How it snowed on StAnza 2013, but poetry melted us

Dry, bitter snowflakes whirled in the streets of St Andrews, where StAnza International Poetry Festival merely gained in warmth and conviviality as the thermometer fell.  I'm just back from a fab four days in the north.

Highlights for me were Gillian Clarke reading from 'Ice', and explaining the principles of cynghanedd - and Eurig Salisbury reading in Welsh.  Mark Doty read a beautiful poem about a - dog.  Rare, that, but this one was perfectly weighted, humane, moving.  Wasn't really just about the dog.

I fell big time for 'Found in the Fields', Carrie Akroyd's work on John Clare.  You felt it was a collaboration.  
Alvin Pang was great, and over my last Poetry Breakfast I heard him reading in Chinese, and then the translation.  All the Poetry Breakfast discussions were absorbing.  I especially enjoyed listening to friends Dave Borthwick and Andy Forster talking with Mandy Haggith and Carry Akroyd about how poetry engages with the environment.  I had to rush from that one though, to beat my way through Arctic winds to St. John's Undercroft for my reading with Zoe Skoulding.
Which was a sell-out, especially appreciated as it was the official launch of my first collection from Oversteps Books, 'Not Lost Since Last Time'.  (Mandy Haggith told me later how she got the last ticket).  I had a lovely audience, and since I went first I was able to enjoy listening to Zoe's work too.
John Burnside's Masterclass was fascinating, and ran to time, though I could have taken more.  Dumfries and Galloway poet Em Strang put in a tremendously strong poem, as did Fife based poet Barbara Davey.

Jean Johnstone's book (collaboration with Jane Hirshfield)

In the middle of one busy day I walked very fast (to avoid hypothermia) down to the Westport Cafe where I met with artist Jean Johnstone, who had brought her handmade artists books, created in collaboration with poets, specially to show me.  We set the coffee and soup safely away to the other side of the table, and slowly unwrapped rough silk cloths to reveal the books.  When I picked up the first book, I gasped.  It had no weight at all, yet substance, like holding a songbird, with the same sense of both frailty and life pulsing.  Jean sets words and images into beeswax, and the books retain a faint scent of wax alongside the woodiness of handmade and hand-moulded paper.  Sensational.  And she's coming to Ludlow Fringe to do a special event  in June.  Don't miss.

From 'Unmapped'

And I loved 'Unmapped' an exhibition and poetry book by poet Rebecca Sharp and artist Anna King.

Gael Turnbull's 'The Edinburgh Poem'

And I played with Gael Turnbull's famous 'Edinburgh Poem' (slot the words together in magical serendipitous ways that always work).

And met Maureen Sangster and Paula Jennings, and admired their work on the collaborative Farlin project, involving artists and poets from Fife and Shetland.  And we all missed The Byre as a venue, and hope it'll be back before long, but the spirit of StAnza certainly remained in place. And John Hegley and Jacob Sam la Rose were just great, as was Erin Moure's twinkly humour and experimental mind.  I could go on, but it's my bedtime.

Basically, if you can get to StAnza next year, go.

Magma Poetry Awards Night

Me and a Magma

London was freezing cold, Bloomsbury at its sharpest.  Like any good provincial I was distracted by the window displays but was securely borne along by my London-based friend so that we arrived at the RADA Studios almost without my noticing.

Inside, all was warm and friendly.  We were briefed about the running order and given our free copy of Magma, before swigging some wine.

Short poems first, with winners reading both their own and a favourite written by someone else.  This was often a perfect sidestep from where they'd started from, very good to listen to.   Paul Stephenson, the winner, was really, really good, reading 'The Pull', a poem of 10 short lines, that began: 'Moon is a dare:// a raid on a haystack,/a stock of silver,/a salver of harvest...'

Then we had the specially commissioned poems from Moniza Alvi, Simon Barraclough, Tom Chivers and Claire Crowther: varied, surprising, skillful.

Paul Stephenson 1st Prize short poem

Gillian Clarke read from 'Ice'.  I willed her to read 'Polar', the poem about the polar bear rug - and she did.
'I'm dreaming on the white bear's shoulder,/paddling the slow hours, my fingers in his fur'.

She was a smiling, generous judge, who although she said she wouldn't comment on individual poems then suddenly changed her mind and did so.
Which did make us all very happy.  I read my shortlisted poem John Henderson Walks, happy to think of it under Gillian's stone on her piano, having  made it to her 'Maybe' pile.

I thought the top 3 poems Gillian chose were all exceptional.  Amali Rodrigo (who had come all the way from Mumbai!) read Glacier Lagoon, with its attenuated, perfect, inevitable metaphors - 'learning a new language// unable to shake off the foot-fall/ of an old tongue, floes drift, hang//back at the river-mouth, shape-shifting/...

Gillian Clarke

In Lucy Ingrams' poem Snow Tide, the 2nd prize winner, we were again breathing cold air, in a poem so understated you are halfway through before it makes its meaning simply, terribly clear: 'She starts, "You are my... my...?"/We laugh and answer, "...daughters!"/It takes no hold, she starts/again, stirs salt into our tea.// I trace the valley's freeze...'

Third prize winner Rosemary Hudis took me instantly and simply back to the house I grew up in with 'The Women of my Childhood' ...'who, as I came out of the fog/of my own play in a brick-quiet/yard, back through a kitchen door/were always bending/away into another act//their hands vanishing into bowls'

Thank you Magma for such a well planned, warmly executed evening.  It was a treat to meet Rebecca Bilkau after we'd collaborated on the Solstice poems project last midsummer.   And also Laurie Smith, Rosie Shepperd, Anja Konig, Simon Barraclough and Anne-Marie Fyfe.  And finally, thank you Shona, who looked after me for two days.  Long ago, we ran off to France by bicycle for a whole year, in the interests of avoiding Thatcher's Britain.  But this week, as well as getting me safely to the Magma Awards, she took me to the Schwitters in Britain exhibition (which is another story, a good one), the John Soane Museum (weird corridors of the mind) and very much more.

Amali Rodrigo 1st prize winner

'Not Lost Since Last Time' is published!

So excited to have copies of my full first collection from Oversteps Books actually sitting in a humble cardboard box on the floor of my cubby hole.

Should you want one, I have some copies to sell therefore. However, I cannot currently fathom what PayPal has done with my account and my 'Button' on this blog.  (I log into PayPal, and all is deserted like no Button ever existed... though I get the impression they work for my other pamphlets.)
While I'm locked in an unsatisfactory email exchange with them, do please just email me on jean at wordsparks.co.uk if you'd like a copy of Not Lost.  £8.50 inc P&P, and my grateful thanks.

A Poetry Party! Weekend for Ludlow

I'm really enjoying working with Deb Alma (that's the Emergency Poet, she of the white coat and the vintage ambulance, bringing joy to the verse-starved) as we develop a weekend of poetry for Ludlow Fringe.

Ludlow Fringe will take place from 21st to 30th June, and the first weekend will be A Poetry Party!  (The exclamation mark in this case being part of the title).  Wholly in keeping with the zeitgeist, there is no budget but nonetheless we have had so many excellent poets offering to come at their own expense to read/perform/lead workshops/add to the general gaiety.  And of course we are trying to raise some dosh as well.

So far, we have a headliner reading from Helen Ivory and Brian Johnstone; and Helen will be judging the Ludlow Fringe Poetry Competition.  Brian will take a Masterclass, to which you can submit poems, he will provide a crit, which is discussed with the poets and with the involvement of an audience.  It's a fascinating process and we're so lucky to be able to offer this.

Work by Jean Johnstone in collaboration with Jane Hirshfield

And then - we'll have readings from Liz Lefroy, David Calcutt, John Killick and Angela Topping... Angela will also be judging our Young People's Poetry Competition, and running a workshop.  Artist Jean Johnstone will give a presentation and discussion of her beautiful work making artists books in collaboration with poets (she has recently worked with Jane Hirshfield, also with John Burnside and Kathleen Jamie).  Writing West Midlands will be there to run a writers' information and networking session.

There will be poetry mummers performing in the town, and the Emergency Poet can be consulted in her ambulance in Castle Square.

Dizzy yet?  All weekend there will be a room given over to the wild - in the shape of POETRY IS PANTS! We invite you (and that's poets of any age) to write your own poem on the subject of pants.....could be smarty pants, royal pants, pants for cold weather, magic pants, furry pants, animals’ pants, favourite pants, spy pants, pirate pants, witch pants, bank robber pants, dangerous pants......(or knickers!)

……or you could write a poem about socks...

We provide the templates, and you write your poem on a pair of pants (or socks), decorate according to taste (or no taste) and we'll peg it on the washing line outside the Ludlow Mascall Centre on Lower Galdeford in beautiful Ludlow.

(Big thanks also to the excellent Ludlow Mascall Centre, who are providing their very fine venue for nothing, and there will be a lovely cafe open, and a sundrenched, stone-flagged garden).

More and better will appear on the Ludlow Fringe website as we go along. Look out for info on those competitions, we promise prizes...

Hooray! a poem published on 'And Other Poems'

Thoroughly encouraged this morning to see my poem 'George Aiken's Map' published by writer and tutor Josephine Corcoran on her blog 'And Other Poems'.

I've always enjoyed reading her eclectic, open-hearted selection of poetry on this blog - so I'm very proud to see my work there.

Click here to find 'And Other Poems', if you haven't yet.

A Horse in the House

Blossom is visibly an old horse.  (She's been living with us in one cottage and then another for over 20 years).  I rescued her from the barn eventually, where she'd been put 'temporarily' at some point) and fetched her down to Ludlow.

I need to find a very large hook and hang her up again on the wall.

She was built by artist and musician Kate Howden for a community play in South Somerset.  A little craquelure, barn-dust and paint-peel (and the deep snow lying outside) has only enhanced Blossom's affinity to Ted Hughes' poem 'Horses'...

I climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark.
Evil air, a frost-making stillness,

Not a leaf, not a bird-
A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood

Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.
But the valleys were draining the darkness

Till the moorline – blackening dregs of the brightening grey –

Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:

Huge in the dense grey –ten together –

Megalith-still. They breathed, making no move,

With draped manes and tilted hind-hooves,
Making no sound.

...

Gareth Owen at Shrewsbury Coffee House Poetry Night

Organiser Liz Lefroy makes us all feel welcome

Last Thursday the lovely Shrewsbury Coffee House welcomed in a large and lively audience for its monthly Poetry Night.  Renowned poet, playwright and performer Gareth Owen was first-footing it into 2013 for us.

Gareth Owen waves his specs for 'Are Yer There Moriarty?'

What it's all about for Gareth is the sound of people talking.  He set off with readings from his Collected Poems for Children, instantly entrancing us with 'Are Yer There Moriarty?', in which Uncle Arthur appalls the aunties and thrills the children by taking off his footwear and hanging his feet in 'condemned socks' where all could not avoid them.

   That was not, in any way, the full strength of  what Uncle Arthur did - after the 'sensitive ones who pressed flowers' had faded away and 'only the strong were left' they all played 'Are Yer There Moriarty?' which involved a pitched battle with a rolled up copy of The Liverpool Echo.
 By the last lines the audience had become a little overwrought and had to steady up with gulps of our host venue's stonking coffee (thank you Evie and  Simon).

Gareth singing us deadpan songs

 Gareth however did not let up the pace, and we had to cope with 'Miss Creedle teaches Creative Writing'.
'This morning,' cries Miss Creedle,
'We're all going to use our imaginations'
We all winced along, and Miss Creedle importuned her class with suggestions:
'Foetid is an exciting adjective'...

Fine coffee, bottled beer and happy January people

 Gareth rounded off his set by introducing us to his alter ego, Virgil Clenthills, and taking to song and a keyboard.  The pace never slackened and the air of theatre was only enhanced when at the last minute, an  elegant blonde lady in a magnificent red woollen scarf swept up to the front and excused her early departure in husky Italian.
"Ciao bella", smiled Virgil Clenthills, all unfazed.

*

 Poetry Night at Shrewsbury Coffee House will be back on Thursday 7 February, when you can hear Rosie Shepperd (one of the winners of 2011's Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition), poet and novelist Julia Bell, Jack Edwards and, er, me.