Blinking in the light

Somewhere in one of the boxes of photos under my bed, there must be a picture of my friend, Angela Prior-Kimball, and me together, when we first knew each other at Lancaster University in the early 80s, but for a reason that has nothing to do with our friendship, I still haven't mustered the inclination to unearth them.  So here we are not together, Angela having taken the second photo, of which I was completely oblivious, at the 1983 graduation ball. 

On the face of it, our friendship was somewhat unlikely. Angela was ebullient, with a can-do attitude - to the last, as it turned out. She was good at tennis - her nickname at the time was Angela Prior-Lloyd-Bum (Lloyd after the then Chris Evert Lloyd) - and even then she had a fascination with fashion, and impressive boundaries. I, on the other hand, was bookish, definitely not sporty or fashionable, and riddled with insecurities. 

One episode I remember - which Angela had forgotten, although she appreciated it when I told her the last time I saw her - involved a rabbit fur coat my father had given me, which had been given to him by a former client from when he'd sold insurance. Of course, I wouldn't dream of wearing fur now, but this was the winter of 1981/2 , which was so cold it has its own Wikipedia entry, and I was steadily freezing to death in the west end of Morecambe, in a mouldy attic which was painted the colour of the inside of a Ladyshave box (as another friend memorably described it), so I suppressed a vague feeling of disquiet, and wore it. Until, that is, the night I bundled it into an alcove in what was then Lonsdale College bar, only for it to be gone when I came to catch the bus back to the Battery. 

Any relief I felt at not wearing rabbit skin over my own any more was swamped by anxiety at what my father might say when he found out I'd let the damn thing get stolen. I still wasn't fully reconciled to its loss when Angela turned up unexpectedly in my flat a few nights later and asked if I'd had any news of its whereabouts. I immediately launched into a description of where I'd looked, who'd been in the bar at the time, various false sightings, etc, only for her to start laughing and call me a silly moo because in my consternation, I hadn't noticed that it was draped around her shoulders. The landlord, it turned out, had put it behind the bar so that it wouldn't get nicked, but hadn't been there when I was looking for it, and had forgotten to tell me subsequently. Angela, though, like the Vintage Queen she was to become, had ferreted it out. 

Being a language student, I graduated a year later than Angela, in 1984, by which time she'd started her business, Heaven Vintage, and was rumoured to be managing a pop group. Within a few years I had multiple babies and she was appearing on The Clothes Show; then, by the mid 1990s, she was living in Miami and it seemed our paths had diverged for good ...

... though elsewhere, computer programmers were dreaming of a phenomenon called social media, and by 2011,  we'd re-forged our connection to the point where I dedicated a poem in Communion, my first poetry collection, to her. 

Even so, that might have been the extent of our rekindled friendship, were it not for a chance encounter in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2014. I was hurrying to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre to see Henry IV Part I with my partner; Angela was sitting in the sun with a friend on the corner of Sheep Street and High Street, and true to form, spotted me as I passed by, quite unaware, and shouted my name. 'I recognised you by your walk!' she declared, somewhat disconcertingly. 

After that, we kept in closer touch. My last two trips to see her in Coventry came after her diagnosis of Stage 4 ovarian cancer almost exactly two years ago. The first included a visit to the Cave of Wonders that was her flat on Blondvil Street, which address suited her to the ground.

On my second visit this September we sat in the sun by the River Sherbourne at Charterhouse, watching the bees in the Himalayan Balsam and eating ice cream. Angela was as indefatigable as ever, planning a huge vintage fair to raise money for a new treatment that isn't available on the NHS. As I was hoping to go, I thought there was every chance I'd see her again, but a dose of Covid (mine) and Angela's cancer colluded, and although the fair happened in November, another visit wasn't to be. 

So it goes. Solstice feels like a good time to write this. The year has turned, and we're all heading towards the light; it's just that my dear determined friend has beaten us to it. 

Books that made me a poet

I’ve been thinking a lot about this subject lately, in order to contribute to a panel discussion with several other poets, put on as part of the campaign to save Redland Library in Bristol. Trawling through my childhood for influences was an interesting and useful process, and I was particularly pleased that the story attached to one of the books I settled on centres on another local library. Moreover, I recommend the exercise. I think it’s important to explore where you come from as a writer, as it helps to establish a route map for future writing. It might even inspire you.

Hymns and Psalms

My grandmother, who raised eleven children between the wars and who always kept a pencil and a scrap of paper in her apron pocket to write down lines of poetry as they occured to her, taught me my nursery rhymes, and these were my first poems, but the first book of poetry I encountered was Hymns and Psalms, the hymn book of the Methodist Church. Methodism influenced my relationship with language throughout my formative years, and has had a huge, if mainly subconscious, effect on how I use it in my writing.

I attended Sunday School every Sunday afternoon from the age of two until I was about 12, and every Sunday morning I sat through the regular church service. Having the attention span of a gnat, I spent years dreaming my way through sermons and prayers. I also found that if I stared very hard at the minister without blinking, I could make a halo appear right around his body, a bit like a Ready Brek kid (only less orange).

The bible stories back then were read from the King James Bible with its strange language and beautiful rhythms, as were the psalms, which Methodists render in a call and response format, between the minister and members of the congregation. The minister reads the first part of the verse, and the congregation the part that answers and augments the original statement. This meant that as soon as I could read, I was speaking poetry aloud, and something about these ritual readings seeped into my bloodstream.

Then there were the hymns. These required serious, getting-to-your-feet attention, and because I was so short, I was allowed to stand on the pew.  And the words! … the dark paths on the wings of the storm, the fiery cloudy pillars, the death of death and death’s destruction … and that’s without tackling the magnificent hymns of Charles Wesley, co-founder of Methodism with his brother, John. I really didn’t have a clue what we were singing about, and for that reason, I’m sure these mysterious outpourings had a far greater effect on me than they would have done. I was a five-year-old child soaking up mysticism, metaphor, and the language of poetry. I was a rhythm Methodist.

‘The Red Pony’ by John Steinbeck

Like the Methodist hymn book, this is another case of not fully understanding what I was reading at the time, and the impact that had on my developing imagination. It also involves the second most important place in my childhood, after my grandmother’s house, and that was the old library on the big roundabout in Filton, where I grew up. Even now, if I close my eyes, I can smell floor polish, and picture the 1960s formica reception desk, which wouldn’t have disgraced the Tardis or Starship Enterprise.

My father would take my sister and me to the library every fortnight, but it was when I could read for myself that it really came into its own. Those brown card tickets we had back then were as precious to me as an EU passport, and served much the same purpose, in that you could travel anywhere with them, albeit in your imagination. I soon secured double the number under 12s were permitted to have, and it was a point of honour always to have read all eight books by the time the two weeks were up – unless the book was a particular favourite, in which case I would renew it and renew it until another customer demanded its return.

Neither of my parents had any interest in literature themselves, so my choice of reading matter was largely unguided. For a long time, I was addicted to Enid Blyton; then I moved on to pony books, revelling in stories of gymkhanas, shows and rosettes.

Then one day, when I was about seven or eight, I took out ‘The Red Pony’, thinking it would be more of the same: fictional heroines living my pony dream. If you’ve read it, you’ll know how far off the mark this expectation was. I got as far as this episode:

‘Billy Buck stood up from the box and surrendered the cotton swab. The pony still lay on his side and the wound in his throat bellowsed in and out. When Jody saw how dry and dead the hair looked, he knew at last that there was no hope for the pony. He had seen the dead hair before on dogs and on cows, and it was a sure sign. He sat heavily on the box and let down the barrier of the box stall. For a long time he kept his eyes on the moving wound, and at last he dozed, and the afternoon passed quickly. Just before dark his mother brought a deep dish of stew and left it for him and went away. Jody ate a little of it, and, when it was dark, he set the lantern on the floor the pony’s head so he could watch the wound and keep it open. And he dozed again until the night chill awakened him. The wind was blowing fiercely, bringing the north cold with it. Jody brought a blanket from his bed in the hay and wrapped himself in it. Gabilan’s breathing was quiet at last; the hoIe in his throat moved gently. The owls flew through the hayloft, shrieking and looking for mice. Jody put his hands down on his head and slept … ‘

In the morning Jody awakes and the pony is gone. He runs up over the ridge after it.

‘He looked up and saw a high circle of black blizzards, and the slowly revolving circle dropped lower and lower. The solemn birds soon disappeared over the ridge. Jody ran faster then, forced on by panic and rage. The trail entered the brush at last and followed a winding route among the tall sage bushes.

At the top of the ridge Jody was winded. He paused, puffing noisily. The blood pounded in his ears. Then he saw what he was looking for. Below, in one of the little clearings in the brush, lay the red pony. In the distance, Jody could see the legs moving slowly and convulsively. And in a circle around him stood the buzzards, waiting for the moment of death they know so well.

Jody leaped forward, and plunged down the hill. The wet ground muffled his steps and the brush hid him. When he arrived it was all over. The first buzzard sat on the pony’s head and its beak had just risen dripping with dark eye fluid. Jody plunged into the circle like a cat. The black brotherhood arose in a cloud, but the big one on the pony’s head was too late. As it hopped along to take off, Jody caught its wing tip and pulled it down. It was nearly as big as he was. The free wing crashed into his face with the force of a club, but he hung on. The claws fastened on his leg and the wing elbows battered his head on either side. Jody groped blindly with his free hand. His fingers found the neck of the struggling bird. The red eyes looked into his face, calm and fearless and fierce; the naked head turned from side to side. Then the beak opened and vomited a stream of putrifled fluid. Jody brought up his knee and fell on the great bird. He held the neck to the ground with one hand while his other found a piece of sharp white quartz. The first blow broke the beak sideways and black blood spurted from the twisted, leathery mouth comers. He struck again and missed. The red fearless eyes still looked at him, impersonal and unafraid and detached. He struck again and again, until the buzzard lay dead, until its head was a red pulp. He was still, beating the dead bird when Billy Buck pulled him off, and held him tightly to calm his shaking.’

I got no further. I slammed the book shut and marched straight back to the library with it, outraged. It was the only book I ever recall not finishing – and I never forgot its invocation of death, even during all the years when I no longer remembered the title and the name of the heartless bastard who’d written it.

Later, when I came of age, I read the major Steinbeck novels and short stories, but never glanced right to the bottom of the list of published works – or if I did, I didn’t twig.  I was in my mid-thirties before the penny dropped, and I finally read it to the end, and cried for the boy, and the pony, and the old stable hand … and for the child whose imagination was to be so marked by a half-read book.

Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes

When I was 16, the door to my future was slammed shut by my teacher, who insisted I wasn’t good enough to study English at A-level (despite getting two As at O-level). As a working-class girl on an assisted place in a posh private school, I suspect my accent was all wrong, and my face probably didn’t fit either. To make matters worse, my parents, who were firm believers in deferring to one’s elders and betters, sided with my teacher and agreed I should study something else.

I took it to heart. I took it deep. I took A-levels and a degree in subjects that were interesting but weren’t what I longed to study. And since I could no longer be an English teacher, I married the first man who asked me and had four children in six years, two of whom were diagnosed with autism at the ages of four and three respectively. By my thirties I was stuck in a damaging marriage with no career, kids I loved fiercely but who needed all my energy, and no self-esteem. Moreover, I was estranged from literature, and everything it had represented for me, for decades.

Then, the Christmas after Ted Hughes died in 1998, something happened. One evening – by some random miracle – I found myself in the front room when a programme about ‘Birthday Letters’ came on the telly. Somehow my husband and all the kids were elsewhere, and none of them interrupted me. I poured myself a glass of Shiraz, and watched and wept as the story of another destructive love unravelled through poetry.

If you’re familiar with the poetry of Hughes, you’ll know that the fox is a totemic animal for him; a guiding spirit.

Epiphany

London. The grimy lilac softness

Of an April evening. Me

Walking over Chalk Farm Bridge

On my way to the tube station.

A new father – slightly light-headed

With the lack of sleep and the novelty.

Next, this young fellow coming towards me.

I glanced at him for the first time as I passed him

Because I noticed (I couldn’t believe it)

What I’d been ignoring.

Not the bulge of a small animal

Buttoned into the top of his jacket

The way colliers used to wear their whippets –

But its actual face. Eyes reaching out

Trying to catch my eyes – so familiar!

The huge ears, the pinched, urchin expression –

The wild confronting stare, pushed through fear,

Between the jacket lapels.

    ’It’s a fox-cub!’

I heard my own surprise as I stopped.

He stopped. ‘Where did you get it? What

Are you going to do with it?’

    A fox-cub

On the hump of Chalk Farm Bridge!

‘You can have him for a pound.’ ‘But

Where did you find it? What will you do with it?’

‘Oh, somebody’ll buy him. Cheap enough

At a pound.’ And a grin.

    What I was thinking

Was – what would you think? How would we fit it

Into our crate of space? With the baby?

What would you make of its old smell

And its mannerless energy?

And as it grew up and began to enjoy itself

What would we do with an unpredictable,

Powerful, bounding fox?

The long-mouthed, flashing temperament?

That necessary nightly twenty miles

And that vast hunger for everything beyond us?

How would we cope with its cosmic derangements

Whenever we moved?

The little fox peered past me at other folks,

At this one and at that one, then at me.

Good luck was all it needed.

Already past the kittenish

But the eyes still small,

Round, orphaned-looking, woebegone

As if with weeping. Bereft

Of the blue milk, the toys of feather and fur,

The den life’s happy dark. And the huge whisper

Of the constellations

Out of which Mother had always returned.

My thoughts felt like big, ignorant hounds

Circling and sniffing around him.

   Then I walked on

As if out of my own life.

I let that fox-cub go. I tossed it back

Into the future

Of a fox-cub in London and I hurried

Straight on and dived as if escaping

Into the Underground. If I had paid,

If I had paid that pound and turned back

To you, with that armful of fox –

If I had grasped that whatever comes with a fox

Is what tests a marriage and proves it a marriage –

I would not have failed the test. Would you have failed it?

But I failed. Our marriage had failed.

I bought the book and read it. I bought Plath’s Collected Poems and read them. Then, three months later, I dreamt of dead Ted Hughes sitting on the steps of Filton swimming pool with his head in his hands. He was all grief, and physically too huge for me to comfort, and I knew immediately that he represented me, and that I needed to attend to this part of me that was dying before it was too late.

My confidence was so shattered I was no longer entirely sure what a poem was, but I started to write. Finding each word was agony; even worse was finishing a poem in the certainty I’d never write another. Then an abrupt and untimely death occurred in my extended family, and poetry felt too dangerous a place to go, so I wrote a novel, one day a week for seven years. But I kept reading poetry, and during the final year of my marriage, I started to write it again.

My ex-husband once claimed these poems broke up our marriage. At the time I blamed his rages and constant affairs, but ten years on, I find I agree with him. Faltering as they were, they represented something that was beyond his control … and beyond mine too. Within six months of our divorce, my first collection, Communion, was published, and I wonder now if all the setbacks and the chance encounters that could just as easily have not happened, had to occur for me to be here now.

An Encounter with the Destroying Angel

I found this in my garden last Wednesday, in a pot containing a small Christmas tree that didn't survive our long hot summer. Having a morbid preoccupation with all things poisonous, venomous and otherwise highly dangerous, I could tentatively identify it as amanita virosa ... 

... otherwise known as the Destroying Angel ...    

... and having sought a second opinion from friendly expert, Bruce Langridge, this does seem to be the correct conclusion.  

In any event, I didn't make mushroom soup with it. I wrapped it up, put it in the dustbin and washed my hands. Dog safe, partner safe, poem written. 😎

I can't share the poem because by the time I've finished tweaking it, it might turn out to be good enough to take its chances in the world. So here's one I prepared earlier, from my first collection Communion.

Earth Stars

From the chronicles of trees

she wants monsters

baleful Destroying Angels,

stellar brides of hell

all innocence and virulence

in petticoats and veil,

or troops of gleaming Death Caps

goose-stepping through leaves

marshalling for massacre

in copses, killing fields, as if

escape clutched in her hand might gift

illusory control.

In forests damp and warm

in thickets blanketed by spores

the Prince with Devil’s Fingers

knows their secret, loamy holes.

He can smell them, see them, feel them swelling

opening the ground

thrusting through the litter

with a hungry, crackling sound. 

He finds her Velvet Shanks and Blushers

puts an Amethyst Deceiver in her hand.

In the sultry, starless dark,

she’ll settle for a zodiac

of flesh and pearls and earth.

Billboards all along the Kennet & Avon

Well, maybe not quite, but the pressure was on - 'Kin' had to have an airing on today's Poetry Please or else, as my friend Jan pointed out, Dru Marland might be done for selling copies of 'Inking Bitterns', in which it appears, under false pretences. 

In the event it was there, tucked in amongst offerings from Thomas Hardy, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Charlotte Brontë, Wislawa Szymborska, Mark Doty, John Clare et al. How very exciting - even if it took four years from when Dru made her request.   Clearly, the mills of the Beeb grind slow.  

If you missed it and would like to hear it, follow this link. It's almost exactly half way through the programme, at 15.04 minutes in.  Or wait until next Saturday, 4th June, when it will be repeated at 11.30pm. 

As mentioned above, 'Kin' is published in Dru's 2012 illustrated anthology of nature poetry, Inking Bitterns, available from Gert Macky books, and also in my 2011 collection Communion, published by Indigo Dreams.

'Kin' on Poetry Please this Sunday!

After a false start a month or so ago, when nothing happened, Dru's received an email from the Beeb to say that my poem, 'Kin', requested by her back in 2012, will DEFINITELY be on Poetry Please on Radio 4 this Sunday, from 4.30pm. That's this Sunday, 29th May. From 4.30pm. Absolutely definitely. Really.

However, I've since been informed that it  will be on the same time as the commentary on some football match at Wembley involving a team called Barnsley. And apparently this might be a problem ...

Oh well, I'm sure someone will rethink their priorities before it's too late.  

'Kin' is from my 2011 collection, 'Communion', published by Indigo Dreams Press, and also appears in Dru's illustrated anthology of wildlife poems, 'Inking Bitterns', available from Gert Macky Books. 

So Much More Than The View ... National Association For Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty/National Parks

I love leaving the house (and the vague notion that I should be doing some housework) to go walking, preferably in the country. For me it's an intrinsic part of the writing process, and I am hugely lucky that my home city of Bristol is ringed by the Wye Valley/Forest of Dean, the Cotswolds, and the Mendips, and that at a slightly greater radius lie the Gower, the Brecon Beacons, the Malverns, the North Wessex Downs, Cranborne Chase and the West Wiltshire Downs, and the Quantocks.

And when I holiday, invariably in Devon, I can see Dartmoor from the hills behind my family's caravan, while the Blackdowns, North, East and South Devon, Dorset, the Tamar Valley, Cornwall, and Exmoor are all within easy reach.  So much variety and interest - and all of them either Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty or National Parks.  

So I was delighted when our postman turned up with several copies of So much more than the view, a joint publication from the National Association For Areas Of Outstanding Natural Beauty and National Parks England, which highlights the benefits such areas offer society. 

It turns out that the AONBs and National Parks in England cover more than a quarter of the country and welcome more than 260 million visitors per year.  They also provide inspiration for artists and writers (like me) and sporting people (not like me); homes for people and wildlife; thousands of jobs; and life-enhancing experiences for people of all ages.

Given that these areas are so vital to the country's economy and to the health and well-being of so many, it does therefore seem surprising that public spending on AONBS and National Parks is less than £1 per person per year.  They need more investment from the government to continue to protect these places and to promote sustainable growth within communities. I support these aims, which is why I was delighted that my poem, Coleridge Changes His Library Books, from my first collection, Communion, was quoted in part in the brochure, as an example of how these places can be inspirational.  

In fact, my poem about Coleridge, who famously walked his way around the West Country,  takes its inspiration from visits I made to the Quantocks, Exmoor, the Wye Valley, the Mendips and East Devon - no less than four AONBS and one National Park.   

At the launch of the brochure back in June, the Environment Minister Rory Stewart asserted that we have a 'deep obligation to protect this land, its farms and its communities', and that 'while we celebrate the fact that they have also to potential to bring prosperity, we must never reduce such places simply to their economic value – they are so much more than that.'  Whether this will translate into more government investment remains to be seen.  Certainly such statements seem to be at odds with permitting fracking companies to drill horizontally under national parks and other protected areas, to give just one example of the way these landscapes are under threat.  

In the meantime, we can voice our opposition to such initiatives, visit our special places and support their local businesses, support the AONBS and National Parks by donating, volunteering, putting our car parking money in the honesty box, etc. And we can keep on walking, learning and writing; painting, photographing and sculpting; telling the stories and histories of these places; and letting everyone know how vital - yet fragile - they are. 

As for the bit about being a household name, well, thanks, guys, but I don't think 

that's the case even in this house, given that the dog seems to think I'm called Mum.  But I'll still keep visiting and keep writing. 

The Next Big Thing

David Clarke has kindly tagged me in an on-going project called ‘The Next Big Thing’. This involves writers answering a set of questions about a book which has been or is about to be published. They then tag other writers who keep the chain going.  If you follow the links up and down the chain, it will be like going on a jaunt without even leaving the settee. It turns out that my preferred tag-ees - Roselle Angwin and Alison Lock - have already done it: you can read their respective responses here and here. 

The book I’m going to talk about is my novel, ‘Dart’, a story about a family living on Dartmoor during the Black Death.  It’s due to be published on 4^th February 2013 by Tamar Books, which is an imprint of Indigo Dreams Publishing.

1. Where did the idea for this book come from?

I have a passion bordering on obsession for Dartmoor and I think the idea came to me in snippets of information that I gleaned while reading up on walks that I was preparing to do.  For example, I was intrigued by the fact that there's an area at Merrivale known as Plague Market, where the townsfolk of Tavistock would collect food stuffs placed there by moor-dwellers during times of contagion, leaving money for what they took.  And that the crossroads called 'The Watching Place' outside Moretonhampstead is believed to have been so named because it's where villagers watched to see whether the inhabitants of a plague-affected longhouse were dead before burning it to the ground in an attempt to halt the spread of infection.  These details gradually coalesced inside my head into a story.  

2. What genre does your book fall under?

I suspect that it's a  novel for young adults first and foremost, but please don't tell my publisher, Ronnie Goodyer, because he doesn't publish children's books!  I think it kind of slipped in under the radar:  Ronnie and his partner, Dawn Bauling, were already publishing my collection of poetry, Communion, and since we had all bonded over our shared love of Dartmoor and border collies, I resolved to submit the requisite three chapters anyhow, in the hope that the location might blind him to what I believed my target audience to be.

That said, 'Dart' explores many themes which will also resonate with a more mature readership, such as coming to terms with loss; remembrance and continuity; finding one's voice; and the triumph of the spirit in times of adversity.  I like to think that it will also appeal to the crossover and/or reading group market.  And in any event, as Tolkien observed in 'On Fairy Stories', we impose a false dichotomy between adults and children in terms of story-telling and the use of the imagination. 

3. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Well, I'm sure Lauren Ambrose, who played Claire Fisher in Six Feet Under, would make a fabulous red-haired witch!  Though to be honest, I feel it would be a mistake to cast stunningly beautiful Hollywood stars.  People just didn't look like that in England in 1348!  So I'd be on the look-out for ordinary people with interesting faces who could be dressed down a lot.  

4. What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

And I thought writing a three page synopsis was hard enough!  Erm ... The End Of The World Is Nigh!

5. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

When I started writing it, my four kids were much younger and more demanding of time than they are now, so I had to fit my writing in around them and my part-time job. I'd try to set aside one day per week during term time for research - I did an awful lot of reading up to get the historical and geographical detail right - and writing.  (During the school holidays, when I couldn't write, I marched them over Dartmoor instead, checking out locations and mapping my characters' movements.)  I don't know about the first draft - I can't remember - but I do recall that it was seven years between the germination of the story and the point at which I felt it was ready to make its way in the world, several drafts later. 

6. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Dartmoor was a huge inspiration, as I've already mentioned.  I also wanted to write it for my inner seven year old, who wanted nothing more than to become an author when she grew up.  I'd lost track of her over the years and wanted to do something kind for her.

7. What else might pique the reader's interest?

Well, we're constantly being told by the media that we are overdue a pandemic.  If one actually comes along, it would increase my story's topicality no end!

8. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

As I mentioned before, it's being published by Tamar Books.  As far as arranging readings goes, I'm the person to contact as I don't have an agent - in fact, I'd be surprised if any poets of my lowly stature do.  That's what I see myself as first and foremost - a poet who happens to have written a novel.  In fact, I'm putting together a putative second collection of poems right now and falling in love with the whole process all over again.  

 Illustrations by Dru Marland.

   

Et in Arcadia Ego

I am in receipt of the final final final set of proofs for my novel, Dart.  Which is scary because I used to proofread professionally back in the days of galley proofs and Tippex and learnt then that the only thing more certain than the small error that escaped your red Bic is the fact that some bastard will gleefully point it out to you.  

Although that hasn't been the case with my poetry collection, Communion.  It was a while before I could even open it after it was published.  When I did manage it, I saw one very minor thing I wished I'd noticed and changed at proofing stage, but no one else has ever said anything and now I can't remember what it was.

That said, I'm really not keen on the idea of living down a novel with a hideous error half way down page 73 (or anywhere else) so I'll be proofing carefully between now and the New Year.  Never mind Christmas, it's publication day that's looming.

In the meantime, here are some pictures of the Valley of the West Dart, where my story is set.

The West Dart at Huccaby

Glittering innocence

Over the stone stile

Longaford Tor, Higher White Tor and Bellever Tor from Hexworthy

Stepping Stones at Sherberton Firs













My novel, Dart, will be published by Tamar Books (an imprint of Indigo Dreams) on 4th February 2012.  More details here, and here.

You might be avoiding Amazon on account of their (tax) avoidance, but fret not, my poetry collection, Communion, is also available from Indigo Dreams for £6.99.

A Poem for Remembrance Day 2012

Tobruk

for LRH

Silence,

not for two minutes

but sixty years.

Only then does he start to talk, 

not to his family but his brothers,

those soldiers in slippers,

with cemetery teeth,

their medals saucepan lids

pinned to punctured chests,

their stories shrapnel

lodged in matter

from a distant land called War.

Later, I gather rusted splinters,

their gist a desert expedition:

mirage of wire,

signs in barbed Gothic script,

hot metal surfacing

through oceanic sand, in front, behind. I panic,

turn to trace his steps,

a trail of breadcrumbs

swallowed up by circling dunes;

not knowing how this terror ends,

if my father will survive

to speak its name.

                       © Deborah Harvey 2011

My father was ground crew in the RAF during the second world war and saw service in Palestine, Egypt, Tripolitania and Italy.

This poem is from my collection, Communion, published by Indigo Dreams.  If you like, you can read some more here.

Fire, Frost and Dragon's Breath

If I had any doubts about the wisdom of getting up early on a Sunday to read poems to the converted in Wells, my drive across the Downs - all smouldering trees, dragon's breath and frost - dispelled them. Then, as Pameli and I started the descent from the Mendips, I screeched to a halt and jumped out of the car.  No matter that it was a relatively busy single carriageway ...  Glastonbury Tor was adrift in mist.  And how can anyone deny it's magical?

And when we arrived, the City of Wells was morning-dark and misty also.

With such auspicious auguries, the reading of poems in the Oak Room of the Swan Hotel could hardly have not gone well, and so it proved.  For once, we seemed to have an audience that didn't consist entirely of contributing poets, including my friends, Liz and Paul, who had kindly come over from Portishead.  And I sold a couple of copies of my collection, Communion, too - always a bonus.

Before heading back to Bristol, Pameli Benham, Stewart Carswell and I had a little wander around the moat of the Bishop's Palace.  It must be quite sheltered as autumn doesn't seem to have advanced far there yet. 

On the way back to the car park, I managed - finally - to get a photo of Union Street, which was once Grove Lane, and before that Grope Lane, and before that, Gropecunt Lane, for my collection of Gropecunts.  

Which reminds me, whilst on the walk around Bristol yesterday, Mark Steeds mentioned a lane in the bombed mediaeval quarter of Bristol which went by the splendid name of Cock and Bottle Lane.  Must do come googling.