Flying the Albatross

With the launch of my new collection approaching at pace, it was good to have a mini dress-rehearsal at Riff Corner Poetry Open Mic Night in Clevedon at the beginning of September, despite it taking me nearly an hour to drive the short distance home from my place of work through extensive roadworks, and then a return journey via Tickenham Hill and Failand in mist that was verging on fog. All hail autumn. 

Nevertheless, it was an interesting evening in good company. Open mic-ers currently get a little longer to read than at your average open mic session, and it was good to hear two or three poems, rather than the usual swift single, although this might have to change at some point as the evening was well attended and is clearly gaining in popularity. Thanks to Tim Burroughs for inviting me to read there, and for the above photo. 

Thanks are due also to Ben Banyard for asking me to read at Portishead's wildly successful ArtPort festival at the end of September. We'd been due to read alongside Bob Walton, but as he was still convalescing, Sue Hill, the other half of The Write Box, stepped into the breach. It was a lovely event, again well-attended and one I hope will be repeated next year.

 

 

My journey to Trowbridge Stanza on the first weekend in October was eventful, as someone drove into the back of my car by the Downs in Bristol. I was a bit shaken, but managed to complete the journey without further incident, and thoroughly enjoyed reading on the same  bill as Saili Katebe. We'd been due to read alongside each other back in 2020, as part of the Bristol Lyra Poetry Festival, which had been cancelled at the start of the pandemic, so it felt right and good to finally do that.

My penultimate autumn gig was in Bristol, as part of the Ten Bristol Poets event running at the Bristol Literary Film Festival in aid of St Peter's Hospice. It was a privilege to read alongside the following poets: 

TOP  1. Tim Burroughs  2. Jan Swann  3. Charles Thompson  4. Kaz Michael  5. Martin Rieser

BOTTOM:  6.  Helen Sheppard  7. David Punter  8. Me  9. Bob Walton  10. Melanie Branton

I enjoyed the opportunity of reading a few of my Bristol poems, from my collection 'Learning Finity', for a change, including one about my grandmother, who died in the care of the staff of St Peter's Hospice. Here's an earlier recording of it: 

 

My last autumn gig is Sunday 24th November and it's not necessary to leave the comfort of your own home to hear it, because I'm guest poet on West Wilts Radio's The Poetry Place at 3pm or any time you please, as it's streamable worldwide here.
 

Finally, it was great to have a poem from Love the Albatross in the latest issue of IDP's The Dawntreader ...

and also here, in the issue 4 of The Fig Tree.

Reviews of Love the Albatross can be found in Ink Sweat & Tears, London Grip and Tim Fellows' Substack.

A yee-haw poetry round-up

In terms of poetry, 2024 got off to a good start with Clare Shaw and Kim Moore's Writing Hours, a month-long series of daily Zoom workshops, the majority of which I managed to attend despite work commitments. They came at the right time for me this year: I spent most of last year severing emotional ties to my previous project and not writing poems - something which would have sent me into spiralling panic years ago, but which I've come to realise is a vital part of the process - and now I'm ready to start again. To give me a gentle boot up the bum, a commission from Bristol Lyra Poetry Festival came my way, and with the help of a prompt from last year's Writing Hours, that poem is taking pleasing shape as I write this. (I say I don't panic, but phew.) 

The previous project - my next collection, 'Love the Albatross' - just needs some final arranging of poems and a last read-through before it goes off to my publishers, Ronnie Goodyer and Dawn Bauling of Indigo Dreams, and the act of emailing them will be additional impetus for getting started on a new obsession. 

A few excellent poetry gigs have come our way in Bristol over the last few months. I was aggrieved to miss the launch of Melanie Branton's new collection, 'The Full English' and Jonny Fluffypunk's gig, both at Satellite of Love, thanks to a bout of acute bronchitis, but I did get see Ruth Padel read some new poems at Bristol University, inspired by the snake goddess figurines found at Knossos in 1903.  

I've encountered a few adders in my time, two of them alive (rather than run over). I didn't pick this one up and wave it in the air like the goddess in the top photo; rather - since it didn't appear to want to budge from the side of the path - I picked up my young collie, Ted, and sidled past as quickly as I could (after I'd taken a photo, of course). 

I spent another excellent evening at the launch of Helen Dewbery and Chaucer Cameron's poetry film based on the collection of poems by Chaucer entitled 'In an Ideal World I'd Not Be Murdered'. 

To be frank, I'd been a bit of an agnostic with regard to poetry film - enjoying many but not quite appreciating the need for them, because shouldn't a really good poem be able to summon strong images in a reader's mind without assistance or embellishment? Obviously the right film had to come along, with poems I already knew well, for me to be converted, and this was it. Helen's film adds layers of time and place to Chaucer's poem, without taking away any of their inherent power. It's an emphatic vindication of the form and I strongly recommend it. 

A few opportunities have materialised for me to read some poems during the first few months of this year, although I need to focus on getting readings later in the year and into 2025, once 'Love the Albatross' is published. The reading with Words and Ears at Bradford Roots has been and gone already, but there are a couple looming connected with the aforementioned Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival in April, and on 15th February, I'll be reading in support at the launch of Tina Cole's new collection, 'What it Was', which takes place at the Poetry Pharmacy in Bishop's Castle.

It's a memorable collection, for which I was delighted to write an endorsement.  

A few contributor's copies have come my way, in which 'Love the Albatross' poems that have a home. (I'm always relieved when this happens with poems from a themed collection, as it means they stand on their own, as well as part of a whole.) 

I'm especially pleased that the poems published in Dream Catcher stand alongside two by fellow Bristol and Leaping Word poetry group poet, Marius Grose.

Finally, a link to my poem, 'Your silence is all I have left', which was runner-up in the 2023 Frosted Fire Single Poem competition, and can be both read and heard on the Wild Words website.

Walls, Windows and Doors to the Life to Come, &c

Last night's inaugural outing for a new venture in poetry improvisation called Strange Cargo was the first time I'd managed to get out of Bristol in weeks. Or even get out at all. 

In any event, it went well. The gig, part of the Lyrical series run by Diana Durham in Trowbridge Town Hall, was a little daunting but an excellent opportunity to try out our plan of spontaneous poetry reading on the loose theme of walls and windows. 

We found ourselves in the perfect room for our subject-matter, and my fellow poets, Dawn Gorman, Chaucer Cameron, Anna-May Laugher, Shauna Darling Robertson and Helen Dewbery (Pey Oh being away) and I grew in confidence.  

By the end of the evening we were brimming with ideas for framing the poems, regulating their flow, and also the possibility of audience participation instead of a more formal open mic. It feels good to have a new venture underway.

Today I'd hoped to take our dog, Ted, who's been confined to base during the last month of hospital vigilance and funding applicationing, for a lovely long walk, somewhere with open skies, but he's picked up a bit of a limp so I had to downsize my plans.

Instead we headed for Greenbank Cemetery, which I've driven around all my life but never actually visited.

There was a burial going on when we got there so we decided to walk the bounds of the plot for our first visit. 

Sultry summer days aren't my first choice when it somes to visiting cemeteries, mainly because they tend to burn off all the atmosphere. 

The grass had been newly mown too. It was all looking very well-kempt.  

War graves, both military and civilian 

The long alleys of trees provided some welcome shade.

It intrigues me how people still visit old tumbledown graves to pay their respects, even if the tributes are chosen to last as long as possible, thus reducing the frequency of remembrancing required.

I watched two large, bright jays fly into a lime tree and then turn into lumpy jumping shadows that were completely invisible. 

A pair of moulting crows weren't as self-effacing. 

Poor Kate Perezic got a beautiful headstone but it doesn't look as if her loving husband chose to lie with her in the end. 

Commonwealth war graves

I'd intended to pop over the road to Rosemary Green where the dead from the Eastville Workhouse, which used to stand there, were buried, including my great-great-great grandfather, Mark 

Drewett, who died there in the 1880s. (No headstones for them, of course.) But Ted was still limping so I decided to save that journey for another day.  

Breadcrumbs coming soon

So this is what it's going to look like - the cover of my forthcoming poetry collection from Indigo Dreams Publishing.  Meanwhile, I'm angsting over commas and full stops, as is my wont. It will soon be time to Step Away From The Second Proof.  

Here's one of the poems that will be in it. It was originally published in 'Salt on the Wind', Chaucer Cameron and Helen Dewbury's anthology of poems in response to Ruth Stone, which is available from Elephant's Footprint.

Memory

after Ruth Stone

You scrabbled for

strands and threads

wove together

whatever you could

a piece of story

to keep you warm

cover your shame

But under the surface

something shifts

alters its colour

You turn it

all the ways you can

but all you thought

                     you knew is gone 

                                         Poem  ©Deborah Harvey 2016

                                         Artwork  ©Dru Marland 2016

Salt on the Wind : Poetry in response to Ruth Stone

I've been so busy moving house, I haven't had the chance to post about this book, an anthology of poems written in response to the startling, funny, fierce work of the late American poet Ruth Stone, whose centenary was in 2015.  

The collection has been put together by North Somerset-based poets and poetry film makers, Chaucer Cameron and Helen Dewbury, and includes a foreword by Ruth's granddaughter, Bianca Stone.  I'm honoured that three of my poems are included among the thoughtful and thought-provoking contributions collected here.

'Salt on the Wind' is available to buy from Elephant's Footprint, or from any of the following readings that have been planned for the coming months, as follows:

Tuesday 26th January     Berkeley Square Club, Bristol                    8.30pm

Friday 5th February         Can Openers, Steam Cafe Bar, Bristol      Noon 

Thursday 12th May           Cheltenham Poetry Festival

Sunday 24th July              Buzzwords, Cheltenham                             8pm

Thursday 25th August      Words and Ears, Bradford on Avon        7.30pm

Thursday 6th October      Swindon Poetry Festival