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. 

Poetting at the 2022 Kennet & Avon Summer Floating Fayre

And so to the summer floating market on the Kennet and Avon canal, this time on Darlington Wharf in Bath. (They call it the floating fayre these days, but I like floating market, as it sends me straight to Neil Gaiman's 'Neverwhere'.) 

We weren't entirely sure whether we should take Cwtch with us or not; she's had a sheltered life so far, especially during her formative months, being a lockdown pup, and she was quite nervous at the Christmas floating market in Bradford-on-Avon, but she took it all in her stride this time. (Apart from some bloke we met asking if she was a husky ... 😂 )

We had a cup of coffee with Dru and Jinny on the towpath next to NB Eve. (It was so good to see Jinny back at the west end of the K&A and to be able to give her a hug at last.) Then Dru mentioned the poetry reading taking place at the buskers' spot and how I could read and I said I had no poems with me to read (despite having the Satchel of Poetry on me) and Dru said you've got one in the book and put a copy of 'Poets Afloat' in my hands and the Northerner said I lit up like a Christmas tree - in summer! - and that was that. 

Here's Jinny, Dru and Mitch reading their poems. 

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. 

The IsamBards at the Bath and Bristol Festivals of Nature

There was a time, presumably, when reading nature poems in public would have involved invocations of beauty, mellow fruitfulness and golden daffodils (hosts of). These days poets are rightly more exercised by climate catastrophe, pollution and the alarming decline worldwide in pollinators, all of which featured in poems read by me and my fellow IsamBards at the Festivals of Nature in Bath and Bristol over the last two weekends.  (As did radioactive dogs, a rotting corpse, and a father-in-law falling through a greenhouse roof. For the purposes of light relief.) 

Here are a few photos, starting with Bath.

Viper's bugloss on the banks of the River Avon in Bath 

Pameli Benham reading in Green Park

Dominic Fisher's fans rushing the stage

I brought an interpretive dancer with me.

Bristol's festival was rather more urban in its setting, down by the floating harbour. 

We had the good fortune to be on stage next to Severn Cider's stand, so there was something of a captive audience. 

I couldn't resist a pint either.  

The Satchel of Poetry, at home with the nature of the festival

Of course, if you are waiting to read yourself, any photos you take show your fellow-readers side-on ... 

... so it was lovely that my friend Merowe was in the audience and shared her photos.

It always feels good to read at home.

The 2017 Kennet & Avon Canal Christmas Floating Market

A technical hitch meant I had to forgo the jaunt I'd planned on the return journey from my recent trip north. No matter; a day later I found myself in Bradford. 

Bradford-0n-Avon, that is, for the biannual - and now verging on traditional - Floating Market. 

I was too busy browsing - and nattering to my friend, Cathy - to remember to take many photos, which is a shame as it is such a photogenic event, and a rare sploge of cheeriness on a grey December day. Nevertheless, here's a few of my few. 

One of the loveliest things of the day was carrying the Satchel of Poetry and people coming up to me on the towpath because they recognised it as the work of Skyravenwolf. And letting it commune with its makers for a while. (I was so busy buying mistletoe earrings that I forgot to take photos of the very busy Chris and Jinny.)

Another lovely thing is that it is becoming a place to meet up with friends whom you wouldn't normally get to see during the pre-Christmas rush. Cathy bumped into three friends, and we had coffee and tea with my oldest friend, Liz, and her sister, Alison. And we saw Sue Meddings, and maestra singer-songwriter Lou Bell and her daughter, Ciara, probably for the first time since the last Floating Market. I forgot to take photos, however. 

Here Sue and Cathy are consternating with Dru after a muddy dog jumped up at Dru's books and - yes - got mud on them, after which the owner hurried away without making good the damage. Fortunately, the mud wiped off with diligence and care and no undue loss of stock, but it was still A Poor Show on behalf of said dog owner. (I did take a photo of this.) (The cleaning up, that is - not the culprit.)

Cathy and I also took a walk up the towpath, under Sainsburys bridge where I saw my first kingfisher a few years ago and as far as the next one. 

No kingfisher today ... 

... though we did have a very close encounter with a hot-air balloon.

The Floating Market is a very lovely thing. Can't wait for the next one at the end of July. 

The Satchel of Poetry and St Melangell's Good Hare Day

Sunday - and there was more birthdaying to be done. Or at least, we had to go to Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire to pick up my present. This was The Satchel Of Poetry commissioned by the Northerner from our dear friends Chris and Jinny, who together comprise Skyravenwolf, and whose work is extraordinarily accomplished and very beautiful. 

Little did I know - which is as well, as I would have worried if I had - that my brief for the bag had caused Chris herself some concerns. I hadn't really thought too long about what I wanted because I knew I'd love whatever she and Jinny came up with as long as I could wear it crosswise over my body and fit sheaves of A4 paper into it.  But Chris wasn't sure that her pattern cutting was up to making a satchel. Then there was the question of decoration.  I love foxes and I love hares; I don't love blood, however, so a hare and a fox interacting in a way that wasn't violent was mooted, as were bees, as that is the meaning in Hebrew of my name.  And then - inspired, I suspect, by the stately mushrooms we'd spotted in the field of Chris and Jinny's handfasting not long before - the idea of Fly Agaric And Other Assorted Fungi insinuated itself.  Little did I know that Chris, who is expert in wrens and oak leaves, fritillaries and may blossom, crows and mistletoe, green men, mermaids and lurchers, wasn't at all sure she could do a fox. Or toadstools. Especially toadstools that Don't Grow Together In Nature on account of being found in different habitats.

Once we arrived in the Canal Tavern, however, it became clear that she could do all of this. Very well indeed. 

My only sorrow is that I can't see both sides at the same time.

And there were so many other things to delight in too. The magical plaited strap, for example. Which Jinny assures me she doesn't do by magic at all, though I'm not sure I believe her. 

And the toning lining with its beautiful stitching, and the pockets I omitted to mention at commissioning stage but which are both Beautiful and Useful. (Oh, how my hero William Morris would have approved of The Satchel Of Poetry!)

All was now happiness and relief. I managed to keep my weeping under control. And Chris now knows that she can do foxes and hares and satchels and mass assemblies of toadstools very very well indeed.

(Of course all those toadstools wouldn't grow together. They are in symbiotic relationships with very different trees that also don't grow together. Nor is a fox likely to run past a hare without at least drooling. But that's what artistic licence - and poetic licence - are for.) 

And then there was this, drawn by Dru. 

She's St Melangell with her rescued hare. As Dru says, probably the earliest ever sab. I shall find her a beautiful frame and hang her in our Marland gallery. 

The Satchel Of Poetry will get its first outing on Thursday at Words and Ears. Fittingly, this is in Bradford-on-Avon, and Chris will be there, along with Jinny and Dru who will be reading their poems.  

All I have to do now ... all I have to do now ...  is write words that are worthy of being carried in it.