the month is:

Poem of the month October 2025

Getting Here(first published in my second Wayleave pamphlet in 2021). Go to Poem of the Month page 

My writing life

Has been taken up with revising and editing poems for magazine submissions. I have recently subscribed to Robin Houghton’s monthly list of submissions windows for poetry magazines and  September is a busy month. So only one new poem this month which I took to the Stanza group. I have made a note to myself to try to write some more soon. In the maelstrom of political violence, climate change and economic uncertainty it is, to say the least, hard to know where to start. Carol Ann Duffy’s poem that appeared in the Guardian the other day, State/Banquet says everything there is to be said about the recent state visit (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/sep/17/carol-ann-duffy-writes-bombsite-poem-about-trumps-uk-state-visit).

My reading life

While I read fiction on my Kindle, when it comes to non-fiction books I like a real paper one and at the moment I am reading Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom (Penguin Random House 2024). It is not a book to enjoy as much as a book to learn from, a challenging read.

A poem a day at the kitchen table. We finished Eliabeth Burns’ collection Held (Carcenet 2010) and have moved on to her posthumous collection The Lightkeepers (Wayleave 2016). Elizabeth was the person who first introduced me to a writing group and got me writing poetry seriously. The Wednesday Women Writers met, and still meet, in each other’s houses every week to share and workshop poetry and prose writing. Elizabeth, who died ten years ago, was a friend and mentor for me. Her posthumous collection includes a number of ekphrastic poems about visual art and music.  

We are also reading from Amber, a collection by Iris Ann Lewis, (Graffiti 2024) whom I met and worked with on my recent visit to Ty Newydd. I discovered that I share with her my interest in archaeology and prehistory. 

Both these excellent women poets have  caused us to Google the people and places they reference, which has added another layer of interest to our daily poetry readings.  Because of their carefully researched work we have learned about the Woman of Dolni Vestanice and the Danish painter Hammershoi. (Go on! Google them for yourself!)

Hare in the headlights

Earlier this month I did some voice coaching for members of our Stanza group who were reading at this year’s  Morecambe Poetry Festival. I also read at the Stanza Showcase on the 18^th September at the King St Studio in Lancaster. This latter was a great evening and lovely to hear and enjoy the richness and variety of the work that our group is currently writing.

In October I am hoping to read at the open mic at an event in Kendal organised by Joy Howard, of grey hen books, and where Pauline Yarwood, Ilse Pedler and Kerry Darbyshire will be reading to raise funds for Save the Children’s work in Gaza. (Tuesday 14^th October, 7.00-8.30 pm, Outside-in Children’s Centre, Beezom Road, Kendal, LA9 6EL)  

That’s it for now   

Many years ago when I was teaching performing arts full time, the poet Jackie Kay did a two day residence at Edge Hill University to mark the opening of the Creative Writing department. She also facilitated a workshop with some drama students.

She arrived with a big carrier bag full of the day’s newspapers and invited the students to walk around and look at the headlines. Then she posed the question: What is really going on?  I have never forgotten this session and the extraordinary discussion and wonderful work it engendered in the young people.

For me part of the purpose of poetry is to raise and respond to this question, to engage with public forums and media to write about politics in a creative way. So here are some of the headlines from today’s UK papers: August 30th 2025:

‘Inn justice’ for Epping
Raynor faces sleaze enquiry
Shooting Terror
One third of Gaza wounded are children
Farage deportation plans
Taylor to wed Travis
Migrant hotels face closure
Noel: I’m so proud of Liam
Minister for hypocrisy
Pill for weight loss on NHS

How should or might a poet respond? 

Could  these be headlines prompts?

What preoccupations do they echo in us as poets?

Over the next few months and into 2026  I will be exploring my process in writing political poetry, writing about the really difficult things that make me angry or the ridiculous things that are also terrifying. If you come and read my blog I invite you to respond with your own ideas and comments.

My Writing Life

has been sporadic to say the least during the last 18 months or so, dogged by endless health issues which I will not share, but it has come back on track inspired by my most recent residential at Ty Newydd with Zoe Brigley and Rhian Edwards. Four days in late July: Editing and Submitting your work with Seren editors, and I came away with a plan or should I say A PLAN!!!!.

I have been looking at past poems and the plan is to move my collection, which has been in progress far too long, towards publication. I have come back with lots of ideas  and  much inspiration. My thanks to both lovely tutors and fellow poets who shared the special experience with me. Zoe and Rhian work are both accomplished poets and excellent poetry teachers. Worth following up: https://zoebrigley.com/ and https://www.rhianedwards.co.uk/.

I learnt a lot about editing  and an alternative way of workshopping, as devised by Felicia Rose Chavez: https://www.feliciarosechavez.com/about.

At the moment I am still writing some poems as well as sending poems to magazines and looking for submission windows with  publishers etc. of which more next time…  

My Reading life

A poem a day at the kitchen table. My wife and I started doing this with a couple of Mary Oliver collections that had been languishing on my  bookshelves for a long time. Currently we are enjoying Eliabeth Burns’ collection Held (Carcenet  2010). Sometimes more than one poem. It makes me read poets I haven’t read for a while.

In prose I have enjoyed  Elif Shafak’s There are Rivers in the Sky. A story of two rivers, the Tigris and the Thames, it tells how a working class, minimally educated young man in 19th century London manages to decode the cuneiform inscribed on clay tablets from ancient Nineveh in the British Museum. However it is also the story of the Yazidi people of Turkey and Iraq, and the oppression they have suffered through the ages, culminating in the genocide committed by ISIS in 2014. At times not a comfortable read (and an ending that is somewhat contrived) but very good quality writing.

Hare in the Headlights

Lots coming up in September apart from  my Stanza group. I am rehearsing some members of the group who are  reading at the Morecambe Poetry Festival (12^th to the 14^th September )Then I am reading at the groups reading  at King Street Studios Lancaster on September 18^th. A  busy month while the plan chunters on in the background.

Till next time and I look forward to receiving your comments soon.

Elizabeth Hare

And getting back is a going to be an expensive nightmare. The countries on the short green list, are largely places too expensive to go to, ever, or that you wouldn’t want to go to, ever.

So, if you could go anywhere where would you go?

Would you, like me, want to go back to somewhere you have already been, somewhere you love? Or somewhere you’ve always wanted to go to and never have.  Thinking about travelling for me has brought on a fit of memories and longing for the roll of the suitcase wheels on the station platform, the sound of other languages around me, the smell and taste of exotic food, the touch of sun on my winter-cold skin.

I have decided on two remedies for this lamentable state of affairs. This month’s poem of the month Papagayo Beach is from my 2019 Wayleave pamphlet, Testimony and you can find it here.

Secondly in the next few days I shall be recording my second U-tube video, If I Could Go Anywhere on which I will be reading a selection of my travel poems.

Please join me on my imagined and remembered travels until we can all go for real.

My Writing Life

The highlight of the last few weeks has been my experience of an Arvon at Home poetry course. I have never been to a real Arvon course, so I was glad to take  the opportunity to go to an online one. It was wonderful to have four workshops, one each morning for four days and two good tutors John Glenday and Mona Arshi, plus tutorials in the afternoons and readings in the evenings. Just like a real writing week!

But not quite. Hours and hours of Zoom made it possible, but were also completely exhausting in the way only screens can be. We were all at home with our lives going on around us and taking a writing retreat was not easy. Having said that I really enjoyed the screen company of the other poets, even if socialising was minimal.

It was certainly worthwhile and online makes Arvon accessible to people in other countries who would otherwise never have been able to come.

I am longing to get back to real writing residentials and I shan’t mind if I never zoom again after restrictions are lifted in June, but it was fun and very interesting and worthwhile.

My Reading life

Very largely influenced by the poetry that we read at the Arvon. There was a recommendation to read collections, so I have just finished a second reading of Elizabeth Burns posthumous collection Light Keepers. Because Elizabeth lived here and was in my writing group and was a mentor and friend,  it was both a sad and a joyful experience. In this reading I revisited many poems I have loved and heard her read and encountered more I had never come across.

In my determination to read poetry I have also been reading the latest in the series of BloodAxe anthologies Staying Human (ed: N. Astley 2020). It is vast tome and I have taken it slowly and methodically. However, I confess to not having read every poem and some sections were, inevitably, more to my taste than others. I particularly enjoyed the poems in the section entitled Harmony and Discord.

Hare in the Headlights

My publication this month in the Grey hen anthology Not Past, But Through (ed J. Howard, 2021) of my poem about my hometown river Lune.

After a break, apart from Arvon, of nearly two months from writing I am returning slowly and getting going again. Always on the horizon is my dream of a collection.

That’s all for now.

 

 

You must be the change you want to see in the world. Mahatma Gandhi

It has been just over a month since the end of the Kendal Poetry Festival. During that time how does a poet react to what is happening out there and all around her?

My Writing life

Poetry is one of the few art forms that can be said to have survived the pandemic reasonably well. Poetry is written and often read alone, and the internet lends itself well to the sharing of workshops, readings and even festivals online. It has been a lifesaver for me to have my regular writing groups on Zoom throughout the last year.

Having said that, the Kendal Poetry Festival was tour de force and included 60 poets and up to 160 participants at some of the readings. All credit is due to the directors for getting such a complex event together so well. It was great to return to reading after reading and see the same faces there. Some of the time it felt as though we really were together sharing the experience. Of course, we missed the live buzz and getting our books signed, but there was the advantage of hearing poets who were reading in other countries and who might not have been able to come in person.  Afterwards I rushed to the festival online bookshop and bought books which I am now taking my time to enjoy. For nine days the festival banished the lockdown blues.

But there was more to it than that. Much was read about the reality we are currently struggling to survive in, about climate change, about politics and the pandemic. It would be easy to dismiss the event as too small to make a difference, but I heard poets who were very clearly being the change they want to see and touching the hearts and minds of those who listen to and read their work.

In the first week of March all daily life, and the writing life, was interrupted by the murder of Sarah Everard, allegedly by a serving police officer, and by the way the demonstrations of grief and solidarity and the protests against violence against women have been addressed by the police and by the media.

I know no woman who can truthfully say that they have never been harassed or treated with disrespect because they are female. So how can we expect to live the change except by protesting, except by meeting without fear, except by walking our streets at night, and that is still hard to do.

My writing life continues reasonably steadily at about a poem a week at present pushed on by the deadline of the next online writing group. I am happily being guided at present by Kate Clanchy’s Grow Your Poem. I recommend it.  Right now, I am taking a break from the group and have signed up for an Arvon at Home at the end of April.

My reading life has been rich and strange this month. I have enjoyed Anne Tyler’s The Redhead at the Side of the Road, only wished it had been longer. Also Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owen, and The Other People by C J Tudor. All good reads, getting me through this seemingly endless lockdown.  And yesterday I finished reading Carolyn Forche’s collection In The Lateness of the World and very soon I am going to read it again. I have now plunged into a truly enormous anthology, more of that next time.

Hare in the Headlights

This month I have had a poem, Lune accepted for a forthcoming Grey Hen anthology and sold 35 copies of my pamphlet Just Above the Waterline. 

I am currently about to make my second YouTube recording of poetry, coming up soon.

That’s all for now.

The title is in the spirit of the recent landing of Perseverance on Mars, and also because the first part of this blog is about the launch of my latest Wayleave pamphlet Just Above the Water Line on 29^th January 2021 online.

I sat on the sofa in my living room and read my poetry to 50 people. It felt very strange. There are many reasons why I would have liked to have had a real launch with refreshments and wine and friends gathered, but it was nevertheless, a lovely occasion. It felt very odd at the end when I just switched everyone off rather than staying on for a chat and a drink.

Anyway, thanks to Mike Barlow for publishing me (again), to Graham Lowe for his beautiful cover illustration and to my partner Pat for inspiration, punctuation and patience with my, mercifully temporary, persona of ‘temperamental artist’.

Thanks also to my guest readers Carole Coates who read from her forthcoming collection and Pauline Yarwood who read from her Wayleave pamphlet and other poems.

Here are details of what they read.

Pauline read:

Open Skies and Depth of Field, both of which will be in her new pamphlet, Loop which will be published by Wayleave in April.

Things change (published earlier this year in The Unpredicted Spring – Lockdown Poetry 2020, edited by Kathleen Jones and published by The Book Mill Press as part of the Norman Nicholson Poetry Competition.)

and a new poem, Sweet Sixteen. 

Carole read:

Falling in Love with the AA Man (and how he taught me to love my car)
History to the Defeated may say Alas
All Greece Hates
Coming Back Unexpectedly You Look through the Window at your own Room.
All these poems will appear in her next collection When the Swimming Pool
Fell in the Sea, to be published in May this year by Shoestring Press.

Finally, thanks to everyone who came and the lovely feedback I have had from so many of you. 

Back to my usual blog format

My Writing life

Been busy for the last month. I have been more or less keeping up my daily pages, not every day but at least every few days, and I am not going to beat myself up about it! I have written six poems since the beginning of 2021 and am keeping up with both my writing group and Brewery Poets online. I have just submitted four poems to a magazine and am starting to write and collect for my (one day, hoped for) collection! One thing about lockdown: you can’t say you are never at home to write …

Currently attending the Kendal Poetry Festival online as well, all nine days of it. I will do a retrospective blog about it next month.

My Reading life

Some wonderful books recently, and reading is definitely a major part of coping with the present circumstances.

I have enjoyed.

Redhead at the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler

We Begin at the End by Chris Whittaker

And am currently reading Delia Owen’s Where the Crawdads Sing.

One of the few upsides of lockdown is plenty of time to read as well as write.

Hare in the Headlights

Coming up, I plan two U tube recordings soon.

The first will include a couple of poems from the pamphlet but will mostly be travel poems and called If I could go anywhere, simply because at present we can’t go anywhere. The second is still at then thinking stage.

Then there is the magazine submission and a poem submitted to a forthcoming anthology that I have not heard about yet.

So, several things cooking just now.

Till soon

If you would like to buy a copy of my pamphlet, please go to the publications page and scroll down to the order form. The pamphlet costs £5 and there is no additional charge for postage.

 

This first blog of 2021 gives me an opportunity to announce the launch of my second pamphlet for Wayleave Press: Just Above the Waterline, to be published next week. There will be a launch via Zoom on Friday January 29^th, 2021 from 7 to 8 pm, with guest poets Carole Coates and Pauline Yarwood.

As a poet I have learned never to underestimate the power of words and the effect they have on other people and I have come to understand that it is my solemn duty to use words wisely to tell the truth. Recent events in the US have indicated all too clearly the power of lies and disinformation and how they can become the assumed truth with dangerous consequences.

I have no idea how to begin to talk to people who are caught up in believing these lies and conspiracy theories, whether they are about politics or the pandemic. All I can do to try always to be truthful in my writing, to speak with as authentic a voice as I can and rely on the power of truth itself to reach my listeners and readers.

The first group of poems in the new pamphlet is based on my voluntary work with asylum seekers and refugees. Some of the truths I tell in these poems may be shocking, but I want to reveal what is really going on for the people I am privileged to work with, and sometimes reality does not make for comfortable listening. The story told in each of these poems is true.

Inevitably, given our current reality, the pamphlet includes poems about the pandemic and my experience of it, living as I do in a small northern city, part of what the media likes to describe as ‘elsewhere in the UK’. In these poems I have tried to be faithful to reality as it unfolds for me, and this section includes a poem about spending a night in hospital in August 2020 (thankfully not with Covid-19 but a mercifully less serious broken thumb!), and having the opportunity to bear witness to the extraordinary work of the NHS.

We live in a strange and damaged world, an uneasy reality, and I am sure that, more than anything else, we need to reach out to each other with truth and kindness.

Yesterday the number of people vaccinated exceeded the number of people infected in the UK, just. I write as we all are right now, just above the waterline.

To order a copy of Just Above the Waterline please visit my publications page and download the order form at the bottom of the page. Please contact me if you would like an invitation to the launch.

June 20th 2020

With the weather gone wild, wet and windy,  here in the North of England at least, and the world still in fearful lock down, this is not the usual celebratory relaxed time that we get for summer Solstice; long quiet evenings in the garden and trips to see the sun set over Morecambe Bay.

However My Writing Life remains eventful, nonetheless.

Last week Mike Barlow of Wayleave Press showcased my 2019 Pamphlet Testimony in his Editor’s Blog. He highlights two of the poems about homelessness.  In these times of  impending  economic disaster, they are, as he says, a timely reminder of some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

Here’s the link https://www.wayleavepress.co.uk/?cat=3

Last Thursday week, June the 11^th I attended a Zoom poetry launch for Katrina Naomi’s new collection, Wild Persistence. It was lovely to see her and hear her read and I realised how much I miss poetry readings. More of the collection later, but it was astonishing to see 117 people on a zoom, 5 pages!   You would never get that number for a poetry reading. I could not have gone for real as she lives in Penzance and it would have been too expensive. So maybe zoom poetry readings will continue, who knows? It was great to see a couple of familiar faces in the crowd, from Katrina’s poetry course at Ty Newdd last year.

My poetry writing continues steadily, disciplined by the weekly zoom with the writing group, which is very sustaining.  The work is perhaps still a bit obsessive about the pandemic and other current politic events.  At present we are five in the group, three writing poetry and two writing memoirs, and we meet on Wednesdays at 4 p.m. for about an hour and a half, which includes a good chat and catch up at the beginning. This means that from Sunday onward my mind is starting to battle with a new idea, or indeed to find one, and get something together to send round for others to read before the group.

Next week I am starting to send poems out to magazines, something I have not done for ages and using Jo Bell’s model to do this. My next blog of weeks’ time in a couple will be about how I get on. ( Bell’s book How to be a Poet, referenced in the previous blog)

My Reading Life

I have had two new collections to read, Katrina’s collection Wild Persistence published by Seren a couple of weeks ago and Jennifer Copley’s What Happens to Girls, published by Pindrop. I have given each collection a quick read to get the feel and I will comment on them in detail next time when I have had a chance to look at them again. Otherwise the usual enjoyable fiction and a start made on AC Grayling’s Democracy in Crisis; not exactly cheering, but informative.

Hare in the Headlights

A big one this week; my first poetry reading on U tube; I read four poems from testimony and was more nervous than I remember being for long time! Not since my performing days long, long ago.

Here’s the Link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhA54Cyee6k

I have already had 52 watches at the time of writing, very exciting! Enjoy them and watch out for the next one in July.

Till soon.

Not a remake of the spooky Australian film, (1975), but it feels so long since I wrote a blog that  I am hoping  the catchy title intrigues you enough to lure you back to reading my blog again.

The  title also refers to our lock down break out, ( don’t worry just the two of us from the same household), to picnic at Glasson Dock a beautiful little place near home where we sat  in deck chairs by  canal basin and marina  and watch the world, such as it was, go by.  I won’t tell you what facilities were open as that might lead to a rush next weekend. And to think we used to go to Spain!

So is this blog going to be about a change of perspective brought about by the virus? Not really, except that I have enjoyed the peace and quiet while worrying about all the other people who live in cities, have lost their livelihoods, or their families and friends. I feel an enormous sense of privilege at having got away so comparatively lightly compared with others who have been through so much.

However in all this I have written and My writing life has flourished. This is largely because my writing group has been zooming every Wednesday afternoon and as a consequence I have been regularly writing poems. So far I have six done about the virus/lock down experience, probably enough.

However to catch up properly I need to go back to October 26^th 2019   That is the date of my last blog and since then much has happened. In December 2019 I went to the poetry carousel in Rydal. It was great and I particularly enjoyed the workshop with David Tait.  The new venue, Rydal Hall, is very good. Nice food comfortable rooms and close to Ambleside for a trip to the shops (it rained all the time.)

There was a Brewery Poets workshop in January which I attended, but since then no poetry for real, only online. Sadly, the Kendal Poetry Festival 2020 was  cancelled/postponed  but I have kept my ticket for when it happens, although no one knows when that will be. The arts have suffered so badly in all this that we can only hope that they will recover and before too long.

In mid-February I took a sabbatical from my work with refugees and for a month focused on my writing and putting together a pamphlet/ collection for competition entry. I didn’t win and I didn’t expect to, but it gave me the chance to create a deadline to work to, and to think about structuring a collection. A selection of these poems will now go out to magazines over the next few months in the hope of publication. I will keep you posted.

Then just after I finished my sabbatical the lock down came on March 23^rd. The refugee work moved online and on the phone and the spring came as well. So the lock down time has been divided between refugees, writing and the garden/ allotment which last is flourishing in the current lovely weather. It feels normal being at home or gardening but ‘out there’ is eerie and unnerving I find.

My reading life Has also been enhanced; lots of light reading of course to take my mind off what’s happening.  I have also found How to be a Poet  by Jo Bell and Jane Commane, ( Nine Arches Press 2017) an excellent book and that in turn led me to the poetry of Joelle Taylor and her  collection Songs my Enemies Taught Me. (Outspoken Press 2017). I am only sorry I never came across it before as it a truly inspirational book for a political poet like me.

Hare in the Headlights

My project at the moment could be called ‘get yourself out there’ and I am taking a two pronged approach. As mentioned above, I am developing a strategy for sending poems to magazines over the next few months.  That is scary enough, but even more so is the prospect of going on U tube to read my poems. We have acquired a video camera during the lock down and I am going to record three poems from my 2019 pamphlet, Testimony, over the next couple of weeks.

Watch this space.

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 29^th June but the workshop on 7^th September was postponed and will take place on Saturday November 16^th

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 (18^th to 21^st 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 16^th 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.