Filling January with poetry

I don't do that well in winter, being encumbered with Seasonal Affective Disorder, so I try to fill it with poetry to compensate for having to take the Christmas lights down. 

This year was my third year of doing Kim Moore and Clare Shaw's January Writing Hours, which offers the discipline of an hour a day responding to poems and prompts. Sadly, I can only ever attend four per week because of fixed work commitments, but even so, after a two-year break from writing poems following the completion of my most recent collection, 'Love the Albatross', I feel I might be getting ready to start writing again, and so it was good to smell the distant whiff of poetry on the air. And it's always wonderful to encounter poets and poems you might not have come across otherwise. 

I also volunteered to read at a few poetry events, largely to make myself do it despite the dark and the longing to hibernate. The first of these was the launch of Di Slaney's new pamphlet, 'January conversations, with dogs', published by Valley Press. Di was looking for poets with poems about dogs to read at the launch, so I sent her a copy of 'The Good Dogs of Chernobyl', which was published in my 2019 collection, 'The Shadow Factory', and was delighted when it, and I, were chosen to take part. And although they were mostly distant, Northern, god-like poets involved, whom I 'know' from social media but have never met, I instantly felt part of a warm poetry community - it was a beautiful launch of a thoughtful, dog-accompanied collection of poems that never tip into sentimentality, skilfully illustrated by poet and artist, Jane Burn. And yes, I bought two copies, one for us and one for dog-owning, poetry-publishing friends, and if you like dogs and poems, you should too. 

                         

Mid-month and I left Bristol for the first time this year to travel to Bradford-on-Avon for the second Poetry@Roots reading at Bradford Roots Music Festival. I read at the first one last year, on the grounds that not wanting to leave my settee to drive along the frankly scary Sally-in-the-Wood in winter's dark was exactly the reason why I should do it, and it was a such a shiny experience, I jumped at the chance to do it all again. 

Organiser and compere Dawn Gorman

This year there were guest readings by Kate Noakes and Christine McFarlane, who was launching her first collection, 'Irish Elk and other Extinctions'. Dawn, who organises every event she puts on so very competently, but without the least hint of bossiness, interviewed Kate and Christine for The Poetry Place on West Wilts Radio, and also Dominic Fisher and me about the forthcoming anthology from the IsamBards, 'Dancing on the Bridge'. You can hear us here, at about 6 minutes and 25 seconds in. 

Taking to the Golden Gudgeon stage

Then, right at the end of the month, two readings within 18 hours of each other, the first a Manchester Metropolitan University Alumni Showcase, at Manchester Poetry Library, which I joined online. 

Compere Kim Moore with a bottle of beer and fellow-reader, Rachel Carney, listening to a collaborative reading on the theme of dementia by Hilary Robinson and Rachel Davies

I always find Teams and Zoom readings slightly terrifying in case a) someone rings the doorbell and the dog goes ape, or b) I suffer a technical disaster and find I can't join the reading, or the internet goes down - none of which has happened yet, though that doesn't stop me worrying. This time, there was even more jeopardy, as we're between kitchens right now, and out of camera shot, I was surrounded by tottering piles of crockery, rusting pots and pans, jars of condiments bought with the most exciting of intentions in 2018 that somehow got pushed to the back of the cupboard and never used, etc, etc. In the end, I took the precaution of shutting poor Cwtch the Collie upstairs, from where she tried to dig her way back down through the ceiling, though this wasn't audible in Manchester. As for the notification which kept popping up, telling me I had a poor network connection, I just ignored it and it was OK. 

Rachel Carney's view from the audience

Since this might have been my last contact with MMU, I'm pleased it went well. I loved studying for my MA, and having the space to write about the difficult subject of estrangement was important to me as I negotiated my experience of it. It was also exhilarating hearing the poetry some of my peers - Rachel Carney, Betty Doyle, Simon Costello, Hilary Robinson and Rachel Davis - have written.

The final reading of the month wasn't at all scary because it was on my home ground, at Silver Street Poetry and Open Mic, of which I'm one of the co-organisers. Knowing everyone there makes for a safe space in which I can be a little more frank about the circumstances behind the 'Love the Albatross' poems than I might be otherwise. And of course, people know me in return, which means I know I won't be judged. 

Action MC moment from Dominic Fisher

It means a lot to me when people who, it turns out, have experience of estrangement come up to me after a reading and tell me how much these poems have touched them. 

Finally, the last poem from 'Love the Albatross' to come home to roost did so in the pages of Indigo Dreams' The Dawntreader. A fine place for it to land. Thanks to Ronnie and Dawn for everything. 

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.

Horses on Horfield Common (again)

Every now and then I fall down a rabbit hole into the past, sometimes more than once. 

All these years later I remember what a treat it was to spot horses on Horfield Common just before Christmas in 2011, and last Friday there was an echo of that visitation when I saw more horse-drawn vans making camp on the common, alongside the rather more mundane motorised vans, caravans and camper vans that line Kellaway Avenue in these days of scant social housing. 

I was on my way to the reading by Alice Oswald and Kim Moore in town, so couldn't stop for a closer look, and since I was due to drive to Oxford the next day to take Son the Elder to a roboteering event, I concluded, sadly, that I probably wouldn't get a closer look at them. But in the morning, as luck would - or wouldn't - have it, my car started making disconcerting juddering noises before we'd even got as far as the M4, which meant the trip was off, and having driven it rather gingerly  to our garage in Redland, my walk home took me straight past the Common and the new camp there. 

Important, I feel, not to romanticise hard lives; nevertheless, both I and the little girl who used to hang around outside the blacksmiths at the bottom of nearby Bishop Road in the 1960s in the hope of seeing a horse in need of shoeing (but never did), felt all kinds of happy to see horses grazing the common. 

A MAd dash to Manchester

I wore my bee earrings to my graduation ceremony in Manchester, as Chris Palmer and Jinny Peberday of Skyravenwolf had given them to me and I probably wouldn't have even enrolled for my MA at Manchester Writing School without Jinny's insistence I'd regret it if I didn't. So it was important they - Chris and Jinny - were there with me in some form yesterday (along with The Satchel of Poetry, which they also made and which was carrying a pair of comfier shoes for when the Northerner and I got lost walking back to the car park, which we did, hopelessly, despite the Northerner being Northern and having lived in Manchester for several years in the late 90s and early 00s). (It's changed a lot, apparently.)

Deborah means 'bee', of course, and when I'd put them on, I wasn't thinking of the fact that bees are important for Manchester too. In fact, they're everywhere as a symbols of defiance post the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, and it's good to see them.

Rochdale Canal

Canal Street

Manchester looking simultaneously like its 21st-century self and 1920s Berlin

First stop, the Midland Hotel to enrol and get togged up. It was great seeing my fellow-students, Tina, Liz and Cherry, in the queue as I'd never met them in person, having followed a distance learning course via Teams. (Although it was all distance learning anyway during the worst of Covid.)

Then we proceeded across the concourse to the Bridgewater Hall, where the ceremony was taking place.

There was a lot of clapping to be done, of course; important to keep clapping as you yourself have been clapped across the stage for that brief don't-fall-over moment in the bright lights. (The Northerner did some whooping too, which proves you can't take him anywhere, not even up North.) As a bonus, the speeches were pretty good, as these things go, especially the one by Letitia Jones, President of the Student Union, whose mum got a clap as she was simultaneously getting her PhD 'somewhere down the road'.)  

Oh and at the end of the row behind, a glimpse of Mohammed, who was also on our course, and the swish of our superlative tutor Kim Moore in passing as she exited the stage, all very pleasing.

(I'm really quite proud of both of us for getting all this studying done in our old age.)

Unfortunately we couldn't hang about and socialise afterwards, as we'd been up since 3am in order to get to Manchester comfortably by 8am, and despite a marathon dog-sitting session in the middle of the day by Son the Elder, Cwtch the Collie was waiting patiently for us in her crate back home. (Although since there was someone getting her doctorate with her dog in her shoulder bag, I could have tried stuffing her in The Satchel of Poetry, I suppose.)

A lovely, if exhausting, day ... and meanwhile the poems I wrote during the course continue to make their way in the world, with one of them being shortlisted for this year's Plough Prize and another being Ink Sweat & Tears' pick of the month in April. Thank you, Manchester and the Manchester Writing School. 

Poetry on the Levels

There's been lots of poetry going on lately. I missed the most recent session of our open mic, Silver Street on Friday, as I was covering at work for my co-worker Neelam, who's on a family holiday in India, but late Sunday afternoon saw the Zoom launch of Finished Creatures Issue 7, which I'm very pleased to have a poem in. It sounded a bit daunting to begin with, with 'breakout groups' - eh? - being organised for sub-readings, but it worked very well and was an enjoyable prelude to the Zoom launch of my former tutor Kim Moore's latest book, 'Are you judging me yet?' 

Yesterday was a poetry day too, and it started auspiciously enough with two foxes making their way through the back gardens and finally settling in my neighbour's. Hopefully we'll get some more kits this year.

I'd been booked by Ama Bolton to read at Wells Fountain Poets in the evening, and as it was the first day of the Easter holidays as well, I decided to make a day of it and visit my friend, Jan, who lives in Glastonbury.

After the most delicious bowl of sweetcorn chowder at the farm shop and cafe which is literally next door to Jan's rural domicile, we set off for a meander around the locality, stopping first at nearby Meare. 

The Church of St Mary was locked so we didn't get the chance to go inside, but no matter, the mediaeval Meare Fish House just down the road is always worth visiting so we wandered there instead. 

If you're wondering why there's a fish house in the middle of fields, there used to be a pool here, as the village name suggests. It was large, measuring four miles in circumference in winter, and disappeared when the Somerset Levels were drained in the 1700s. 

Sadly, it too was padlocked and we couldn't get inside. 

We then drove to Godney along Godney Road. It was exhilarating to see the Levels remembering themselves after the recent rain, so we stopped where the road turns right and walked back down to the rather prosaically named Division Rhyne.

What the bright and sunny day lacked in atmosphere, it made up for with brilliantly clear views in all directions.

Glastonbury Tor in the distance

And even on sunny days, the pollarded willows lining the causeway look haunted, or, as Jan observed, as if they've been drawn by Arthur Rackham.

Stranger still were the celandines opening their petals and blooming underwater. 

Looking back towards Godney

Division Rhyne

After a light, pre-reading repast back at Jan's, I drove over to Wells, parked and walked down the former Gropecunt Lane - now Union Street - to the King's Head. It was a warm and supportive evening, as expected - no photos, but a residual fuzzy feeling that makes mementos unnecessary. The only bit of the day that didn't quite live up to expectations was the drive home, when I had to divert from the A38 to the A39 because the road was closed at Pensford, which meant returning via Keynsham and negotiating St Philip's Causeway in the dark but you can't have everything and at least rush hour was long past by then.