Blog Posts

Not Quite Hibernating

21/12/2017

A trip through wintery East London by train and bus to wonderful Paekakariki Press in Walthamstow has woken me up! Letterpress printing, an endangered method, is alive and well at this Walthamstow workshop, where the machinery is as beautiful as the poetry books they publish there. (Among others, I've been enjoying Chrissie Gittins' delightful collection 'Professor Hegel's' Daughter', and 'Patrick Bond's 'Signals on the Railway Land', poems celebrating a Sussex nature reserve.

This hulking beast is the Heidelberg KS Cylinder, brought from Coventry and now lovingly restored to good working order.

I spent an hour lost in the joys of 'The Printers Vocabulary' helpfully provided by Paekakariki: from 'Asses' (a term for compositors used by pressmen, in return for being called 'pigs' by the compositors), to the dreaded 'Balaaam box' (into which were thrown rejected manuscripts) and on to 'Xylonite' (nothing to do with the planet Xylon, it turns out) and Zincos (blocks used in producing engravings on zinc). Before I knew it, it was way past lunchtime and already getting dark. Back to hibernation then.

Watch this space for my new chapbook, 'White Roads', due out with Paekakariki in 2018.

Drought Days, Orchard Boats

31/10/2017

After a dry, dry summer here in Montalcino, the drought continues. Beautiful turning leaves in orchards and vineyards, but still hardly any rain.
This mornng I'm at my desk, writing a review for London Grip of this lovely poetry pamphlet by Maria M McCarthy: 'There are Boats on the Orchard'. It's bringing the vanishing orchards of Kent into this Italian room, and i love it that it is also quietly promoting the work of the Kent Orchards for Everyone project to save and restore orchards in Kent and farther afield. Another small book to celebrate, with its subtle ironies and delicate line drawings by Sara Fletcher. Well worth seeking it out, I think; available at Cultured llama.

At Swindon Bus Station I Sat Down and Wept...

10/10/2017

Not really! I got on the number 13 and went to the last two days of wonderful Swindon Poetry Festival. And wished I'd been there for more. I loved the Battered Moons prize-winning poems - stand-outs for me were the first prize poem 'If I Say, Flower' by Louise Grieg and Rachel Davies' irresistible commended woodlouse tribute, 'Chiggy Pig' (I've always been a huge woodlouse fan). I mean a very big fan, not a fan of huge woodlice. Although now I think of it... You can go to the linked site to read these two and other great winning poems.
This is me enjoying my first-ever festival performance, encouraged by the warm and responsive Swindon audience. Thanks to Cinnamon Press, I now have a cinnamon-red book to flick through with seeming nonchalance and read from in proper professional poet style. It was great going first in the set, so I could relax, calm down my blood-pressure, and listen properly to the amazing, brave and beautiful lines that came next from Daniel Sluman, followed by Julia Webb's darkly magical Bird Sisters.

Swindon's a very special place to perform your poems. Most of it happens inside the now-legendary Tent Palace of the Delicious Air. In addition to the starry night you can see here, the tent stretches back into an area with the audience lolling on cushions, Arabian desert-tent-style, or seated on chairs between walls with mandala-like panels, making it feel both intimate and limitless. And then there's Richard Jefferies, the Swindon naturalist who is celebrated at the museum where all this happens (he's the attentive little figure under the reading stand). I hope he liked my tree poems!

There were so many good people and great poems, it seems unfair to single any out. But look out for a show in development called Mad and Glow, from Jacqueline Saphra and Tania Hershman. I think it will be appearing at other events throughout the year. Be warned, both jam and Marmite are involved!

Altogether, Swindon was transformed for me during this weekend, thanks to the inimitable Hilda Sheehan and all who work so hard to make every aspect of the festival (including the late-night toast guzzling sessions!) so delicious.

All the fun of the fair - a great day out at Free Verse poetry bookfair, Conway Hall, London

3/10/2017

Walking from the number 8 bus stop to Conway Hall, I made myself a promise: this time I won't buy more books than I can hope to read in the next few months. Some hope!
But still, it was hard to choose... however, these are books I picked up from some of my favourites among the vibrant crowd of poetry presses at this year's fair, including my own publisher, sparky Cinnamon Press from Wales. I looked for poets I like or have read good things about and have been meaning to read, then found myself drawn to books with an interesting format, a well-chosen or spacious typeface, or even a pleasing shape. These are from: Rack Press, Paekakariki, Nine Arches, Emma Press, Cinnamon, and Herules Editions.
It's an event I look forward to, with free talks and readings (I happened upon a wonderfully entertaining set from Amy Deakin, Nick Eisen, George Harris, Rick Dove and Susan Evans, of William Cornelius Harris Publishing), and plenty more besides. Where else could you walk into a free day full of poetry people, poetry news, poetry books, workshops, and readings next to the Café on the Green in the little park nearby? OK, I admit there was no candyfloss, but they did provide a sublime veggie wrap and a great cup of coffee too. Now all I have to do it to get down to some careful reading as autumn sets in.

Time flies and this week it's National Poetry Day once more!

25/9/2017

Looking forward to it this Thursday, when I'll be reading with fellow Cinnamon Press poets at West Greenwich library. We'll make it a really special evening; I hope that some of my readers will be able to be there. Docklands Light Railway provides a lovely trip over to Greenwich for anyone coming from the North!

Remixed Borders revisited

8/9/2017

Kew Gardens - what a great poetry venue! On Wednesday evening some of us from the Mixed Borders garden residencies shared garden poems with a London Parks and Gardens Trust audience. The reading was held in the Sir Joseph Banks building, not as I'd imagined under banana leaves in the Palm House or surrounded by lotus blossoms in the Waterlily House. Still, it was lovely to hear more of the beautiful poems that came out of our garden residencies. An online 'flicky-book' is currently in production and will be available via The Poetry School, poetryschool.com.

A Restoration, revisited

31/7/2017

In Italy the heatwave continues. It's made it hard to find the energy to write, so that anything I've produced in the past month has emerged very slowly, and I'd like to say thoughtfully. But mainly just slowly.
This photo shows part of a fresco in the church of Sant'Agostino near where I live in Montalcino, whose restoration has also been progressing very slowly and in fits and starts, but is now once more underway.
Over several years I've been fascinated by the process, which has a wonderful, almost devotional quality. These beautiful frescoes (painted during the 14th and 15th Centuries, possibly by Bartolo di Fredi of the Sienese school) show scenes from the life of St Anthony. But what I love the most are the small peripheral depictions of everyday rural life at the time of the painting. In this one, three people (contadini?) are on their way to market, the woman carrying eggs, and on her head two unfortunate ducks! I wrote the poem below in 2014, when the fresco was just starting to reveal its rich colours. It's lovely to see the work coming close to fruition this year.

Duck Hat

Who is that woman with the two ducks
strapped to the top of her hat?
A basket of eggs, such a timid frown.
I’ve knelt close on folded sheets
for a fortnight, mending holes in her gown
with a fine white filler, edged

my narrow brush across her cheek.
As if she’s a lover or child, she needs
my kiss, but salt obscures her lip,
mottles the words she tries to mouth
in efflorescence. Here in the faintest slip
of lampblack, her cottage

hides among pines. All day I scrape
blown mortar, soothe hail-stone scores
with a spatula. Hills at her shoulder
wobble, terre verte, verdegris. Hands
reach and fail, lost in a fall of plaster,
caput mortuum, browned purple

at her feet. This is the lost treasure –
woman, duck hat, dancing dog – if only
I can give them back their shadowy journey
close to the bare earth, terra cotta, umber,
far from tin-leaf haloes, the well-worn story
told in cinnabar, shell gold, peach-stone charcoal.

You can find this poem and others set in England and Italy in 'Other Blackbirds' available from Cinnamon Press.

Past, Present and Future at Ledbury Poetry Festival

3/7/2017

I spent a contemplative weekend at Ledbury Poetry Festival, immersing myself in poetry events, performing one of my poems at the launch of Adam Horovitz's gorgeous, sappy, botanical anthology 'The Physic Garden' (available from Palewell Press - follow the link)...
... then hiding (in a park, or at my comfortable, secluded B and B - Harlequin-Ledbury, recommended!) to think and write... for me a perfect combination.

One of my highlights was a little exhibition of artists' books (Ledbury Book Arts) where I discovered the book art of Anthony Bateman. Anthony told me he is proud to live next door to John Masefield's childhood home, and he's made a beautiful art book from an edition of Masefield's work. Turning the pages with delight, I came upon the opening of Masefield's poem 'Tewkesbury Road', and was thrown straight back to childhood, to the first poems that moved me. I still carry in my head lines and phrases from this poem, learned by heart at primary school: 'the shy-eyed delicate deer', 'the dear wild cry of the birds'. I suspect that traces of Masefield's rhythms and images linger in my own writing.

I also loved the way the whole town seemed drawn into the festival spirit, with a shop window competition, poetry chairs around the streets and free and fringe activities too throughout the weekend.

I learned how to write a triolet with American poet A. E Stallings (a great teacher as well as poet; if you ever get the chance do go to one of her workshops).

I caught parts of 'Fair Field', a promenade version of Langland's 'PIers Plowman', too, brought up-to-date in anti-austerity style and performed around town and up in the Malvern Hills.

I cackled with the best of 'em at Nicholas Murray's feisty 'A Dog's Brexit'. Cathartic rage! (And shades of Bulgakov?)

And I carried home a pile of books for my 'to read next' shelf, from the poets I'd heard reading, too many to mention but perhaps the stand-out for me were Ana Blandiana, legendary Romanian 'Poet of Freedom' prize-winner, and Turkish/Kurdish poet Bejan Matur with her translator Jen Hadfield. These poems ('If This is a Lament') bear witness and lament without ever losing that sense of word-joy that poetry can give. Bejan's chapbook sold out before I could get to the book table - so I have it on order from the Poetry Translation Centre!

I guess for some of us, a poetry festival is the equivalent of an activity holiday, doing the things we love best in a different and beautiful setting. Thanks to the Ledbury Festival, I feel very fortunate to be able to do so.

Midsummer in the City

22/6/2017

Hot, hot days and nights, and the city in turmoil with terrorist events and the terrible fire in Kensington have made it impossible to celebrate this midsummer. I hope the Open Garden Squares day in Markham Square offered a small space for reflection, with leaf-poems fluttering in the gazebo and garden-lovers finding verses planted in the borders alongside the delphiniums and philadelphus. After weeks of immersion and writing, I found that the garden had inspired a surprising amount of poems, with more still at the development stage.

I felt very privileged to have the opportunity to 'reside', research and write in this secret garden square - thanks to the residents, The Poetry School and Open Garden Squares . I learned a lot more about making the most of a residency. In particular, for me all the most important inspirations came from the people I met there. Chance remarks by François, the gardener, about the small treasures he has dug up in the beds over the years - a marble made of marble, a sea-washed pebble - threw me back into the historic and prehistiric past of the site where now there is a garden, little pieces of people's personal histories attached to the place... a pet bird buried under a tree, a treetop visible from a Heathrow-bound plane.

I'm also continuing work on a poem sequence inspired by the leaves I brought home, pressed and ironed to make poem leaflets. The leaves have given me a light, airy way to write; I'm still chasing them.

My Leaf-life is Getting Quite Exciting!

14/6/2017

Getting ready for open garden day at Markham Square, Chelsea 2-5pm next Sunday...