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. 

Pushing the Cart (and a Chance to Listen at your Leisure)

When my publisher, Ronnie Goodyer, told me that he and Dawn Bauling had nominated one of my poems from ‘Love the Albatross’ for a Pushcart Prize, I had to look it up. (The prize, that is). I'd seen people celebrating their nominations over the years, but without any idea exactly what it was. I had the impression being nominated was an honour, and largely its own reward, and having looked into it, that seems - realistically - to be the case. (At least, there 's an slim anthology of poems published every year, but thousands of nominations. I’m just very grateful to to have a poem amongst them.)

So. Many thanks to them both, and congratulations to my fellow Indigo Dreams nominees, alongside whom it’s an honour to be listed.

Also, now it's been aired, here's the link to hear Helen Ivory and me guest-poetting for West Wilts Radio's 'The Poetry Place' whenever the fancy takes you. 

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.

Launching an Albatross

First thing on Tuesday morning I looked into the bathroom mirror and saw something had altered in the eyes looking back at me. And I could feel the woman-who-reads-the-poems - the one I stand just behind at readings, marvelling as she rises to the occasion - making her move early, to hold my hand through the day at work and the difficult rush hour drive down town to the John Sebastian Lightship moored at Bathurst Basin, and step forward at the appropriate moment to launch a handful of albatrosses into the Bristol night. So lucky to have her at my side! 

MC for the night was local poetry supremo, Helen Sheppard, another pair of very safe hands. And first, guest readings from Melanie Branton and Chaucer Cameron, two of the most gifted poets and generous women I know, who both understood the cost of writing these poems and launching them into the world. I was so privileged to have them agree to read alongside me. 

My selection of poems was followed on a Q&A on the subject of writing from trauma, hosted by counseller and former director of Poetry Can, Colin Brown.

 For anyone who's interested, here's a transcript of the question and answer session:

Question:  You mentioned what a very difficult subject estrangement is to talk about, and yet you’ve written a book of poems on that very subject, which you now have to share with the world. What made you decide to do it?

Answer:   I don’t think you can always control which poems turn up and when, and there came a point, about four years ago, when these were definitely the sort of poems that wanted to be written.

Question: Do you know why that was?

Answer:   Well, the latest estrangement from my child was showing every sign of lasting a lot longer than the previous one, so writing poems was a way of engaging with the situation without having to talk about it and risk shame or the judgment of other people, because of course at first it was in private.

Question: Perhaps it was also a way of maintaining a connection with your child? 

Answer:  Oh, the connection was there all right. Writing the poems was a way of managing it, without impinging on their desire for no contact.

 Question:  What do you mean by managing that connection?

Answer:  Well, as I said during the reading, sometimes the relationship you have with someone who isn’t physically in your life is even more intense than if they were present.

 Question:  And that must take a toll emotionally?

Answer: Yes. Before I started writing the poems, it felt like I was experiencing all the stages of grief, all at the same time, every day.

Putting all that emotion into poem-sized chunks and working at them meant I could explore it in a measured way, using metaphor and story to try to make sense of it.

Question:  Yes, because you’re not ranting or seeking validation for your own individual situation here, are you?

Answer: Oh, I definitely wanted to avoid that, because that would have stopped the poems making connections with other people. They had to be art, which meant they had to leave room for the reader to inhabit with their own experiences.

 

Question: And there were your child’s feelings to consider too?

Answer: Absolutely. Above all, they had to respect and preserve my child’s privacy. That’s always been really important to me.

  

Question:  So, what steps did you take to ensure you did that?

Answer:   Well, not long before the poems started to materialise, my mother broke her hip and went to stay with my sister, who lives in the Midlands, while it mended. And then the pandemic started and she had to stay there, and I suddenly found myself with considerably more free time. So I quickly signed up for an MA in Creative Writing, and used that as a framework for writing ethically about trauma. 

  

Question:  How did you do that?

Answer:  In the first instance, I studied and wrote essays on poets who engage with personal material and are emotionally authentic without compromising their integrity or privacy … Elizabeth Bishop and Denise Riley spring to mind.

Question: Did the course also affect your own practice? 

Answer: Yes, I became very strict with the content of my own poems, making sure that they revealed emotional truths but not ‘my truth’, because you can be sure my version of events isn’t how my child sees things.

  

Question: And this is where the ethics come in?

 Yes. I didn’t think it would be fair to use my platform, such as it is, to deny their truth, even if it doesn't fit with mine.

  

Question:  ‘The stories we tell ourselves to justify our actions’ is an idea that appears at various key points in this collection – in fact, there’s a thread of poems about it. Why is this important to you?

Answer:   I don’t know if everyone does this, but I definitely think writers - and artists in general - tell themselves stories in order to make sense of difficult situations.

  

Question: And some of the poems hint at stories taking over and getting out of control … 

 Answer: Yes, and that’s to be avoided at all costs. Your relationship with your story has to remain a truthful one, and that applies whether you’re making art about the situation you find yourself in or just living it. 

  

Question:  Finally, you facilitate poetry writing groups in Bristol. If someone asked you what your ONE best tip for writing about a deeply personal issue, what would you tell them?

Answer: I’d say … exploit the unique nature of poetry. It’s a collaborative art, so always leave space for the reader to bring their own experience.

One way of doing this is to write ‘ghost’ poems – ones which convey your story without actually telling it, so that instead of splurging every last detail, you simply communicate the emotional truth of the matter.

And if I can add a second tip! – read poets who do this well, like Selima Hill, Sharon Olds, Ruth Stone, Caroline Bird, Kim Moore … there are so many of them. 

The ensuing questions from the audience were thoughtful and insightful and the evening ended on a very warm and positive note. 

Then it was time to heave a bit of a sigh of relief and head for home, where a chilled bottle of champagne and a warm dog were waiting. 

With many thanks to Indigo Dreams Publishing, Colin Brown, Helen Sheppard and the Satellite of Love Poetry and Open Mic team, Katie Marland, Melanie Branton and Chaucer Cameron. 

'Love the Albatross' is available to buy from the Indigo Dreams website. 

We need to talk about estrangement

 'Love the Albatross' is in the world and I feel all kinds of emotions. 

Its subtitle is Estrangement Stories, estrangement being an increasingly common phenomenon. According to Psychology Today, one in ten people have cut off a parent or child, yet you'd never guess it from the code of silence surrounding it. And it's easy to understand why. The shame and social stigma is such that no one wants to out themselves and risk the often ill-informed judgment of those who have no experience of disowning or being disowned, yet feel qualified to offer an opinion.

I hate talking about it. And yet here I am with a whole collection of poems on the subject. And they're for anyone who's ever stood on this precipice, from whichever side of the Great Divide. Anyone who's ever felt they were the only one in this situation. Anyone who's ever looked at their child or loved family member and thought 'I'm so glad this will never happen to me'. Anyone who's ever loved someone more than they love themselves. 

'Love the Albatross’ is a meditation on inter-generational relationships, estrangement and silence, in which people communicate through messages in bottles, birds and dreams, fragmented memories assume mythological status, and the stories we tell ourselves to justify our actions escape their labyrinths and run wild.

In ‘Love the Albatross’ … estrangement, transformation and albatross are expertly woven together, with Harvey bearing witness to the nuance, complexity, and devastation inherent in this most ruinous of losses.  I found these poems authentic, liberating and transformative … Nothing is more evocative than the feeling that a writer has gone back in time with the reader, as witness and companion.

 Chaucer Cameron

Publication date is 30th August, and the collection can now be pre-ordered from the Indigo Dreams website. Signed copies are available from me - comment on this blog or contact me via social media. 

Thank you. 

Lighting Touchpapers

Exactly a month ago, I was privileged to attend a beautiful evening of poetry in the King's Head, Wells. 

We'd gathered to celebrate the launch of Sara Butler's collection, 'Waiting for a Change'. The evening was hosted by Ama Bolton and Morag Kiziewicz, two members of the highly respected Wells Fountain Poets. Sara was a member of the group too, until ill health prevented her from continuing. It was Ama and Mo who collected Sara's poems and arranged them into this book.

Ama reading

Mo reading

I have a personal stake in this collection, as Sara was also a valued member of Poetry Can's poetry group some years ago, and I’ve longed to hold a book of her poems in my hands for years. Now, thanks to Ama and Mo, that dream has come true. This book really is an act of love.

‘Waiting for a Change’ is available from bookshops or – if you must – Amazon: ISBN 978-1-914398-15-5.

Someone called Deborah Harvey has this to say about it:

‘A love for nature infuses these poems, though it’s never romanticised, Sara having both an eye and an ear for the dark and the all-too-human. And there’s always the laughing ‘yes’, and sexiness, and a desire for something better, which is found and made real in these poems.’

I had another enjoyable evening at a second launch, namely, the Zoom event celebrating the publication of 'High Nowhere' by Jean Atkins and 'What it Was' by Tina Cole. It was a treat to hear the poets read their very skilled and thought-provoking work. 

I also read some poems, as a pre-launch of my forthcoming collection, 'Love the Albatross', which is now at the printers and due to be published by Indigo Dreams Publishing at the end of August. Here's a preview of its cover, which has been beautifully realised by Katie Marland.

The poems in 'Love the Albatross' are about estrangement. Two of them have recently been published in journals, and can be read here and here. 

A Poetry Spring

I've had an excellent couple of months as far as poetry's concerned, not least the chance to go to readings by some of the country's most celebrated poets, including ... 

... Don Paterson ... 

... Simon Armitage ...

Photo by Tim Woolf

 ... Alice Oswald ... 

and Caroline Bird, all of whom I've been privileged to hear, courtesy of Bristol Poetry Institute and the Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival. 

In particular, Alice Oswald, who was at St George's, blew me away, as she always does. I think this must have been the fourth or fifth time I'd seen her read, and as always, her performance was mesmerising. Except you can't really call it a reading because Oswald speaks her poems from memory. I was quite near the front of the audience this time, and I watched carefully as she announced the title of each poem, paused and then disappeared somewhere else altogether. Pure concentration. I was especially delighted to hear her speak extracts from 'In Memoriam' and most of all, 'Dart', as I'd travelled to Bath back in the early 2000s, I think, to hear her read it and she'd been unable to appear. It's been a lasting disappointment.

Walking back down Park Street to the car park I realised I had my hand clamped over my mouth. This has happened before, notably when I've seen my heroes perform; it's the principle symptom of Bowieitis, which is also known as Leonard Cohen Syndrome. I'm not sure if it's because I get dumbstruck or if I'm trying to stop my heart leaping out of my body through my mouth. I don't think it had happened after a poetry reading before, but there I was, having to remove it to speak to my fellow-IsamBard, David Johnson, at the bus stop. 

Talking of the IsamBards, we've been out and about, conducting a fourth poetry walk through the centre of Bristol, from Queen Square to Millennium Square, again as part of the Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival. Unfortunately we had to do battle against a rather loud funfair, which wasn't there when two of our members scoped out the route a couple of months ago, but poetry prevailed and our audience were enthusiastic throughout.

Cwtch the collie - photobombeuse extraordinaire - trying to include herself in the performance at the entrance to Queen Square

Dominic, David and Pameli by the Seamen's Mission and Chapel 

Photo by Tim Woolf

The final event of the Poetry Festival was 'City of Words', a showcase presented in partnership with the Bristol Festival of Ideas. It was a special joy to see my friend  Hazel Hammond on stage reading a poem, five years after a stroke that left her with aphasia.  

I read a commissioned poem I'd written called 'Psalm for the unnoticed Places'. It's about the local pockets of edgeland that are so important for wildlife, diversity and our own well-being, and which came into their own during successive lockdowns, when we were unable to travel outside of the city. It was good to have something to work on while I'm between projects.

Equally enjoyable - because it's a joy to see your friends excelling in their craft - have been the smaller readings, book launches and shows. Here's Melanie Branton taking us on a guided tour of 'The Full English' with her knickers on her head ... 

... Lizzie Parker launching her collection, Cormorant, for which I was honoured to write an endorsement, with support from Bob Walton and Claire Williamson ... 

... and Rachel Clyne returning to the city that hosted the launch, a year ago, of her collection, 'You'll Never Be Anyone Else'. 

Elsewhere, the first draft of my forthcoming collection, 'Love the Albatross', has returned from my publishers, Indigo Dreams, and is awaiting my attention. One of its poems has just come home flushed with success, having been highly commended in the 2024 Slipstream Poetry Competition. A second poem can be read here in Fragmented Voices, while a third found a very stylish home in the latest, 20th anniversary edition of 'Abridged', an compelling journal of poems and photographs based in Northern Ireland.

Also - very excitingly - the collection's artwork, by the very talented Katie Marland, is now in the world. It's way too early to reveal it, but here are some photos Katie took on her visit to Bristol City Museum, where - excitingly - staff brought her albatrosses to sketch. Admittedly they weren't Laysan albatrosses - the title of my collection is, of course, a nod to Wisdom the Albatross - but even so, they had, as Katie puts it, 'a LOT of birdy character and helped [her] to learn a lot about the way they work'. My grateful thanks to her and them. 

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 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.