... and now it's nearly Christmas!

My last post was in July, so where did I go? Absolutely nowhere! I've been writing poetry every day and getting lots of rejections, but nothing makes me want to give up. I've been continuing with online courses with the Poetry School which are always inspiring and I've also sent poems to Katrina Naomi for critiquing. She was so perceptive with her comments that she helped me enormously. This, I think, is the way forward.

I've fallen in love with a pamphlet 'What I Saw' by Laura Scott, published by The Rialto. There is a short poem in it called 'Poems' that has been pinned up in my study for the last couple of years as it inspires me. The other poems in the pamphlet are beautiful and I wish I could write like that.

Last week I read a couple of poems at the Poetry Society Stanza meeting, at Keats House in Hampstead. I'm ashamed to say that I've never been there before and it was wonderful. I met Stanza 'leaders' (I don't like the word 'facilitator') from all over the UK and further afield. It was refreshing to be able to talk poetry and discuss how we all manage our Stanza groups. I was interested to talk to two leaders from Spain to see how their meetings compared with ours in Portugal.

There have been weddings and funerals, births and deaths, and many plans for 2015. First up is a trip to Colombia, Ecuador and the Galapagos in January, and, less formed, plans to spend 6 months in Porto (beautiful city) in the Autumn, sell the house in Sintra and move nearer the sea, and a tutored poetry retreat at Moniack Mhor in September. I'll be needing it, as hopefully, there'll be poems to work on that emerge from the cloud forests of Ecuador.

Resolution: Blog more often ;-)

Poetry Reading

My completely wonderful Stanza group pulled out all the stops and gave a great reading on Sunday. We had a large audience (nearly a crowd!) and even a few people sitting on the floor. It was hard not having any idea how many people might turn up but we had about 50 which is fabulous.

We read for about 6 minutes each, in two sets, and had printed out a pamphlet with a small selection of our poems which people found really helpful. I think a lot of them had never been to a poetry reading before. They seemed to enjoy it and were a wonderful group, ready to laugh in all the right places, and are already asking for the next one! It took so long to organise that I now feel quite flat and a little bit aimless. All poetry ideas have fled to the four corners of the eaves, so I will have to coax them down.

Not much more to say about it except it was great fun and I was on a high afterwards until just now! I think it's bed time ... so goodnight.

Wind Turbines

Before I apologise, yet again, for being such a lazy blogger, let me confess to an obsession with wind turbines. Yes,they are a blot on the landscape, and yet, they are so graceful and appear out of nowhere and in the most unlikely places. They have set me off on a writing spree which is something I don't turn my back on.

Meanwhile I've been walking in the Alentejo in dangerous places. Gado Bravo is the equivalent of 'Beware of the Bull.' We were a group of about 30 and even had our picnic in the 'Gado Bravo' field. I wasn't very hungry and longed to be anywhere but in a field of wild bulls. We were among the cork trees, where, I was told, the bulls don't like to go. If you believe that you'll believe anything!

On the poetry front I was lucky enough to get a place on Kim Moore's open workshop with the Poetry School and I'm also on another online course with Katrina Naomi on the use of the Autobiographical 'I'. 

Today I achieved all the printing for our Stanza group's poetry reading and left posters and leaflets at the House of Wonders. It's interesting being on the organising end for a change and it's a lot of fiddly work. I'm looking forward to the reading and hope we don't have an empty room!

I'm off to UK on Thursday for the Aldeburgh music festival again, and promise not to post any more Scallop shells or shingle. Who knows what will feature this time.

Freefall

I have already been back from my Freefall writing retreat for three weeks, so I feel shockingly remiss not to have written about it sooner. I think that, because it was such a fabulous experience, I wanted to leave it happily in my memory box. Barbara Turner Vesselago came from Canada to lead us, in a beautiful place near Lagos (Agarve) called Monte Rosa. There was something very liberating about writing without editing. I did feel as if shackles had fallen off me and somehow managed to write 5 poems every morning. Of course, they now need editing to knock them into shape, but that wasn't the purpose of the exercise. 

The mornings were spent in silence and you write until mid-day and then print it out and give it in to Barbara. In the afternoons we would meet and Barbara would read out the work anonymously - a bit tricky if you are the only poet! We had a wonderful group of people, 4 from Portugal, 3 from Canada, 1 from Sweden and 1 from France, all writing in English. They were wonderful writers as well as being supportive and funny.

The picture above is of the cork forest over the road where we would go for walks. The trees are wonderful shapes and look like chorus girls. As it was April the wildflowers were in full bloom, especially the giant rock roses.

I haven't been exactly lazy since my return, but feel as if I've been fiddling about. I've been editing work and looking at all the impending competitions. I know they are such a long shot but it is exciting to have poems on the move, even a rejection can be exciting, as there is always a chance! I'm also trying to decide which poems to read at our first Stanza group reading at the end of June.

House of Wonders

Our Stanza group are very happy to have chosen a venue for our first poetry reading. The House of Wonders in the centre of Cascais looks like the perfect place for an informal reading with an open mic at the end. We have no idea how many people, if any, may come but reckon we have to give it a go.

We have a name which we chose democratically with an anonymous vote and call ourselves BLUE  ORANGE POETS. Agneta, who is one of our group is a fabulous artist and is designing a logo which I'll post here once she's finished.

In a couple of weeks I'm heading off to the Algarve for a Freefall Writing week lead by Barbara Turner Vesselago. I'll certainly be blogging about it afterwards and am looking forward to the whole experience.

Spring

What a wonderful surprise to catch a few days of sunshine in London and this beautiful spring offering on Eel Brook Common. 

I managed to go to a poetry reading at the Royal Academy, based on the architectural exhibition Sensing Spaces, that's on at the moment. Called Wandering Words, it was Pop Up Poetry, a first for me, and the poets popped up all over the place. The problem was that they'd usually popped down again before I, and many others, could get to hear them. The acoustics didn't help and visitors to the exhibition were milling around chatting at the same time. The exhibition was spread between various rooms and some of the exhibits were mazes and passages, which made it even harder. I think it's a brilliant idea but I was disappointed as I'd gone especially to hear Tamar Yoseloff, Robert Peake and Helen Ivory, among others, and it was hard to find them. I'm afraid I gave up and left early.

Just before leaving Portugal, Visual Verse, http://visualverse.org/ asked me to write a poem for their March picture. It was fun to do, but my layout (postmodern apparently) didn't work on ipads/iphones so it looks a bit of a mess. Another lesson learnt ... stick to the left hand margin! I got a bit nervous when I received emails saying Tweets had gone out mentioning my name. I need to learn more about Twitter, although I love following people and it's a wonderful way to find out about poetry events, I'm ashamed to say I don't really know how to Tweet. Take a look at Visual Verse as the idea is wonderful and I'll certainly have another go next month.

This has been a busy few days and I was happy to achieve, at last, the poem I've been trying to write about the shell line at Shingle Street. (You are very lucky to get two pictures today).

It came about through as assignment with my Poetry School online course. This assignment was about Exploding Form. I chose a pantoum as it's the one form I really love and eventually, after days of fiddling around with words and formats, the poem seems to have pulled together and I'm happy with it. That is something I VERY RARELY say about my poems. I may not feel so happy after it has been critiqued.

I got back to Portugal last night with the sun in my wake, so let's hope winter has nearly gone.

I'm so fed up with the rain that I'm not even inspired to think of a title for today's posting. I can see that the UK is having a terrible time, and Portugal is also bowing under the weight of water. The waves have been up to ten metres high, gale force winds and it has rained non-stop since December. Sunday was a red alert day and the winds were scary up here in Sintra.

Writing a poem a week appears to be my normal rhythm. Then hours and weeks of editing go into them, so the writing goes on for a long time.

I've just started a new online course with The Poetry School with Kathryn Maris as the tutor and I'm very excited by it. It's called What are the rules and when can we break them? We've just submitted our first poems for discussion and I had a wonderful time writing a poem, as a sort of free-write, ignoring all the rules that have come my way since I put on a poetry hat. As a result it is the longest poem I've ever written, very different to my previous tidy poems. There's a great feeling of energy within the group and I'm looking forward to the next few weeks.

This posting looks forlorn without a picture so here is photo of clouds on Monday morning after the storms.

Beachcombing

Our Stanza group met today and they've written some fabulous poems inspired by beachcombing. We've had fantastic storms which have really churned up sand and debris, destroyed huts and wrecked beachside restaurants. The idea was to bring photographs of  their finds with a poem/poems about them. I was excited by their work and we are continuing with the same theme for next month's meeting.

Meanwhile plans are afoot again to organise our first public reading here in Portugal, so hopefully more about that later.

No resolutions.

I don't like resolutions as I always break them but I have tried to make some poetry ones.

a) I plan to read more using the time I waste fiddling around with things like templates for my blog and Googling around on my ipad. 

b) I'm going to carry on with the Reading notebook that I used for Lancaster. It stops me dipping in and out of poetry books and magazines in an aimless way and helps me to concentrate on what I'm reading, focus on poems I like, and think about why I like them.

c) build writing time into every week.

d) put all my writing notes into some sort of order.

I think that's enough for a year when I wasn't going to make any resolutions. Anything must be easier than dieting, but I won't talk about that one here.

The picture is blue string I found on the beach at Christmas. It shows an unravelling, the way of resolutions. I'm meant to be beach-combing for material for a poem for the next stanza meeting but it's been pouring with rain for days. The next sunny day I will go out and comb the beaches, and that's a promise.

So, Happy Resolutions to you all.