London Open Garden Squares Weekend

I was delighted to find myself in London during the OGSW and managed to visit three gardens with resident poets. Diane Mulholland was nearby in Fulham and by fluke I arrived just as she was giving a reading. She had written some lovely poems based on her time in All Saints Fulham Vicarage Garden and on the history of the garden. 

I then jumped on a bus to Nevern Square, and again things were on my side as John Grant was due to give a reading in 15 minutes which gave me time to look around and read poems he had pinned to the trees. He had a small but appreciative audience who loved his poems and his humour.

John in his POET's T shirt

I wanted to meet Julia Bird as I think I must have clocked up more hours with The Poetry School online courses than most people. She was resident poet at Arundel & Elgin Garden in W11 near where I once lived, so I went there on Sunday afternoon. She was in a suitably

poetic bower, so camouflaged by greenery that I nearly missed her. Poems hanging from trees like wind chimes held the clue to her whereabouts.

I love the whole idea of gardens with resident poets and will certainly apply next year as I think it would be a fascinating experience.

Sissinghurst Castle

Last Friday I went to Sissinghurst Castle along with other poets included in Paper Swans Press beautiful pamphlet The Poetry of Roses. We read in the rose garden where the colours and scents were stunning. It was a privilege to be in Vita's gardens after the crowds had left. We were able to wander around and take it all in. Unfortunately the tower was shut, but I will definitely be back. I'd been wanting to visit Sissinghurst for years but never imagined it would be a poetry reading that would lead me there.

I went on up to Aldeburgh for a few days of the music festival and saw the amazing Illuminations, staged to Britten's song cycle Les Illuminations, inspired by Rimbaud's poetry. It was a wonderful spectacle, part circus part opera, and Britten's music was truly fabulous. I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

I do wonder what will happen in Aldeburgh for the weekend of the poetry festival. I'm keeping the date pencilled into my diary as I think it would be great to keep it going in some form or other and can see on Twitter that there is a movement in that direction.

...and away!

I flew back to London for a couple of days for the launch of The Chronicles of Eve at The Poetry Café where I read my poem 'Pear Shaped'. The anthology is beautiful - just look at the front cover here. I apologise for the background fabric which is not apt for this powerful collection. I read it cover-to-cover, on the way back to Portugal, and I think it's a wonderful and edgy collection of poems. Congratulations Paper Swans Press.

Home!

After 6 weeks in London helping to look after my mother I have, at long last, made it back to Portugal. The weeds have thrived, the house needs painting after so much rain and there hasn't been one viewing. I went into Sintra this morning to look for a tile panel to put at the front of the house to make it look more exciting. I went at 9.00 to beat the tourists but they were already pouring out of buses and running around with selfie sticks. Anyway I met a fascinating man who can paint anything I want on tiles. He took me to his mother-in-law's beautiful courtyard garden which had some wonderful antique panels. Sadly, mine will be new, but I chose what I wanted and was even organised enough to have the measurements with me.

For the first few weeks after my mother's fall there was no time or headspace for poetry. I had to drop out of the fabulous online course I was doing with Liane Strauss with The Poetry School as I just didn't have any time. I also cancelled the course I had enrolled in with Kathryn Maris, starting in May. For the first time my poetry mind went blank which was a horrible feeling but I eventually started to do some editing and the muse returned. I entered a competition by Paper Swans Press for poems on Roses at Sissinghurst and was very excited to be highly commended which means my poem will be in their Roses pamphlet, and hopefully read (by me!) at Sissinghurst in June. I've always said I don't write about flowers or love but I also wrote three poems for Emma Press for their anthology on Love. I await the results, but surprised myself by having great fun with these themes.

Poetry Review and Magma were waiting for me on my return so I have plenty to read and I'm also sifting through my latest poems to see which might work together in a pamphlet.

My tile panel will look a little like this one

Wonderland Ekphrasis

I was lucky enough to be in London for a reading of poems written specially for the Alice exhibition at The British Library. The poems were a wonderful and diverse collection and a lot of them were very humorous. Holly McNish had me in stitches. I didn't know her work at all but have now ordered a copy of her book 'Nobody Told Me'. It was a joy to hear Mona Arshi, Robert Seatter and Amali Rodrigo, among others. I was hugely impressed by how beautifully everyone read and it was wonderful to be in London and able to catch this event. I miss this kind of thing in Portugal.

Our Stanza group is going from strength to strength and we have found a beautiful venue for our next reading. We are still investigating but it is in a lovely second hand bookshop called DejaLu in Cascais. The bookshop is run as a charity to help the professional development of young people with Down's syndrome. It would be great to be able to raise funds and/or awareness at the event. We are in the early days of this plan and probably won't think of holding the reading until after the summer.

Meanwhile, I am spending longer in London than first planned, as my poor 96 year old mother fell over and broke her hip on Mother's Day. She is very feisty and progressing well. This morning she was attempting the Times 2 Crossword, 18 hours after her anaesthetic!

Workshop

Ruth O'Callaghan gave our Stanza group a wonderful workshop day in Estoril. For some of the group it was the first time they had ever done a proper workshop and we had a lot of fun. It was a long day, with hard work, but the energy was fabulous and Ruth worked magic.

I'm really happy to have had two poems chosen for And Other Poems which will be posted on Josephine Corcoran's poetry website on March 11th. I've also had a poem chosen to be published in Paper Swans Press new anthology, so I feel very lucky.

Yesterday I had a peek at Visual Verse's picture for February and it was very inspiring so I stuck to the rules and wrote a poem in an hour ... mind you, it's a very short one and could do with some editing, anyway it's up on their website which is great. I write very slowly so this was in record time for me. I love spring, as I have lots of energy and do a lot of writing. It may not be spring in England but it's certainly come to Portugal.

Commas

I hadn't realised that I had fallen into a bad habit of using too many commas in my poems. I never used to, so it has crept up on me over the months. Luckily Helen Ivory pointed this out to me in my last assignment for her course, and, I've been going back over some of my poems to see how bad the damage is. It's not looking good!

On that note, Happy 2016, and my resolution is to 'watch those commas'. I've put a big pink Stickie on by desktop to remind me. It sits next to a Stickie with advice from Jo Bell 'make the first line interesting'.

The picture is of wind chimes made of ceramic bells for sale at the market in Lyon where we had a few days just after Christmas. They were very magical and I regret not buying any. I thought they would probably break on the way home.

I read a beautiful poem the other day on Josephine Corcoran's blog And Other Poems, by Mark Totterdell called Leaf, which has inspired me to carry on ... I didn't know his work but will search further.

Apologies for the randomness of this post. I think it's because I'm trying to gather my thoughts after Christmas and also to get some order back into my life, with a busy few weeks ahead :-)