Polar Poetry

On Friday last week, writer and performer Siobhan Logan, author of the wonderful Arctic-inspired poetry collection, Firebridge to Skyshore, came to visit me in Cardiff. We first met at the Polyverse Poetry Festival at the University of Loughborough back in July and shared out mutual obsession with all things Arctic whenever there was a brief gap in the programme.

Since then, we've exchanged a few emails about the possibility of collaborating on a polar poetry project, so it was wonderful to meet again in person last week and start to give shape to some of our ideas. Over lunch (very appropriately, in the Norwegian Church Arts Centre, one of my favourite Cardiff landmarks), we talked about putting together a polar-themed performance, discussed possible sources of funding and also came up with a list of organisations from which we'll aim to seek bookings.

There's lots more planning to do in the weeks ahead of course - we have to put a proposal together and, crucially, come up with a zingy name for the project (like finding an apt title for a poem, this is going to be so hard to get 'right'). I really hope all our planning will pay off and I'll be able to write another polar poetry blog post in a few months' time with news of bookings for the spring!

Suffolk Poetry

Last Friday, I was lucky enough to be guest poet at one of Suffolk Poetry Society's poetry cafes, at Browsers Bookshop in Woodbridge. Getting there took seven hours on the train from Cardiff, via London and Ipswich, but the long and contorted journey was unquestionably worth it!

The audience was warm, attentive and very knowledgeable on matters poetic. Almost all of them read a poem in the first part of the evening and I enjoyed the mix of their own work and poems by a range of published writers, including Ruth Padel, that they wanted to share with the rest of the group. Lots of questions and lively discussion followed my reading, lots of copies of Creatures were sold and lots of carrot cake was consumed - the evening couldn't have been better!

I was struck, too, by how vibrant the Suffolk poetry scene seems to be - on the day after my visit, there was to be both a Kenneth Steven workshop and a Celtic poetry evening, for example. Fred Ellis, my hospitable and dynamic host, was brimming with ideas for new projects the whole time that I was there and I'm already looking forward to returning to the area and being involved in other Suffolk poetry events in the future.

Saturday Live and Writing Lyrics

I was up in London again at the weekend for another poet-in-residence slot on Radio 4's Saturday Live. This time, the studio guest was shoe entrepreneur Harvey Jacobson so my end-of-show poem was shoe-themed! For my top-of-the-show poem in response to one of the week's news stories, I came up with a piece that blended the Kelly Report on MPs' expenses and Bonfire Night. If you missed the programme and are interested in hearing it, you can listen again here.

Later in the day, I met up with my namesake, the very talented jazz vocalist and trumpeter Sue Richardson, to chat about our ongoing collaboration. Neither of us has had much time to devote to the project of late, but Sue is planning to record her new CD next spring and also has a tour lined up, during which she'll preview all the new material - so songs now need to be written!

I really enjoy writing lyrics and will, I hope, be drawing inspiration from some of my favourite lyricists (Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, Stephen Sondheim, Dave Frishberg...) as Sue and I move forward with our collaboration in the months ahead.

A Wilder Vein is Published!

Yesterday was the official publication date of A Wilder Vein (Two Ravens Press), an anthology that I'm absolutely thrilled to be part of.

Edited by Linda Cracknell and with a foreword by Robert Macfarlane, it's 'an anthology of new literary non-fiction that focuses on the relationship between people and the wild places of Britain and Ireland. This is writing which animates a connection between humanity and the natural world, articulating discoveries and new ways of seeing – writing which is, above all, a meditation on who we are as people in a still-wild world.'

‘A Wilder Vein is a significant contribution to the contemporary literature of place. The work gathered here is testy about piety, but not reticent about beauty. Repeatedly, these writers return to the idea that cognition is site-specific, or motion-sensitive: that we think differently in different landscapes. And therefore, more radically, that certain thoughts might be possible only in certain places, such that when we lose those places, we are losing kinds of imagination as well.’ - Robert Macfarlane (author of The Wild Places, Mountains of the Mind)

Contents:

Foreword by Robert Macfarlane
Introduction by Linda Cracknell
Ardnamurchan Almanac by Gerry Loose
The Slob Lands by Neil Hegarty
Black Rabbits by Marco Daane
Crossing the Divide by Kenneth Taylor
Explorations in a Legendary Landscape by Michelle Cotter
Wild Life on Braighlinne by Mandy Haggith
The Light and the Line by Jane Alexander
Sewing a Seam on the Spirit Line by Lisa Samson
The Hill by Alison Grant
Echoing Lands by Raja Shehadeh
The Road North by Judith Thurley
Whale Song by Lesley Harrison
Strata by Sara Maitland
Beached Wales by Susan Richardson
Humber by Katharine Macrae
Routes by Ken Wilkie
Walking the Edges by Margaret Elphinstone
A Dub in Assynt by Andrew Greig

Back in my childhood and early teens when I first started to dream about becoming a published writer, this was exactly the sort of anthology that I craved to be featured in, so I really am feeling quite excited today!

If you like the sound of the book too, do visit the Two Ravens Press website and check it out.

Oxjam Cardiff

Friend, photographer and fellow blogger, Rhys Jones, has been kind enough to send me through some photos from my recent Oxjam Cardiff ecopoetry gig. In most of the photos, I'm looking pink-cheeked and overheated (the venue, Y Fuwch Goch, a city centre bar, was very crowded and it was an unseasonally warm October Sunday) but in this black-and-white image, excessive pinkness thankfully doesn't show!

Oxjam was a great event to be involved in - though it was mostly a showcase for musicians throughout the country, organisers in some cities made space for poetry too. And since climate change was Oxjam's fundraising focus this year, I felt very passionate about participating.

Fiona Robyn's Blogsplash

Novelist and poet Fiona Robyn (whom I interviewed here about six months ago) is going to blog her next novel, Thaw, starting on the 1^st of March next year. The novel follows 32 year old Ruth’s diary over three months as she decides whether or not to carry on living.

To help spread the word she’s organising a Blogsplash, where blogs will publish the first page of Ruth’s diary simultaneously (and a link to the blog).

She's aiming to get 1000 blogs involved - if you'd be interested in joining in, email her at fiona@fionarobyn.com or find out more information here.

Desert Island Writings

Friday evening's poetry reading at Circles Bookshop in Bristol was hugely enjoyable. The venue was very much my kind of place - cosy, intimate, brimming with second-hand books and with a little café-bar area. I did about forty minutes of performance, then after the interval, the event organiser, Trevor Carter, otherwise known as the Bard of Windmill Hill, interviewed me about my inspirations, aspirations and motivations.

As a starting-point for the interview, I'd been asked to bring along five pieces of writing that have inspired me in some way - it was, of course, extraordinarily difficult to choose just five. After much mulling and pondering, re-reading and list-making, though, here's what I plumped for:

1) Terra Incognita by Sara Wheeler - the book that first got me interested in ice and snow and polar exploration

2) Three Women by Sylvia Plath - the poem that triggered my desire to write Two of Me Now, my poetic drama about Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf, way back at the beginning of the nineties.

3) Earth Shattering: Eco Poems - edited by Neil Astley. When Trevor forced me to get more specific and pick just one poem from this anthology, I went for Frogs by Kathleen Jamie.

4) The Woman of the Sea from a collection of Inuit Folk Tales, edited by Lawrence Millman. This is a story that's informed quite a lot of my most recent poetry, not to mention the collaboration I've been involved in with printmaker Pat Gregory.

5) (this is a bit of a quirky one) - Ah, But Underneath - lyrics by Stephen Sondheim from his musical, Follies. I've always been a huge Sondheim fan and when I'm writing performance pieces (for Radio 4's Saturday Live, for example), I'm aware that his use of assonance, alliteration, double and triple rhymes, is something I really aspire to.

So, that's my list. Ask me again in a week, though, and I'd probably come up with a completely different selection - there were so many favourites I had to leave out...

Between the Lines

Should anyone happen to be in Bristol tomorrow evening, and feeling in need of a bit of poetry plus some poetry-inspired chat, I'm going to be the guest at Between the Lines at Circles Bookshop in Bedminster.

Between the Lines is a poetry reading with a difference, as once I've done my performance stuff in the first half of the evening, there'll be an interview section, hosted by poet and event organiser Trevor Carter. I've been asked to select five 'Desert Island' poems or other pieces of writing (how to whittle so many favourites down to just five?) and chat about my inspirations and motivations.

Circles Bookshop is at 65 North St, Bedminster BS3 1ES and the event's due to start at 8.15 pm. It would be lovely to see you there!

Poems on Pen y Fan

I'm going to be doing a few ecopoetry gigs for Oxjam in October and a couple of Sundays ago, I joined the Oxjam Brecon team for a mountain-busk-with-poetry on top of Pen y Fan in the Brecon Beacons as a fundraiser for the main event.

I fulfilled a long-standing ambition by performing poems on top of a mountain and hugely enjoyed the hike to the summit too - some of my all-time favourite walks have been Beacons-based. Thanks to Katie Hall for co-ordinating the event and for the above photo too.

To London for Saturday Live

This time, instead of doing my Radio 4 Saturday Live session from BBC Wales in Cardiff, I was up at Broadcasting House in London again. As always, two new topical poems had to be written to a tight deadline - my short top-of-the-show poem was triggered by China's recognition, at last week's UN Climate Change Conference, of the need to curb its greenhouse gas emissions, while my end-of-show longer poem focused on garden makeovers, inspired by this week's main studio guest, Alan Titchmarsh.

It was quite a coincidence that he should have been this week's guest, as I worked with him briefly earlier this year when I was asked to contribute some poetry to BBC2's coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show back in May. (You can read about my Chelsea experience here).

As ever, I really enjoyed the Saturday Live poetry challenge and, as an added bonus, I made it to the Barbican Art Gallery in the afternoon to see Radical Nature - Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet, 1969-2009. This exhibition of artists' responses to climate change and environmental degradation is on for another couple of weeks and I heartily recommend it.

Oh, and if you want to listen to my Saturday Live efforts, there's a link to the show on BBC iplayer here.

Creative Writing Workshops

Next week, my creative writing workshops for the term get underway. For the past umpteen years, I've been offering these courses through Cardiff University's Centre for Lifelong Learning. However, a couple of months back, the University took the astonishing decision to axe all its humanities courses for adults - you can read all about the campaign to save the courses here.

I've since decided to continue running my ten-week courses on a private basis at Llanover Hall Arts Centre. The Thursday class (1-3pm) is brimming, and there are just a few places left on Tuesdays (3-5pm).

So, if you're interested in coming along, or if you have questions about the workshops, please get in touch as soon as possible!

New Journal on an Islands Theme

I'm a bit late posting news of this new journal, seeing as it was launched a couple of weeks ago (I seem to have a big backlog of Things to Blog About at the moment). It's a journal in which I'm thrilled to be included, not only because the islands theme is a bit of an obsession of mine, but also because I admire so many of the other island-dwelling poets whose work is featured, not to mention the inspired editor, Nesrin Eruysal.

Here's the full blurb:

The Autumn (and first) issue of the Turkish Söyleşi Üç Aylık Şiir Dergisi is now available to download in pdf format or read online as a virtual magazine:

http://soylesipoetrymagazine.com/

This issue centres on the theme of Islands, its contributors hailing from the water-locked places of the world, translated into both Turkish and English.

Edited by: Dr. Nesrin Eruysal

Editorial by: Dr. Pete Hay

Poetry by: Pete Hay, Ihsan Topçu, Kadir Aydemir, Adnan Adam Onart, Dimitris Lentzis, Dimitris P. Kraniotis, Fatma Akilhoca, Stephanos Stephanides, Immanuel Mifsud, Maria Grech Ganado, Aine Mac Aodha, Drax Ireland, Ray Givans, Sheenagh Pugh, Susan Richardson, Norman Bissell, Christine de Luca, Donald S. Murray, Maoilius Caimbeul, Oddfríður Marni Rasmussen, Hrafn Andres Hardarson, Adalsteinn Ásberg Sigurdsson, Ingunn Snædal, Gerður Kristny & Kenneth Rosen

For more information on this and forthcoming issues email: nesrineruysal@gmail.com

West Wales Wildlife

Haven't blogged here for a while - mainly due to my having spent some time in West Wales. Walked several sections of both the Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion Coast Paths and also explored the Preseli Hills, where the sheep in the above photo obligingly posed for me near the rocky outcrop of Carn Menyn, believed to be the source of some of the bluestones at Stonehenge.

The wildlife highlight of the week came on a boat trip to Ramsey Island - saw lots of Atlantic Grey seal pups on the stony beaches and five choughs putting on a spectacular diving and swooping display high above the cliffs. Hopefully, in time, this'll inspire another island poem for the sequence I've been intermittently working on over the past year...