Thanks for the Postcards received for the August Poetry Postcard fest 2016

August Poetry Postcard Fest 2016 cards received

And here are the postcards which have made their way across the Atlantic... all 27 of them. I think there are more en route for those who have carried the fest on into September.

In the mean time my thanks to Linda Malnack, Mary Beth Frezon, Rachel Barber, Pat Mirza, Lucia Lemieux, Sara Jameson, Rita Chapman, Karen York, H.V. Cramond, Amy Miller, Laura Snyder, Peggy Miller, L Lisa Lawrence, Gay Guard-Chamberlain, Gail Eisenhart, Christine Irving, Carla Shafer,Will Reger, Linda Barnes, Courtney LeBlanc, Rich, Roberta Feins, Jessie Lyle, Danita Smead, Marcela Villar M, Marc Thompson and the person from the UK who sent the M.C Escher card and a backwards poem.

Most of all thanks to Paul Nelson and Lana Hechtman Avers whodreamed up the whole enterprise.It's become part of my summer.

What I live for - poetry

Today I’m taking part in ‘What I Live For’, an online event organised by author Satya Robyn. People like me all over the world will be sharing what gives their lives meaning.

In Satya Robyn’s novel ‘Thaw’, Ruth gives herself three months to decide whether she can find a reason to carry on living. There’s 75% off the kindle version today (99p / $1.49) – read more here.

In my case apart from the obvious family and friends is poetry. Reading it, writing it and sharing it, so much so that a day without some poetry in it seems like a wasted opportunity. Reading poetry is a pleasantly solitary activity but giving someone else a poem you've enjoyed doubles or quadruples the enjoyment. So many people have beed put off poetry through having had to study it at school or think you have to be clever to understand poetry and it is great to show them this is not true.

I love being given poems in return and infiltrating poetry into as many places as possible. I'm in a poetry readers group on Good Reads and also Josh Lanyon's group. He writes m/m romances but is, I suspect, really a poet at heart. So the group now has a Read me a poem thread and thanks to the Scandinavian members of the group I've been introduced to poets I would not otherwise have encountered; Tor Jonson, Saima Harmaja, Eeva Kilpi, Karin Boye, Olav H Hauge and Eeva-Liisa Manner. 

The Sugar Mile by Glyn Maxwell

I came across references to The Sugar Mile in a book about the first day of the Blitz, written by Peter Stansky, an American historian. This was on the shelf in the village library and even though I have plenty still to read about Malta I borrowed it in the interests of widening my reading. Of course the local library like many across the country needs borrowers and supporters.

Glyn Maxwell is a British poet who lives in the States. The Sugar Mile is his eight collection. It takes place over the weekend of 8th and 9th September 2011 and Saturday 7th September 1940. The sugar mile refers to the Tate and Lyle factory in London which was bombed during the blitz. This is poetry in voices, Maxwell is also a playwright and it shows… there’s Raul the bar tender in who is looking forward to his new job

That there ain’t nobody else in New York City
paid so high? Windows on the World.
Tuesday I start. Tomorrow’s my last day.

Then there’s Joey, an old man at the bar who by chance survived in 1940 when bombs fell on the school in which they were sheltering, waiting for the buses which never arrived.

I was the paper boy
I’m still the paper boy

running from memory,
moving between fires that suddenly.

There are other voices from 1940; the Pray family, a man called Dennis Medland who probably is someone else and even the lost bus driver who doesn’t know if he’s supposed to be in Camden Town or Canning Town.

It’s utterly compelling and I read it straight through like a play unfolding. In the days before having children I’d probably have read it in one sitting, caught up in the drama.

Of course I was also reading it with a writer’s eye, noticing things like Raul the bar tender speaking in sestinas. I’m still deciding upon the structure for the later part of the Malta sequence. At the moment it’s all separate poems and points of view. Maxwell mostly sticks to one voice per poem but I’m minded to start mixing the voices, particularly for Operation Pedestal but it does need to be clear who is speaking. Maxwell also, wisely, limits his cast of characters and they are all fictitious as far as I’m aware. There will be more voices in my poems and many of them from men were really there. There is a fine line to be drawn between paying tribute to those who fought to save Malta and trespassing on their stories. Rather daunting.

Poetry in the streets

There was a wonderful article by Jane Gardam in Saturday's Guardian Review about her and a friend bringing poetry to the streets of Sandwich. Something I've always wanted to do but never been quite brave enough.

Day Fourteen – Time for some Salt

If you have not heard yet of Salt Books, based in Cambridge, England then you are in for a treat. They publish some of the best and most original poets writing today. About this time last year I treated myself to a subscription to their
poetry bank – the best kind of bank around if you ask me.


As a result during 2009 I’ve been receiving regular deliveries of gorgeous hardback poetry books, which I would probably have been too mean to treat myself to. My favourites have been Sian Hughes The Missing and Eleanor Rees Eliza and the Bear.