Lighting Touchpapers

Exactly a month ago, I was privileged to attend a beautiful evening of poetry in the King's Head, Wells. 

We'd gathered to celebrate the launch of Sara Butler's collection, 'Waiting for a Change'. The evening was hosted by Ama Bolton and Morag Kiziewicz, two members of the highly respected Wells Fountain Poets. Sara was a member of the group too, until ill health prevented her from continuing. It was Ama and Mo who collected Sara's poems and arranged them into this book.

Ama reading

Mo reading

I have a personal stake in this collection, because Sara was also a valued member of one of The Leaping Word’s poetry groups, and I’ve longed to hold a book of her poems in my hands for years. Now, thanks to Ama and Mo, that dream has come true. This book really is an act of love.

‘Waiting for a Change’ is available from bookshops or – if you must – Amazon: ISBN 978-1-914398-15-5.

Someone called Deborah Harvey has this to say about it:

‘A love for nature infuses these poems, though it’s never romanticised, Sara having both an eye and an ear for the dark and the all-too-human. And there’s always the laughing ‘yes’, and sexiness, and a desire for something better, which is found and made real in these poems.’

I had another enjoyable evening at a second launch, namely, the Zoom event celebrating the publication of 'High Nowhere' by Jean Atkins and 'What it Was' by Tina Cole. It was a treat to hear the poets read their very skilled and thought-provoking work. 

I also read some poems, as a pre-launch of my forthcoming collection, 'Love the Albatross', which is now at the printers and due to be published by Indigo Dreams Publishing at the end of August. Here's a preview of its cover, which has been beautifully realised by Katie Marland.

The poems in 'Love the Albatross' are about estrangement. Two of them have recently been published in journals, and can be read here and here. 

Poetry on the Levels

There's been lots of poetry going on lately. I missed the most recent session of our open mic, Silver Street on Friday, as I was covering at work for my co-worker Neelam, who's on a family holiday in India, but late Sunday afternoon saw the Zoom launch of Finished Creatures Issue 7, which I'm very pleased to have a poem in. It sounded a bit daunting to begin with, with 'breakout groups' - eh? - being organised for sub-readings, but it worked very well and was an enjoyable prelude to the Zoom launch of my former tutor Kim Moore's latest book, 'Are you judging me yet?' 

Yesterday was a poetry day too, and it started auspiciously enough with two foxes making their way through the back gardens and finally settling in my neighbour's. Hopefully we'll get some more kits this year.

I'd been booked by Ama Bolton to read at Wells Fountain Poets in the evening, and as it was the first day of the Easter holidays as well, I decided to make a day of it and visit my friend, Jan, who lives in Glastonbury.

After the most delicious bowl of sweetcorn chowder at the farm shop and cafe which is literally next door to Jan's rural domicile, we set off for a meander around the locality, stopping first at nearby Meare. 

The Church of St Mary was locked so we didn't get the chance to go inside, but no matter, the mediaeval Meare Fish House just down the road is always worth visiting so we wandered there instead. 

If you're wondering why there's a fish house in the middle of fields, there used to be a pool here, as the village name suggests. It was large, measuring four miles in circumference in winter, and disappeared when the Somerset Levels were drained in the 1700s. 

Sadly, it too was padlocked and we couldn't get inside. 

We then drove to Godney along Godney Road. It was exhilarating to see the Levels remembering themselves after the recent rain, so we stopped where the road turns right and walked back down to the rather prosaically named Division Rhyne.

What the bright and sunny day lacked in atmosphere, it made up for with brilliantly clear views in all directions.

Glastonbury Tor in the distance

And even on sunny days, the pollarded willows lining the causeway look haunted, or, as Jan observed, as if they've been drawn by Arthur Rackham.

Stranger still were the celandines opening their petals and blooming underwater. 

Looking back towards Godney

Division Rhyne

After a light, pre-reading repast back at Jan's, I drove over to Wells, parked and walked down the former Gropecunt Lane - now Union Street - to the King's Head. It was a warm and supportive evening, as expected - no photos, but a residual fuzzy feeling that makes mementos unnecessary. The only bit of the day that didn't quite live up to expectations was the drive home, when I had to divert from the A38 to the A39 because the road was closed at Pensford, which meant returning via Keynsham and negotiating St Philip's Causeway in the dark but you can't have everything and at least rush hour was long past by then. 

Days-Errant

Been doing a lot of errandry* lately, but at least it's involved some getting out and about to interesting places. I get a bit depressed cooped up in Bristol, especially this time of year when some bugger's pulled the plug and all the light's draining away.

*Now I'm wondering if errandry should be errantry, which has the benefit of being an actual word, but that might just be wandering about without the service element. Hmmm.

Anyhow. My mother was in Bristol for ten days or so recently, following a sojourn in Cornwall, and briefly fancied going to Clevedon, so we took her there before she could change her mind. There's a pub right on the front where you can have something to eat and look out over the estuary and there's light and interest even when the weather forecast is poor, which it was. 

And by the time we emerged, it was into unexpected afternoon sunshine, and a plane, which you probably can't make out in the photo, was doing loop-the-loops and things. 

We made our way to the pier.

I took time to admire my favourite thing about Clevedon which is its less than genteel trees ... 

... though there was no walking the steep cliff path of Poets Walk, of course.

After a flying visit to the pier's gift shop, we manoeuvred our way through the narrow lane that leads from the front to Copse Road, emerging alongside the Royal Oak Pub, which was run by my Great-Great-Uncle Joe Rich during the first half of last century. There are lots of family stories associated with this time.

My mother happily told several passers-by and a couple of workmen about the times she used to pull pints there, aged 14. 

The lane hasn't changed much at all, apparently.

A couple of days later we ventured deeper into Somerset to visit my mother's only surviving elder brother, Noel, in Shepton Beauchamp. They did a great job of bringing their childhood misdemeanours to life, details of which I shan't repeat here.  

The next day, my birthday, the Northerner and I were in Wells for the gathering of shortlisted competition poets at the Festival of Literature ... 

... and then suddenly that was enough Somerset, and my sons and I were off to Sussex for a belated birthday jaunt - my daughter's birthday, not mine. And it rained again.

But then it cleared up enough for a little wander around Brighton Marina ...

View to Ovingdean Gap

... followed by cake. 

Bristol Poetry Festival so far and a visit to Wells Festival of Literature 2017

The Bristol Poetry Festival is galloping into its final week. The last seven days have seen fantastic sets from Tara Bergin, Liz Berry, Helen Ivory, Lucy English, and Lois P Jones (the winner of this year's Bristol Poetry Prize), and Martin Figura's stylish and affecting new show about love, loss and poetry, Dr Zeeman's Catastrophe Machine, which I absolutely recommend. Plus a ground-breaking fusion of BSL poetry and poetry film, including translations into sung notation (an indequate way to describe it but the best I can do), with Paul Scott, Helen Dewbury, Chaucer Cameron, Victoria Punch and Kyra Love.  And last night a beautiful, beautiful launch for the anthology of poems by contemporary Georgian women poets, 'The House with No Doors', translated by Natalia Bukia-Peters and Victoria Field, with music from the Borjghali Choir which made me want to dance up and down the aisles of St Stephen's Church. (I desisted but it was a close thing.) 

Then there was Dru Marland's launch of her latest collection, Drawn Chorus, published by Gert Macky, which took place last Monday and which was A Roaring Success. 

Here are the guest poets!



















Today it was off to Wells Festival of Literature for a bit of a change. I'd been asked to get the reception for this year's shortlisted poets in the poetry competition under way by reading my poem 'Mr Cowper's Hares', which won last year's Hilly Cansdale prize for local poets. And since it's always a pleasure to go to Wells, I was happy to oblige. 

And it all went ever so well. 

Here are a few of the City of Wells in Autumn photos such an occasion demands. 

St Cuthbert's

The view from the pub

Stained glass autumn ash with Cathedral backdrop

The ruined Great Hall of the Bishop's Palace

Stained glass from ruined French churches, post Revolution

Tudor fireplace

Fountain

Not falling into the mediaeval conduit on the way back to the car