This week ended as it began: with poetry. Poetry sprang up in the middle too. Oh, where would my life be without a poetry sandwich?
On Sunday I was still in Swindon with my ‘poetry twin’, Hilary Robinson. in the morning we went to writing workshops. Hilary had a workshop in the hotel with our poetry quiz team member, Zoe Brigley. They were looking at using letter-writing in poems. I walked over to the Richard Jeffries museum for a workshop exploring ‘play’, in the tent with the irrepressible Hilda Sheehan. Hilda is a one-off; she loves surrealism in poetry. On Sunday morning she had us making eye-contact with someone in the group and we had to move around the space without breaking eye contact with that one person. She had us dancing with someone, taking it in turns so you danced for a while then stopped in a pose while your partner danced for a while. It broke an Antarctica of ice. Next we stood in a circle; Hilda placed a random selection of items from the museum—not exhibits—on the floor in the middle. We were asked to choose an object from the collection and, without saying what the object was, we had to move like the object. I chose a hand whisk. The rest of the workshop was taken with the object becoming a persona in our writing. I called my whisk ‘Cynthia’. I wrote lines to describe Cynthia using surreal question prompts from Hilda; lastly I wrote a poem using some of the prompts and mixing it with facts about Cynthia, without ever mentioning that Cynthia was a whisk. That draft is still in my notebook, I haven’t done anything with it since I got home; but I might when I find myself at a loss…
After lunch on Sunday we all met in ‘The Tent Palace of the Delicious Air’ for a poetry reading by American poet Nuar Alsadir. Her poetry is challenging: she’s a neuroscientist in her day-job and she introduces the possibility of a fourth dimension in her work. She talks of ‘quantum entanglement’, the connection of everything to everything else in some meaningful way. She is fascinating to listen to; but it was very deep stuff for the end of a full-on weekend. After the reading, a bit of brain-ease, a different, less intense way of listening as Hilda interviewed her about her work. After a tea break there were readings by Elisabeth Bletsoe, whom I hadn’t heard of before but whose poetry was mesmerising. She writes about wild flowers and birds, plays on their Latin names, uses ancient facts about them. I didn’t completely understand all of her poetry but understanding isn’t necessary for poetry: her use of language is hypnotic. I could have listened to her all day. After Elisabeth, another wonderful reading, this time by Julia Copus. The Big Poetry Weekend is a small and intimate festival, but oh my, what huge poets they’d involved.
After our evening meal Hilary and I cracked open the Prosecco our team won in the poetry quiz. Zoe and Chaucer didn’t want any, so we did the polite thing and drank their share for them. The evening session, the last of the festival, saw the launch of Domestic Cherry 7. I have a poem in there, alongside Nuar Alsadir, Hilda Sheehan, Julia Webb, Sarah Leavesly; and Olivia Tuck, who is going to be a big name in the future of poetry: remember, you heard it here first. When I was finding out about Domestic Cherry, I discovered their blogspot: Barry and Mabel explaining it all. It has the stamp of Hilda’s surrealism all over it: http://domesticcherry.blogspot.com Anyway, back to Sunday’s launch. Several of the poets in the journal read at the event. I read my ‘Spooning’ poem that’s in the journal, and I read ‘Code’ which isn’t. It’s the first time I’ve read this one to an audience. Hilary read a couple of poems, even though she missed the deadline for inclusion in Domestic Cherry. It was a whacky and wonderful launch: and Hilda wore her best frock.
Reading at the launch of Domestic Cherry 7, Sunday October 6th 2019
On Monday morning we packed up, checked out, had breakfast and went back to the Richard Jeffries museum for the feedback meeting and the long goodbye. It was lovely and sad in equal measure to be at the meeting giving input into the evaluation, which in turn will feed into the planning for next year. We will be back, Swindon. You are a ‘must return’.
On Tuesday I did the job at the Black Ladd, my daughter Amie’s restaurant, that I’d missed on Monday, so it was Wednesday before I could make a start on addressing the feedback on the ‘minor revisions’ that I received from my Director of Studies while I was away in Swindon. It looked on first glance like an amount of work, but in fact it wasn’t. As much as anything, it involved deleting irrelevances. So I tackled the feedback and then had the onerous task of checking footnotes, checking that publications mentioned in footnotes were referenced in the bibliography, checking that page numbers in the contents page matched the body of the work following the alterations. That all took me to a late lunchtime. I had some business to do with Amie in the afternoon, so I’ll be back at the revisions later today, checking secretarial bits one last time before I send it off to the examiners for, hopefully, a final read. There is a form to complete, obviously, which points the examiners to the changes without expecting them to reread the whole thing. So that’s today sorted. I hope it’s the last goodbye.
On Tuesday evening it was the double book launch of Rachel Mann’s debut collection of poetry, A Kingdom of Love (Manchester: Carcanet, 2019) and In the Bleak Midwinter: Advent and Christmas with Christina Rossetti (Canterbury Press, 2019), a collection of Rossetti’s poetry with commentary by Rachel Mann. I met Rachel when we were both enrolled for the MA in Creative Writing at MMU’s Writing School in 2007. Rachel completed her PhD last year, and A Kingdom of Love contains some of the poems she wrote for her PhD. Rachel is an Anglican priest, a Canon of the Church, and a fine poet; the launch was held in Manchester Cathedral. Andrew Rudd, who replaced Rachel as Poet in Residence at the Cathedral a couple of years ago, introduced her to the audience: ‘Rachel Mann is so prolific she turns out about four books in the time it takes me to write one poem’. She read first from In the Bleak Midwinter; first an extract from Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market’ which I absolutely love, then she read the eponymous poem. Then the organist from her church accompanied one of her choristers in singing the poem as the carol we all know and love: my first carol service this year! Rachel read from her Carcanet collection next, a powerful and committed reading. Lastly she was interviewed by Michael Schmidt, editor of Carcanet Press: two great intellects meeting beneath the vaulted roof of Manchester Cathedral.
More poetry on Thursday evening: it was the first in the new series of People’s Poetry Lectures at the Principal in Manchester: Sean Borodale lecturing on Sylvia Plath. Hilary and I met up with Jean Sprackland for a celebratory drink prior to the lecture: Jean was the supervisor of the creative element of my PhD and we raised a glass of Prosecco to celebrate my successful viva result. Carol Ann Duffy, whose brainchild the People’s Poetry Lectures series is, came over to say hello and to congratulate me on the PhD as well. Evenings don’t get better than this. Sean’s lecture was interesting too: a sustained argument on the importance of bees, honey, beekeeping in Plath’s work, which he links to Otto Plath, Sylvia’s father, who was an expert on the honey/bumble bee. We all know the importance of ‘Daddy’ in Plath’s work, but it was interesting to have this new affirmation pointed out. Sean’s own first collection, Bee Journal (London: Random House, 2012), was inspired in some measure by Plath; I bought a copy and he signed it for me.
On Saturday I drove to Nantwich for a writing workshop with Mark Pajak, part of the Nantwich Words and Music Festival. I was separated from my poetry twin for the day: Hilary had an appointment she couldn’t get out of. Last time we went, a couple of years ago, I got a parking ticket for overstaying my welcome in the Asda car park. This time I found a car park that welcomed me for ten hours so I was safe. The workshop had us asking the ‘what if…’ question, conjoining two separate ideas in one poem: what if paths could ebb and flow like the sea; what if the timbers of a sunken ship could grow again into trees, that kind of thing. It was interesting. I don’t think I have any poems from it; none that I’m proud of at least; but I have a good prompt to think about, to inspire some poetry in the future. At lunchtime there was an impromptu performance of blues music on the piano while we ate lunch. There was also another poetry quiz. How many poetry quizzes can two women win in one week? Yes, Hilary had completed the quiz online as a guinea pig for Helen Kay, who organised the event; I completed the quiz in my lunch hour in Nantwich yesterday. We both got a winning score of 17.5 points, although scored on different questions: I didn’t know Hilary had done the quiz. It’s uncanny: I think we really are The Poetry Twins. We won a bottle of champagne to share. I think we’ll manage that. In the afternoon there was an open mic session; several talented amateur writers read at the event. I read a couple of poems from my PhD collection, then regretted my choice because I read a couple of ‘downers’ and I wished I’d been more upbeat. Most of my poetry is upbeat after all.
So the week began and ended with poetry festivals and there was poetry in the middle, a king sized poetry barmcake. I’m going to leave you with a poem I wrote for the PhD. It takes a line from a Syliva Plath poem, so that seems apposite this week. The line ‘Love set you going like a fat gold watch’ is from ‘Morning Song’, the poem she wrote on the birth of her daughter, Freda. You can find the Plath poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49008/morning-song-56d22ab4a0cee
I took the first line of the poem to write a plea for the celebration of girl babies: in my family, boys were definitely favoured above girls, possibly because there was only one boy in a family of seven siblings. Here’s my poem, inspired by this first line:
How To Wind A Fat Gold Watch
After Sylvia Plath
Open yourself like a rose that welcomes the ladybird.
Open yourself like a rose that the ladybird will crawl into
then fold your petals around it like a womb.
Empty the lap of your life to make a beanbag soft seat
for a story. Share with her your own story,
the stories of your grandmothers.
Share with her those gifts your mother gave you,
teach her to pass down those gifts like heirlooms
to her daughters’ daughters.
Don’t look on her and see the years creeping like slugs
but see the pace and plot of her, how her story
is just beginning, how it needs a middle, an end.
Don’t look on her and see the tadpoles missing from your beck
but see her as the clear water of the beck trickling from you,
notice her laughing stream, her eddies, her rocks and banks,
their wildflowers and willows, their soaring larks.
Listen for the skylark’s aria. Notice her. Make sure
she notices you noticing her every day.