Second Light Spring Poetry Festival

I’ve been a member of the Second Light Network for women poets over a certain age (http://www.secondlightlive.co.uk/) for some years now but this was the first time I’d managed to attend their workshops and readings. I started my three day immersion in literature with a visit to the British Library's Writing Britain, Wastelands to Wonderlands exhibition (http://www.bl.uk/writingbritain). Lots of original manuscripts and great choices of prose and poetry to show how urban, rural, and watery settings define so much of Britain's literature.

A short rest in the peace of the BL courtyard (and in the sun!!) and then I was off the The Art Workers Guild for the Festival’s opening readings. I read two poems written this year for my online courses –it was good to have the benefit of the workshop process before taking them for their first public reading.  So nice to meet other 2nd Lighters and to hear their poetry.

Thursday and Friday’s workshops were stimulating, with opportunities for writing and ideas for the next poem. Kate Foley led a discussion on words & topics that are supposed to be ‘not for use by a poet’!!! Rose Flint looked at women's words and Fiona Sampson considered the character of words and how we use them. Finally, some of Second Light’s latest competition winners read their prize winning poems and Myra Schneider launched her new collection: What Women Want. Myra’s work is so very well crafted and gets straight to the heart of matters, Her long poem about Caroline Norton is inspiration to anyone who wants to tell a long and complicated story in poetic form.

The sun kept on shining, Queens Square was a joy to retreat to for lunch and London buzzed with people enjoying being outside and warm after our cold, wet spring. My weekend began with a free jazz concert at the RFH before heading for home with lots of notes, ideas and another list of books to read. Unsurprisingly its been a slow day today … the paper, 8.9 coffee and the occasional pulling out of a weed.

NB My over the road neighbour has draped his garden wall with union jack bunting and large flags –yards of the stuff is fluttering wildly in the wind. Will it catch on?

Death comes to Pemberley by P D James

P D James writes in Jane Austen style; Austen’s characters find themselves in a P D James ‘situation’ … I didn’t know what to expect and was pleasantly surprised. Elizabeth and Darcy’s lives interrupted by Lydia and Wickham (who else)  … shots in the wood at night, death bed confessions and all the proprieties that need to be observed in Society in 1803. Light, readable, rather predictable but James takes Austen’s pen with competence and has a keen eye for where lives are likely to go when there has been both pride and prejudice in the past.  

Witness the Night by Kishwar Desia

Train journeys all this week and a few hours waiting for some routine health checks meant I had plenty of time for reading this week –firstly the debut novel of Kishwar Desia and then the latest in the very long writing career of P D James (see next entry).

Witness the Night takes as its topic some serous gender matters in India. Desia creates characters that feel real & provides opportunities for this book to be the first in a series. Her passion for bringing the issues she raises in Durga’s story and Simran’s choice of lifestyle is clear. This is a book that’s unafraid to  speak out about serous issues: it needs to be read all around the world. Worthy of the 2010 Costa First Novel Award and I’m looking forward to Desia’s next novel.

Catching up

Not at all sure when my last blog entry was –must have been before I spent a day baking some wonderful bread under the careful eye of Elizabeth, artisan baker at The Lighthouse Bakery  for more details see http://www.lighthousebakery.co.uk/. Now I know how to achieve a loaf with a nice round shape and shapely cuts   and that I have been treating dough far too roughly! My freezer is full of the great European bread we made –so far the Swedish Limpa is my favourite.  Definitely one to make at home especially now I have some lovely proving bowls to use.

I’ve also been bird watching twice these last two weekend –Dungeness RSPB reserve and the Barnes Wetlands Centre were full of swans, ducks and waders. My new binoculars have opened up a new world for me … Marsh Harriers one week, Lapwings the next to name just the best … this could be addictive. Watching birds from a hide is such a relaxing experience .. at this time of year the birds spend so much time preening and bathing –gentle activities that over a few minutes slowly reveal the shape, feather colours and personality of the bird. Must also mention the reed warbler … the book says its song is mechanical but the one at Barnes yesterday was beautifully in tune. And then there was the Heron … hunkered down on one leg over its chicks.

More details on both places at www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/d/dungeness/ and www.wwt.org.uk/visit-us/london

And in between all that my modem crashed but all is well now … more another day

Home by Marilynne Robinson

As a comment on the back cover of Home by Marilynne Robison says ‘this book is unforgettable’ … and because it is absolutely just that it was so worth reading again. I have no doubt I will read it a third and maybe a fourth time one day.

Words of praise for Robinson's acute and quiet observation of sibling, parochial and prodigal life include moving, profound, luminous. It is all that but for me reading it for a second time it was her language that thrilled. Her way with words means she describes the ordinary so that meaning arises as naturally as steam from a kettle. She weaves this essential aspect of a long novel into the weft of dialogue and interior thoughtfulness that lay out her character’s emotions like raw fish on a slab. You can smell as well as see their feelings. You can touch the shape of the shifts in their lives.

Within the pages of Home Robinson writes

‘Maybe sorrow or guilt is simply to be accepted as absolute, like revelation’

‘You get used to kindness. After a while you being to count on it. You miss it when its gone.’

‘Looking for you was sort of the next best thing to finding you.’  

I rest my case. See more at http://www.virago.co.uk/display.asp?K=9781844085507

Writing & Shropshire–contours of delight

I’ve been away –surrounded by a different geography with mainly prose writers on an Arvon retreat that focussed on story telling. It was a great opportunity to immerse myself in words –writing them, reading them, assessing their order and disorder, putting them aside during yoga and meditation, taking them out for a walk in bluebell woods overcast with birdsong.

Shropshire glowed with fields of rape rather than the sun but the contours offered around every corner were a wonderful sight –lots of tree line horizons, lambs bleating for their mums and not unexpectedly this particular spring, a few ‘lakes’ where there were once fields. My winding down activity on Saturday started in Bishops Castle  -a gentle wander through the flea market, quite a chunk of time in the bookshop that specialises in arts and craft  and coffee with the Saturday paper to catch up with the news.

Also visited the Land of Lost Content (http://www.lolc.org.uk/) in Craven Arms … what an incredible place! Everything from the 1940’s, 50’s, 60’s 70’s, almost literally everything … here is a curator who does not believe in white space. You wind through the years along  impossibly narrow corridors, trying not to knock into any of the exhibits, peering into the past through the ordinary things of life. A national treasure.

Enough of places … the writing opportunity was very special. My second time in John Osborne's former home and I’m so glad I chose to do something a little different. Different that is to the previous Arvon poetry courses … so good to look at my writing at a slant, to see writing a poem as story telling and to revisit editing through the eyes of an experienced novelist. I now have 8 poems in the Alderney Stones sequence … and lots of feedback on them, as well as ideas about how to develop some of the short prose I’ve been writing. Lots of thanks to everyone who read my work.

It is, of course, the other people who are there that can make (or break) the time away –especially when everyone is all together in a smallish space. This time it was definitely a group that made good things good  …. a mix of experience and different approaches/genres of fiction, great people to party with and always a bonus –they could cook when their turn came around.. It was great to meet Maggie Gee and  Jonathan Lee  -generous and insightful workshop leaders and Kishwar Desia , a new author to me, who made a guest appearance to remember. I’m looking forward to reading their writing in the next few weeks …. and to more writing of my own.

Finally, in amongst the countless emails I downloaded today was an acceptance note for a poem I sent out into the world quite a time ago. … i do so like the glow that sort of email brings. . Now to more writing in the hope of more glow.