Newsflash!

I was very lucky to find out that Ruth O'Callaghan has started coming to Lisbon to give residential workshops. She has (brilliantly!) accepted to come and spend a day workshopping with our Stanza group. I'm also going to join in with one of her residential weeks and I'm looking forward to an interesting beginning to the New Year.

Last night I got back from a weekend in Barcelona which was a fun start to Christmas as the streets and squares were full of Christmas markets. It is a fabulous city but I never have enough time. This time I managed to get to the Picasso museum and the never-to-be-finished Sagrada Familia. I've been there before, but it's like a magnet over the city, and draws me in. Next time the Miro Foundation will be top of my list.

It's a quick change of suitcases before we set off for family in France tomorrow. I think it's meant to be a skiing holiday but there seems to be no snow. Portugal is basking in sunshine.

So Happy Christmas and a Peaceful New Year with lots of Poetry.

La Sagrada Familia

Making Friends!

Yet again I haven't managed to keep up with my blog but I wanted to introduce you to my new best friend from Moniack Mhor. Isn't she a beauty! We had such great weather and such a wonderful group of people that it was a good tonic before the start of winter. But where is winter? It certainly hasn't come to Portugal as we are still having temperatures of 17º in the daytime.

I've just finished a wonderful online poetry course with the Poetry School. This time it was a feedback course with Professor Andy Brown and I got the most honest feedback that I've ever had. He took a lot of trouble with all of our poems and his comments were very constructive. I wish he'd do another course as I'd be first to enrol. Critiquing is a very tricky business; if you're too tough you can put someone off writing for life, but if you're too kind, it just isn't helpful or constructive. The whole idea is to help some-one to improve their writing.

I went to Ireland in October and spent a few days in Dublin which was fascinating. I had only been once before when I was about 17 and only for about 5 minutes. I fell in love with The Book of Kells at Trinity and made a load of notes. I tried to visit as many bookshops as possible and ran all over the place looking for them. The Winding Stair was a treasure trove of books, a lovely place to spent time rummaging around. I was lucky enough to catch a poetry reading (Katie Donovan & Peggy O'Brien) at Books Upstairs, a wonderful shop in an old house with a narrow staircase, beautiful stained glass windows and lots of poetry books and magazines.

I can see that my list of books and magazines needs updating and I promise to get round to it soon. Meanwhile I have an assignment to do for my online course with Helen Ivory and lots of reading to do for the fabulous reading group on Alice Oswald, led by Kathryn Maris. Alice Oswald has been a revelation for me and I think her poem 'Dunt' is one of the most fascinating and beautiful poems I've ever read.

I'm nearly forgetting my most exciting news which is that my poem 'The Lost Art of Speaking Spanish' has just been published in the latest issue (63) of Magma. Yippee!

Bananas!

This is meant to be a blog about writing poetry but somehow the garden keeps sneaking itself in. We have bananas for the second time in 15 years. I've been writing poems about the garden too. I think it's because I've had to spend more time digging and planting since putting the house on the market. Mind you, with one viewing in six months, is it worth it? It has renewed my love affair with the garden, so I suppose the answer is 'yes'.

Summer took over my life with family and visitors so this blog was put to one side. Now September is here, things have quietened down and I seem to have taken on a lot of poetry commitments.

Next week I'm heading off to Moniack Mhor, a writing centre near Inverness, for a tutored poetry retreat with Peter and Ann Sansom. I'm really looking forward to it and have a pile of things I want to work on. I'm going to be going through London just at the time of the Poetry Book Fair so I'm going to go along and pick up some pamphlets. I find pamphlets are a wonderful way of publishing (and reading) poetry and would love my own one day!

Meanwhile I've enrolled on a reading group at the Poetry School for reading Alice Oswald. Kathryn Maris is the tutor, and the first poem she has given us to read is called Dunt and it is quite amazing. A poem like that makes you realise what a wonderful art poetry is. Writing poetry has also taught me to read it, and I wonder what I did with my life without a poetry book tucked into the car, my pocket or a bag, for company.

Magazine Swap

We had a great Stanza meeting last week. I'd lent the group some of my magazines, well marked with my name so that I get them back, and they had to find poems they liked and disliked and we discussed them. They then found a poem that inspired them to write one of their own. Sometimes it's a struggle to get them to read contemporary poems, so this was a great success.

It went so well that we're repeating it for our next meeting in May and they have swapped magazines with each other. Will I ever get them back?

Spring has really come to the Sintra hills and I'm attacking the brambles in the garden that seem to have sprung out of nowhere. They are always lurking ready to attack, and when we bought the house we had brambles in, the now orchard, that came over my head. We had no idea that there were apple and plum trees underneath.

A really short post today as I'm off to London tomorrow and am trying to get some poems ready for a couple of competitions. It would be great if I could learn how to stop fiddling around with them forever.

Poetry Books!

I'm going back to keeping a reading record like I did when I was studying for the MA. Hopefully this will cure me of my addiction to my ipad. First choice off my shelves is Michael Longley's A Hundred Doors.

Yes, time does fly!

I've been adventuring in Colombia, Ecuador and Galapagos and can't quite believe that the trip, that took a year to organise, is over ... except for about 400 photos. This is also an excuse for lack of blog posts, though, in fact I've been home for a month.

My poetry is struggling and stuttering.  I've been working on one poem for months which just WON'T come right in the last line. Maybe a message to bin it, but I think there might be something worth saving. I can't even put it away for a bit as it won't let go of me. 

Thank goodness for the poetry school as I've enrolled for an online course with Rebecca Goss, 'Poetry of Home and Domestic Objects.' This suits me well as I love writing about the power of familiar objects in the house. I hope it will bring back my muse.

I think that my ipad distracts me from reading properly. I'm too easily distracted when an email pops in, or an idea takes me off on a tangent. I'm going to give myself some rules and settle down to some serious reading of all those fabulous poetry books sitting by my bed! Here the Poetry School is also coming to my aid again, as I've enrolled in a reading group with Clare Pollard, on reading Plath's Ariel. I can't wait for the summer courses to get going in May.

The house has been taking up lots of my time. I'd no idea how untidy we'd become and I've been trying to tidy up for the house to go on the market. At the moment I've stuffed everything into cupboards and into the loft and have a feeling I won't be tackling that lot until we get an offer and the pressure is on. The photographs were taken yesterday, so by Monday, the house we've lived in for 20 years, should be on the market. I have no regrets now the decision has been taken, and look forward to moving somewhere with a smaller garden, or just maybe, no garden at all. Anyway I'm being strong minded and not starting the search until we get a bite. I've always bought my homes by falling in love with them, and I don't want to fall in love, without the funds to get married!

Signing off with a happy house in Cartagena!