Friday poetry and Happy Weekend

I always make time for poetry on Fridays, preferably with a mug of tea. This week's reading material is Jane McLauglin's prize winning first collection, Lockdown, which is being published by Cinnamon Press this weekend.

I am really enjoying Jane's use of imagery and the way her poems capture moments like snapshots. As I'm not able to go to the launch at the 'Made in Greenwich' gallery I have to content myself with reading the poems. My favourite one, so far, is

Learning about Potatoes
On the convent vegetable patch, habit hitched up.
These are Edzell Blue she says, clearing the violet skins
of mud, clagged by August rains. I remember her holding
them, Inca jewels, digging and teaching.

You should learn these things. Theirs were purple too,
but yellow inside. The Quechua word is papa.
She’d pile them into the wicker trug, a violet pyramid,
stack the spent haulms on the heap to rot.

Then pray to her garden saint, headless St Martin de Porres,
found under the convent hedge. A pot of wallflowers
and a prayer against the Late Blight, Phytophthora Infestans.
‘Think now of what you eat, and the million dead.

They still turn up bones on my father’s farm.
Food enough for all, but shipped away
to feed foreigners. And they had not a clean tuber
the length of the land.

I remember a Mayo nun in her grey cotton apron
pitching the piled weeds onto the barrow
and crying with the pain of those who lay
where they fell. In the late summer light

she digs with the fierceness of one betrayed
by men and seasons, thanks God for her violet potatoes,
holds her trug of Edzell Blue
like a lost child found.
 

I used this earlier in the week as a prompt for a writing exercise with my Wing Writers which was very well received. We could all see and hear that nun with her trug of potatoes and her fierce determination. You can read a few more of Jane's poems here  and buy a copy of Lockdown here.

Have a good weekend. 








 

The Year of the Pamphlet - Cherriman, Hershman and Josephy

Either by chance or by choice poetry pamphlets are becoming my favourite things to read this year. I’ve already mentioned Becky Cherriman’s Echolocation which was published earlier this month from Mother’s Milk Books and her poems which have such grit in them. Then in the same week Tania Hershman’s Nothing Here is Wild, Everything is Open, arrived from Ireland, from Southword Editions. I read it in one sitting as you can do with a pamphlet and then as with Becky’s poems went back and savoured each one. You can read my review here. 

Today’s it is the turn of Other Blackbirds by Alex Josephy – one of the latest pamphlets from Cinnamon Press. I’ve previously reviewed Well Kemp’s The Missing Girl. These are also poems which ‘repay more than one reading’, as Chris  Considine says in the blurb. Coming back to them for another read what struck me was the feisty girl running through the poems from the sister in ‘The Sister-Brother’ Treaty who divides the spoils

… I took river bridges, fords

surprised you with teapots

and in A Slip of Wildness

… I was away

into the rough boughs of the yew,

smearing my palms with dust

to the girl in ‘What She Wants’ at the Green Gate, 1983

and a peace sign: Crystal Barbie

the doll I wouldn’t buy

not even for Christmas.

Two of the poems won first prize jointly in the Battered Moons competition judged by Alice Oswald and others have been published or have won prizes. This is however more than just a putting together of ‘best’ poems as it takes the reader on a journey from the poet’s childhood, through a daughter’s childhood and we find ourselves in Italy where there are ‘Other Blackbirds’.

Along the way there are glimpses of a father and 'The OnlyMeal I Ever Saw My Father Cook’, which was my favourite in the collection and in ‘Elbows on the Table’

… He’s deep

in history: Tuscany 1945

a gatehouse blown to pieces

in the long retreat. He turned down…

Becky Cherriman and Echolocation

Today I’m delighted to welcome Becky Cherriman to the blog.
She is a writer, creative writing facilitator and performer from Yorkshire. Her pamphlet, Echolocation is being launched this week  and is available from Mother's Milk Books – a poetic journey into single motherhood, infertility, the adoption process and more from a writer who has lived them all.
She has numerous publications including with Bloodaxe, Mslexia, and her poems have appeared on Umbrellas and the walls of a recording studio.

Her poems have won prizes, including first prize in 2012 with Speakeasy and second in the Ilkley Literature Open Mic 2011. Her first full collection, Empires of Clay, is being published by Cinnamon Press later this year. Becky and I worked together during 2014 when I was her mentor. As is often the case when your interest in poetry chimes with someone else I learned from the experience too, especially from the delight Becky takes in responding to art as you will see from the following interview.

Without stopping to think, can you name four poets whose work has influenced you?

Dylan Thomas, Mary Oliver, William Shakespeare, Anne Sexton

What are you passionate about and what inspires you?

I'm passionate about people and relationships between people, between people and their histories, between people and landscapes.  These things inspire my work as do art, politics and real life events, particularly dramatic ones.

Can you describe your writing practice or process? Do you have a tried and tested means of getting started? Has the way you write changed?

When it comes to poetry I usually start off with a very rough draft, which tends to be more notes than a proper draft.  If there is the essence of a poem there, I come back to it, ideally no more than a week later and type up what I have.  I expand this into a first full draft over one to three sittings, which may involve some research depending on what I'm writing about.  Then there are weeks, months or years of tweaking before I ask for feedback and tweak again. 

I do more rewriting and editing than I used to but then what I write now has more layers to it and so takes more crafting.   

What advice would you offer to another poet who is in the process of putting her first pamphlet or collection together?

It was invaluable to me to have you as a mentor to help me edit the poems but particularly to help me find ways in which the poems could hang together.  Although we didn't do so much of this for the pamphlet, what I learned from you in putting together the collection definitely helped me decide on an order for the pamphlet and which poems not to include.  Of course not everyone can find a mentor but my advice would be to find someone who is happy to read through the poems in your collection, discuss the themes within them and what potential order they could go in.  

Writers' groups and spoken word events can be great places to do find someone to pair up with who is at a similar stage to you.  

Which poem in Echolocation has the most meaningful backstory to you? Can you share that backstory with us?
I'd probably answer this question differently if you asked me this in a year. Right now it is 'Graves' Disease'.  The poem was the last to be included in the book and sprang from a Sonia Lawson painting, 'Down Among The Empty Boats'.  My mind and eye are always interested in and open to art but it rarely produces a heart reaction in me.  Yet, when I entered The Mercer Gallery, my hand went instinctively to my chest. I was particularly drawn to the works depicting Muriel Metcalfe, Sonia Lawson's artist mother and, when I read the exhibition text, was surprised to realise that Sonia's mother had suffered from Graves' Disease, something I've been dealing with for the last 9 years.  Sadly her condition meant she was unable to look after Sonia for long periods of her childhood.  The poem is about illness and sacrifice and the woman's need to carry on for the sake of her child.  In December last year, soon after I wrote the poem, I had my thryoid removed so I expect the poem will always remind me of what I have lived through.

What would you like the reader to gain from reading Echolocation?

I hope every reader finds something in one of the poems that speaks to them or interests them in something new. Beyond that, I would hope the reader might gain something from reading the pamphlet that I couldn't predict.

Several of the poems in Echolocation are inspired by paintings and other works of art, which piece of art is your current favourite? Do you have a recommendation for a gallery or place for readers to visit?

My current favourite is a Sonia Lawson artwork, not the one mentioned above but a stark pencil sketch of her mother, crouched over as though in deep emotional pain. A small child stands as far away as the paper allows, watching her. I'm sorry to say I can't find the title of the work.  It's an accomplished sketch but, as above, it's not the aesthetic quality that makes it stand out for me, it's the personal connection.  It made me feel sad about the ill health my son has had to witness in me and that I had to witness in my own mother.  

The Hepworth Wakefield set up by Barbara Hepworth's family is a wonderful gallery and brilliant at showcasing the work of contemporary female (and male) artists.  It also has an amazing learning department - I'm sometimes lucky enough to run workshops there.  

Could you suggest a writing exercise or prompt? 

This is an exercise Steve Toase and I used for our Haunt project with Imove and people experiencing homelessness.  I'm suggesting this one because it might encourage people to look at Sonia Lawson's work.

Find something in one of Sonia Lawson’s paintings that speaks to a formative life experience you have had or a story you tell about yourself.  What is it about the painting that makes you think of it?  Does this painting offer any clues as to how to transform this experience into a positive experience (if it is not) e.g. through particular motifs or colour or even brushstrokes e.g. wings to escape, arcs to carry the weight and suggest rainbows and hope?  

      Can you find a way to connect your experience and the artwork in a poem? 

 

One year on….

I came close to calling this blog post  being a ‘proper’ writer as it’s a year since Convoy was published and so I’ve been reflecting on the past year.

In lots of ways life goes on just as it did before publication; there’s still laundry to be done, children to be collected from school and the day job at the Open University with its many and varied demands.

So has anything changed? Well I can answer that in one word – confidence.

There is nothing quite like having someone else believe in the strength of your writing enough to publish it, to make you realise you might actually have joined the ranks of ‘proper’ writers. Then there’s the readers who send me enthusiastic notes and comments about Convoy. This is a recent one

‘In Convoy, I appreciated this glimpse of foreign-to-me bravery, foreign because this happened before my time, and is a part of the history of that war I knew little to nothing about. It's a lovely gift to have created a platform for those voices. My father spoke in a similar way about his war experiences in the Pacific arena. By that I mean with few words, but a sense that a lot that doesn't need to be said, while still conveying loss and the wonder of self-survival. Such haunting words and images, 

"I am more than tired, keep seeing things, 

friends who died on previous convoys 

reaching out to shake my hand."

Poetry books don’t generally get many reviews so I have been grateful to the people who have ventured onto Amazon or Good Reads to post their opinions.

The other change is that people now ask me to do things… as a writer. This has included running a village writing group, originally under the auspices of our community library. They are a delight and are so enthusiastic about writing and learning and have made me realise how much I know about the craft. Of course we are all still learning…. then there’s taking part in readings… the Sensing spaces, Wandering words event at the Royal Academy, which provided an adrenaline rush.. it was like doing my fist parachute jump all over again… but with fellow poets alongside.

Having been through the process of putting together a first collection I’m spending 2014 as a mentor to poet Becky Cherriman under a scheme set up by my publisher Cinnamon Press. She has recently had poems published on the Mslexia blog as part of Michelle McGrane’s Against Rape project on Peony Moon.

My Writing process

Rebecca Gethin (Liar Dice, A handful of Water and What the Horses heard ) has kindly asked me to take part in a blog tour of writers where we all answer the same questions and tag other writers who will do the same the following week. A nice way to keep in touch and learn about new people!  Becky posted her writers blog tour last week.

I have one person to tag at the moment and this is:

• Judi Moore: 

http://judimoore.wordpress.com

Judi’s novel,  Is Death really necessary is available on the kindle. As befits the author of a novel set in 2038 Judi lives in the new town of Milton Keynes with several (hard to be specific - they don't stand still) black and white critturs in an old Tardis-like cottage.

Now for my answers to the questions:

What am I working on?

I have several writing projects on the go at the moment. Social media friends will have noticed my current pre-occupation with London’s statues and I’m working on a top secret collaborative venture with another writer. I’ve also returned to writing prose as I have a couple of characters, a  father and son who want me to tell their story. 

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I’m not sure that it does. But I do mostly write poems that are based on things that have actually happened in the past, even if I do invent a lot of the details.

Why do I write what I do?

This is a difficult question to answer because I write what I’m moved to set down and I don’t tend to examine why I’m doing it. It would detract from the writing if I started navel gazing about the whys. That said, many of the poems in Convoy were about the stories we are at risk of forgetting. So there was an element of capturing lost stories and as I was writing the collection it felt as if I was doing it for all the merchant seamen who are the unsung heroes of the second world war.

How does your writing process work?

I wait until I can hear the character’s voice or the voice of the poem. But I wouldn’t want it to sound as if I sit around waiting for inspiration to strike. You’d never get anything written that way. I’ve discovered that you can put yourself in the right place, usually just by sitting down with a blank page.

I’m just about to go off to North Wales for a writing retreat and based on previous experience I know that I will get lots written away from the distractions of home and the day job.

Convoy - the tour continues

With thanks to Lindsay Stanberry-Flynn and Rebecca Gethin who have been asking me thoughtful and thought-provoking questions about how the book came together and featuring Convoy on their blogs.

Lindsay's blog

Rebecca Gethin Featured-writers

Convoy

Officially today was the day of publication for Convoy and so the book is going out into the world on a tide of good will. It and I have our supporters and cheerleaders and I’m particularly grateful to Jan Fortune of Cinnamon Press who believed in the book from its earliest stages

I am mindful too that although the poems are my work the stories that they tell are those of the men who fought for Malta. I hope that everyone who picks up Convoy and reads it will think of them; most of whom are no longer around to tell the stories themselves.

I took part in my first ever relay race today. I was one of those kids who was no good at sport at school and never picked for anything but this lunchtime at work I was part of a four person running team for my Faculty, each of us doing 1.1 miles. Convoy also feels like part of a link in a chain and I hope that everyone who reads it will remember the men in its pages and will pass their stories on.

Photograph taken by my elder son, Luke

World Poetry Day Giveaway

I’m giving away a copy of Rebecca Gethin’s A Handful of Water in celebration of today. Just leave a comment saying why you’d like to read it.

Rebecca Gethin's A Handful of Water

Today I’m delighted to welcome to my blog, Rebecca Gethin, whose second collection A Handful of Water, has just been published by Cinnamon Press. I enjoyed reading this so much that I asked our mutual publisher, Jan, to put me in touch with Becky so I could ask her a few questions. Becky lives on Dartmoor. Her first collection, River is the Plural of Rain, was published by Oversteps Books in 2009. Her novel Liar Dice was the winner of the Cinnamon Press Novel Award 2010 and was published in 2011.

Your poems cover a range of topics, the first world war, the lives of contemporary prisoners and the natural world so do you consciously look for subjects for poems or do the poems come to you? In short what inspires you?

I think ideas for poems come to me. I find them as one would notice an interesting pebble on a beach or an insect one hadn’t seen before. I never consciously look for subjects: it’s just a feeling or a thought that comes over me in odd moments often while doing something else (i.e. not writing). I remember Don Paterson saying at a poetry reading “Whenever you think you think that that would make a good poem, it won’t.” Well, I have lots of those. Usually any poem is sparked by just a small idea or a single phrase or a feeling and I just write about what presents itself to my mind. I carry a notebook in my jacket pocket and try to keep one beside my bed. I forget lots of so-called “good ideas” so that might be a good thing! You see I have this almost –permanent feeling that I must pay attention carefully or I might miss important things. If only I were less busy, impatient or grouchy and were more perspicacious and empathetic I would be able to notice things more clearly.

How long did it take you to put together this second collection. How did you decide upon the order of poems and were there any which had to be left out?


A Handful of Water took me years. I have found that I do need time .... not many of my poems are written under pressure and in a short space. And, in the end, lots of poems were inevitably left out. I’ve heard some poets keep themed files and when they complete a poem they decide which file to put it in so they are at work maybe on various collections at any one time. I admire that hugely. I found the order of this book extremely difficult at first and wanted someone to come to my rescue and find the golden thread running through the dog-eared pieces of paper. Until I realised, with horror, the only person who could do that was me, and that there was no golden thread except that of my own psyche. I wondered and wondered what should go in and what shouldn’t. The bundle of poems I had stored away seemed to have become a sort of closely-packed forest and eventually I saw that there were all sorts of interconnections between the poems’ roots, twigs and branches. I hadn’t been able to see this till I entered the job of trying to make them into a collection: couldn’t see the wood for the trees perhaps? I approached this particular task with A Handful of Water as though I were taking a walk over terrain where there was no visible path between the trees and I could only make progress by putting one foot in front of the other and hoping the next foothold would present itself – looking for something, (image, atmosphere, the underlying feeling) that linked one poem to another. A Handful of Water thus made, emerged as a rather different creature – more edgey and nerved – than the pile of paper from which it emerged.

There is one poem in particular which intrigued me and that was All at Sea i.m. John Hasemore 1893-1916. Could you tell me more about him and how you came to write the poem?


I am very interested in how to write political poems, especially poems about experiences like war when I haven’t been there myself. I was researching for a character who is a conscientious objector during World War One for my next novel (called What the horses heard) in the Quaker Library in Euston. I read about John Hasemore there and his plight captured my imagination. I wanted to write it as starkly and unemotionally as possible. So I am glad you were intrigued by that poem. It really happened like that and his court martial was indeed transcribed in pencil. I used the exact words he gave as his futile defence. Reading about people with scruples against the War in that library was an eye-opener. Those shelves were full of poems I could’ve written. (For your information, the poem called Tribunal was read out by the Peace Pledge Union at their Armistice ceremony in Bradford a couple of years ago and I felt very honoured.) But not all the World War One poems do come from there.... for instance, I found going to the Somme battlefields a terrible shock. And the plaque to a young man in our church says so much by saying so little.

Tribunal
He had no words for what grew between
him and his father down in the garden shed
with its smells of stored apples, potatoes in a sack.
Intent on the objects they were mending on the bench
they passed pliers or chisel one to the other –
large, furrowed hand – soft, marked hand –
a blackbird singing outside, spiders weaving webs,
and cabbages growing in soil they kept hoed,
while the feeling in his vitals formed into shape,
recognised itself, crystallised in the No
he said to the recruiting officer at the desk
in the town square. At the tribunal they asked his age –
You’re not old enough to have a conscience,
next case, next case

And my final question is about an issue that many of us wrestle with. What are your strategies for making the time to write?

Refining as much as possible the art of “No-can –do”..... ruthlessly.


You can find out more about Rebecca from her blog including information about the artist, Lydia Corbett, whose painting is on the cover of A Handful of Water


A Handful of Water is available from Cinnamon Press or Inpress Books

110 Days and counting

The useful thing about having your book listed for publication and appearing in 'forthcoming titles' is that some websites like Waterstones provide a form of count-down to publication so it's 110 days to go.

Between now and then I am going provide on this blog more information about the people who inspired the poems. There isn't the space in a slender volume of poems to go into this level of biographical detail so you will find it here.

Are we there yet?

October is the month in which I hand over my collection to my publisher, Jan Fortune of Cinnamon Press. It is going to be so hard to let go if these poems. I worry about them needing more work. I worry that they don’t do justice to the merchant seaman and others whose stories they re-tell. I worry they are too long, too short, not poetic enough.

The date is fixed for the launch next May, the cover has been chosen from a remarkable set of photographs taken by Bill Lazell who was with the Royal Artillery.

The poems have their supporters, not least Jan, my local writers group who have read them, critiqued them and become sufficiently involved to go and look up the ships on Wikipedia, my writerly friend, Vanessa who has been urging me on every step of the way.

So twenty days to go. No – I’m not there yet but close.