The Poetry Place

After a gruelling couple of days at my first job, each bookended by pre-dawn and evening drives to the Bottleyard Studios across town, and with the added frisson on the second night of a diversion to Sodding Chipbury, and then a late night return trip there to collect Son the Actor from his final gig, I was glad to have a day off today. 

Except that poetry isn't a job, it's a way of living, and since there can be even less respite from that, I was off to Bradford-on-Avon to record a radio interview. 

I met my interviewer, Dawn Gorman, in the Swan for a little prep. 

A short distance away was the makeshift studio, which wasn't makeshift at all but a very kind person's spare room - a lovely, quiet, modern space. 

And they tell me the interview went well. I have to say, it was  much less nerve-wracking than the live radio interviews I've done.

The Poetry Place on West Wilts Radio will air on Sunday 23rd February at 4pm, and Tuesday 25th at 9pm. It will also feature poetry discussion from Dawn and Peter O'Grady. 

At home there was a treat waiting in the form of a goody bag from East Riding Festival of Words, in honour of my poem, The Unfinished Book, which was recently highly commended in their 2019 poetry competition. 

I'm not going to share the poem here as it remains unpublished and so can still be subbed to magazines, but the story behind its writing is here.

I will say, however, that I'm made up, so much so that I've almost forgotten a seagull shat on me and the Northerner when we were in Filey.