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. 

In which I get a cerstificut ...

 ... and an academic transcript, but still have to wait to flounce around in a cloak and hat.

It's five years today since my father died. I suspect he'd have shown off to other people about his daughter's achievement, though to me he'd have said 'Why don't you write something that will make you some money, like that Rowling woman?'

The reason I know this is because it's what he did say, on a different occasion. Of course, Rowling had yet to come out as a transphobe back then. As it is, I'll take poetry and solidarity with my trans friends, thanks. 

Out with the Old, In with More of the Old

Poetry, and getting out a bit with the dog ... that's pretty much it for me, and the end of last year and the beginning of this reflected that.  

On Friday it was Silver Street Poetry, the fourth gathering since we found a new venue post pandemic. Our guest poet this time was Pameli Benham, but the show came close to being stolen by Cwtch the border collie. She was down to read 'The Sheepdog' by U A Fanthorpe, about the collie who stays behind with the sheep while the shepherds visit the new baby born in a stable, but at the last minute she had a bit of a panic about her ability to do a Yorkshire accent (she's from Neath in Wales), so the Northerner (who's from Barnsley) took over. 

The very new New Year has been poetry-filled too, for which I'm grateful, having finished my MA in Creative Writing in the autumn. Along with over 200 of my peers, I've signed up for Kim Moore and Clare Shaw's January writing hours, which I knew would be good, as Kim was my MA dissertation supervisor at the Manchester Writing School. Being between projects, I can write whatever comes, which is exhilarating and a bit scary all at once. I'll be missing some of the sessions, unfortunately, thanks to work and the rail strike, which will see me shuttling along the M4 a fair bit, but I'm not really complaining because the situation is the fault of the government and Network Rail, not the unions. 

Nevertheless, even though I'm making efforts to stave off the January doldrums, I still feel I'll have to seize every bright day that comes my way and make the most of it, to which end we spent an hour on the River Severn at Severn Beach this lunchtime. It was a joy to be out under wide skies in brilliant light. 

A month of poetry - and the Buzzwords Poetry Competition 2022

September's been a busy month, seeing the submission of my dissertation, and with it, the end of my MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Writing School. I decided to apply after my mother went to live with my sister in Nottingham for the last couple of years of her life, and I suddenly found myself with a lot more free time. Now all that's left to do is wait for the result of my dissertation, and then the release of my overall mark. I've really enjoyed rediscovering my inner swot, and will miss her and my studies once I've graduated. (Unless I go on to study for a PhD. We'll have to see.)

September was also very busy with regard to poetry readings; in fact, I ended up doing more in one month than the preceding two and a half years, starting with four readings over the course of one weekend at the University of Bristol's Botanic Garden Bee and Pollination Festival. Reading with me were two of my fellow IsamBards, Pameli Benham and David Johnson. 

I also had the pleasure of being one of the guest poets at the Berkeley Square Poetry Review in Clifton, and at Uncut Poets at Exeter Phoenix, along with Dominic Fisher. 

My seventh reading of the month, again as guest poet with Dominic Fisher, was pre-recorded for West Wilts Radio, courtesy of Dawn Gorman's The Poetry Place. The programme, with many excellent open-mic readings, is available to listen to here.

My final reading of the month was perhaps the most personally satisfying of all, as it was for Silver Street Poetry, the open mic I used to run with my partner, Colin Brown, before the pandemic put a stop to such things. Since then we've had a prolonged search for a more spacious venue than our old haunt, and have found a warm welcome at St Stephen's Church, just off Bristol City Centre, which not only has an excellent Spanish cafe, but also mermaids! 

I'll be running the event from now on with Dominic, Pat Simmons and Rosalie Alston, as Colin is currently working in Cardiff. We'll be booking some excellent guest poets in the months ahead. In the meantime it was great to dip my toes in the warm (as it turned out) waters of viability, a mere two and a half years after I was slated to read in April 2020. 

And my best poetry news for the month came in an email from the organisers of the 2022 Buzzwords Poetry  Competition to say that my sequence of poems, Conversations with Silence, from my most recent project, Love the Albatross, had won second prize, which is all kinds of pleasing. Thanks very much to judge, Nigel McLoughlin.   

Remembering the beauty of Chris Palmer

It was a dark day in mid-February when I arrived home from a morning out with my sons to the news that our friend, Chris Palmer, had had a brain haemorrhage and was undergoing an operation in hospital. As the days have lengthened and the light has come back, my delight in the renewal of spring has been tempered by worry and feelings of helplessness towards Chris and her wife, Jinny; how they were and what was going to happen, as hope ebbed and flowed. Like many others, I carried them with me everywhere I went.

On Wednesday night came the news that Chris had died. Yesterday I drove up to Symonds Yat, wanting to be by the river, in nature, on the edge of one land and another. I thought there might be solace there, but didn't find it. (There were maps, but they can be hard to read.) 

Chris was a leatherworker, an artist and a writer, with a profound empathy for the natural world. She was the sort of person who, if you were lucky enough to make a connection with her - and so many were - she would open her life to you and it would feel like a homecoming. When I think of who she was, I can see she was the epitome of an old soul, countering more than her share of tribulation with the unrelenting beauty that permeated her work, and an attitude of curiosity, gentleness and fun. 

The satchel of poetry

I felt quite desolate when she and Jinny left the west end of the Kennet & Avon canal a few years ago and travelled east and then north-west on NB Netty to be nearer family, but it was easy to stay connected, through discussions about poetry and our MA studies at Manchester Writing School with Jinny, and through Chris's wonderful art and the entertaining blog she'd post daily on Skyravenwolf's Facebook page, where she had a devoted following. Chris and I would message too, from time to time, occasionally addressing a painful set of circumstances we had in common with each other. There were no answers for either of us, but I found comfort in our communion, and came to understand that the inability to resolve this particular issue is not necessarily the disaster I'd previously imagined it to be. Ultimately the responsibility we have is to our own lives, and Chris met that responsibility head on, day after day, regardless of any troubles she might have had. In this she has shown me how to live.

We all wanted Chris to be restored to us. We wanted more evidence of how wondrous life was to shore up our own existences. More beauty, more beauty, we cried, open-beaked and demanding. But I think Chris had learnt her lesson for this lifetime so well, she was, in the end, complete. The Finished Chris.

At the same time, I realise how this conclusion is scant comfort for those who were closer to her than me, who now have a void punched through every minute of every day.

People say rest well at this point, don't they, but I'm going to wish for strength and ease in joint and sinew, and enough leather, tools, paper and paints to keep Chris happy and occupied until the rest of us catch her up. 

Poetry changes lives

You hear it a lot. Poetry changed - or saved - my life. And it's not just me saying it, though I do have cause to be grateful, since this month marks ten years since my first collection, 'Communion', was published by Indigo Dreams and my life's ambition - to occupy a few millimetres on a bookshelf somewhere - happened. Since then, I've had three further collections published by the wonderfully generous Ronnie and Dawn, as well as a now suddenly topical coming-of-age novel set during the Black Death. 

Good things continue to happen for me where poetry is concerned. I'm currently more than half way through an MA in Creative Writing at the Manchester Writing School. Recently one of my poems was shortlisted in the 2021 Bridport Prize. And in February 2022, my next collection, a series of poems about my home city, Bristol, entitled 'Learning Finity', will be published.

After my children, my poems are my best things. I could never have dreamt I would be writing this post a dozen years ago, when I was at my lowest ebb. 

Talk to most poets and you'll likely find some sadness hidden not too assiduously in the background. Poetry attracts thinkers, and maybe also over-thinkers. Reading it can be a source of comfort. Using metaphor to shape loss, and come to terms with our unspoken fears, is a powerful way of moving past them. Noli timere, to quote Seamus Heaney.

Poetry and Time-Travel

There are strange time-lags in poetry sometimes. After spending most of last year watching and listening, I've been completely immersed in a different way of writing this spring, as part of my studies at the Manchester Writing School. I'm hoping the resulting sequence of poems will become a pamphlet exploring the patch of edgelands we've been visiting since the first lockdown, and which I've been documenting in this blog. 

Meanwhile, my publishers, Dawn and Ronnie of Indigo Dreams, have sent me the first draft of my fifth collection, Learning Finity, to work on, which means taking a complete break from common, wood and field for a week or two, and revisiting poems almost all of which were written before the pandemic struck.  It's a big shift back to a past that now seems a long time ago. 

For me, writing poems is a particularly intense means of expression. My brain tends to up sticks and shift completely into the world my current poems inhabit, so switching from one project to another does feel like negotiating a rift.  This is ameliorated, however, by the fact that the poems of Learning Finity exist mostly in mythic time, and are themselves well practiced in time travel.  And to encourage me in making this mental leap, my copy of Poetry Salzburg No 37 arrived from Germany today, in which three of my Learning Finity poems find themselves in excellent company. I'm especially pleased that they're alongside work by my comrade in poetry, Chaucer Cameron. 

I've realised that during this time of pandemic and Poetry Zoom, I haven't been posting much about poetry and publications.  They have, however, been getting out and about while we haven't been able to. Here are a few more of the publications they've appeared in. Many thanks to the editors involved. 

The art of critiquing poetry

In the summer I had a rush of blood to the head and have now embarked on an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Writing School, and one of the modules requires us to … yes, critique each other’s poems. And because you can never have too much practice, here’s one written just for fun.

Hi Bob

 Thank you for sending us your poem, ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’. We think this is a promising early draft.

You set the scene well. The narrator is making a journey, accompanied by a horse pulling a sleigh. It is evening and there is snow. Nearby there are woods, and at a distance a village. The narrator pauses and then considers continuing his journey.

 You capture this opening scene with such precision that it is a surprise to the reader when the poem fails to progress beyond it. We wonder if you have been struck by writer’s block or had a particularly busy week? Have you considered having something happen in the poem? Maybe there could be an attack by a highwayman, or a chance encounter with a young man and his heavily pregnant girlfriend, who are from out of town and need a lift to a nearby inn? Who knows where the story could go from there.

 We have a few specifics to draw to your attention.

First, the title. We don’t think it’s working hard enough for you. You could use it to locate your poem more precisely, as in ’Stopping by Michael Wood just outside Thornbury on the M5 northbound on a Snowy Evening’, or add an air of mystery by calling it ‘The Numinous Snow’.

In the opening line, the inversion feels very archaic to us. It would sound far more natural if it read ‘I think I know whose woods these are’. Of course, you would then have to alter the entire rhyme scheme of the poem, but it needs attention anyway, as ‘though’ at the end of the second line is clearly there just to rhyme with ‘know’. In fact, end rhymes are rather old-fashioned, as is the tum-ti-tum metre of the poem. You could really add interest by breaking the poem up with some enjambment and the addition of internal and half-rhymes.

 In line 1, stanza 2, ‘queer’ is a somewhat problematic choice of word. At best, you risk wrong-footing your reader; at worst, it’s cultural appropriation. And of course, making assumptions about what the horse is or isn’t thinking is an example of anthropomorphism and best avoided. 

Lines 3 and 4 of this stanza are superfluous. You have already mentioned the woods, and the frozen lake is irrelevant to the action of the poem as it stands currently.

It is frustrating that although you return to the horse in stanza 3, its potential is not fully explored. The harness bells add a picturesque, almost whimsical touch, but we know nothing of the animal itself. What colour is it? Does it have a name? There is so much more interest that could be added at this point.

 In the final stanza, the repetition of the last two lines makes for a slightly weak finish. We suggest you substitute line 4 with something like ‘in a Berni Inn that’s clean and cheap’.

 Finally, Bob, we hope you don’t mind if we point out that you’ve been writing rather a lot of these little New Englander poems lately. They can only ever be of local interest. Have you thought of writing something more culturally appealing, such as a riff on Love Island? Or a poem on a theme everyone can relate to, like picking up a prescription on a Saturday with the kids in tow when they’d rather be flying their kite? You could call it ‘Shopping in Boots on a Blowy Morning’.

All the best with it, Bob. We think you have the makings of an interesting poem here, and look forward to seeing a much later draft.

 Warm regards

Deb