Fifteen days of poetry in spring

It's been a wonderful couple of weeks of poetry. First, it was the Lyra Bristol poetry festival, and although work commitments prevented me from going to a few events, I did manage to attend an online workshop led by Malika Booker, and I got to see my poetry hero, Ilya Kaminsky, who was one of the headline poets, and who lived up to my sky-high expectations.

And it was a  joy to have him sign my treasured copy of 'Deaf Republic', all battered and filled with notes from when I wrote an essay on it while I was studying for my Masters degree at Manchester Writing School. 

Talking of which, I also attended a showcase featuring some of the poets I studied with a few evenings ago, albeit online. This was my view for most of the evening, but no matter, the poems sounded great.

Throughout this past winter, the IsamBards, whose swan song it is this year, have been working hard, putting together an anthology of their poems, featuring poems from poetry walks held in the centre of Bristol and its floating harbour, the Bristol Botanic Garden, and Arnos Vale Cemetery, plus further sections entitled 'Brunel' and 'Books'. And now, at last, the anthology, called 'Dancing on the bridge', is in the world.

To accompany it, we've done three recent poetry walks, the first one - as part of Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival - on Bristol's waterfront. 

An interlude - with dog - on Narrow Quay

Reading at Pero's Bridge

Part of our rapt audience, which included John Cabot 

At Mud Dock, our final stop

Eight days later, we found ourselves at Arnos Vale Cemetery for two walks, this time as part of Bristol Walk Fest.

The ram's skull I found in Evilcombe on Dartmoor, many years ago, made an appearance as Yorick's skull during one poem

Our guide for the morning walk, Janine, at George Müller's grave

I'm always touched when flowers brimg themselves to a grave

Our guide for the afternoon walk was Alix, and her and Janine's knowledgeable presence made for fascinating walks.

magpie feather

With thanks also to the butterfly, which fluttered by while Janine was talking about Psyche, the goddess of the soul, who's often depicted with butterfly wings and who's the origin of the butterfly as a symbol for the soul, and to the sparrowhawk, which made an appearance seconds after IsamBard Dominic Fisher read his poem 'Sparrow', which features one.

And of course, my collection 'Love the Albatross' has continued to make its way in the world.  In addition to the reading I did in Totnes, also during this wonderful fortnight of poetry, Nigel Kent has kindly published both a short essay, written by me, on one of its poems - 'The counsel of hares' - which can be read here, and his own highly perceptive and empathetic review on the whole collection, which can be read here. 

Finally, from the same collection, my poem 'A betrayal', which was first published in issue 4 of The Fig Tree's online journal, has made its way into the 2024 anthology of poems, published by Tim Fellows of Broken Spire Press - many thanks to him also.

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 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.