Poetry&Poetry

I've had a poetry bonanza in England for the last few weeks. Firstly with the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival which was as wonderful as ever. It started with a fantastic workshop with Robert Wrigley who, with his charm and humour, had us all writing away. I attended a talk on Poetry Travels with Olivia McCannon and readings by Richie McCaffery, Kim Moore, Shazea Quraishi and Luke Yates. Close Readings, Craft Talks, Discussions and Short Takes. It was exhausting and exhilarating and the only problem was not being able to go to everything.

Back in London it was my turn to read. My first reading in public was at the wonderful Troubadour Cafe for the launch of the latest edition of Magma, number 57, one of my favourite poetry magazines. I had one poem in the magazine called '&' which I read, plus one other poem which I chose, called 'If I were an Animal'. The theme for this edition of Magma was The Shape of the Poem and look at the fabulous cover! It was an exciting evening with lots of poets reading some inventive and wonderful work and the atmosphere was warm and vibrant. I imagined that I would be terrified, and was certainly nervous, but the atmosphere carried me along and I had a fascinating evening.

My second reading, was a few days later, for Second Light, a network of women poets. I'd had a poem commended in their competition which was then published in their magazine Artemis Poetry. I love this magazine for its selection of poetry and for its articles which are hugely informative. I was given a 7 minute reading, which doesn't sound much, but seemed quite a long time to me. Strangely, I found this reading unsettling, as the room was small and the audience very close. I think I galloped my way to the end, but, as with every new experience, I learnt a lot, mostly about how not to read. I found it a very interesting event held at The Art Workers' Guild with some powerful poems being read. Moniza Alvi, who had judged the competition then read from her moving new collection At the Time of Partition.

So now I'm back in Portugal, in the middle of making turkey gravy to freeze for Christmas. There's not much poetry in that.

Where has it gone?

Once again I'm moaning about 'time'. I haven't posted for 9 months, enough time to have a baby, but my baby has been my poetry portfolio. The MA is finished and my portfolio is sitting on a desk somewhere in Lancaster. I thought I'd feel bereft after the MA but I'm writing as much as ever and starting to send poems out to magazines and competitions. It takes a lot of organisation to keep track of them all. I don't want to get in a mess sending copies of the same poem to different magazines at the same time. I keep a sort of running commentary on Excel that seems to take care of it all.

My Stanza group is going strong. We've been meeting for two years now and we have a wonderful time together. There is a lot of talent there. We are feeling brave enough to give our first public reading, so hopefully we'll have it organised for the New Year. The hardest thing is to find a venue for free.

Meanwhile I'm just back from a holiday in Fort William, via the lake district, which was magic. Having lived out of the UK for so long I'm starting to feel like a tourist in my own country.The photograph is of the gatehouse at Milton Lockhart near Carluke, which is being restored. The old house was moved stone-by-stone to a theme park in Japan. The new owners of Milton have built a wonderful looking new house which doesn't clash at all with the feeling of the place.

It is still boiling hot in Portugal and so dry that I'm permanently sniffing the air for the smell of smoke. The other day there were two fires, which looked much closer than they were, but I had to get into the car, passport and wallet in hand, and go and make sure that they weren't just around the corner. The smell of burning travels for miles. Luckily the fire station is very near to us and a siren goes off to gather up the firemen when they are needed. They are volunteers and do an amazing job.

I am now resolved to get back into blogging. I don't think I've really sussed out how it all works but I'll get there eventually.

New Year

This time last year I was getting ready for my trip to New Zealand and now I'm off to Australia to see family. I'm not looking forward to the unusually high temperatures they're having at the moment, but I'm longing to return there again. I wish it wasn't quite so far away. 

I'm not happy at my lapse in blogging but I'm working hard on my poetry portfolio and the tutorials come round very fast. I know I shall miss it all when it finishes in July. I then have until September 1st to submit. I'm aware that the time will pass very quickly and am trying not to panic. I would love to learn how to add all sorts of wonderful pictures and links to a blog and that is something else I plan to work on after my course has finished.

I'm still in a poetry wonderland, reading lots of poetry books and trying to keep up with the new writers emerging daily. I've also started to submit poems to competitions which is exciting and then humbling! I look enviously at the winners and am always astonished at the high standards. I'm also amazed by the unusual slants people take when there is a theme. I will never get published unless I try, so I think it's the route to take. After September I'll concentrate much more on submitting poems.

I did a fabulous online course with The Poetry School on the poetic line and learnt a lot. There just doesn't seem to be time to put it all into practise. I will certainly continue with The Poetry School once my MA has finished.

I have a poetry workshop tomorrow and the group is working very well together. We've been going for 18 months and have moved out of the Church in Estoril to a local coffee bar, or rather 'Tea Room'. It's very elegant with a tantalizing choice in hot chocolate.

I leave in two days so I'm off to pack. I hope to get back to my blog on my return, meanwhile a Happy 2013 to everyone.

Summer

I feel cross with myself for letting this blog slide over the summer. When I last wrote I was  just setting off for Lancaster University. Well, summer school was the most amazing week and I don't know what I'd been so nervous about. I met with a wonderful group of people in the real world, as we'd only met virtually before, and some great tutors. I won't wax lyrical or it will never end.

Poetry workshops start up again in a few weeks time. I've changed the meeting place from the church hall, which worked well, but was a bit gloomy, to a fantastic gallery/cafe called 'The House of Wonders', in Cascais. If that doesn't stimulate creativity, nothing will.

The above picture is of Cascais Cemetery. I became fascinated by the Portuguese custom of  digging up bodies after 5 years, cleaning the bones, and putting the remains into little boxes in the wall, to create space. Some of the boxes have windows, like peep shows. Apart from the remains, there are all sorts of things inside: little shoes, photos, plastic flowers, sun hats...as you can imagine, there are quite a few poems evolving out of this.

I'm going north to Porto next week and spending a few days in the Douro Valley, one of the most beautiful places in the world. Let's hope some poems come out of it. I'm not much good at nature poems but love writing about urban environments, so perhaps I'll just read a good book or prepare for the start of the next academic year. I have lots of ideas for poems but not much idea about what area I want to explore next. I've been reading a fascinating book called The Art of The Poetic Line by James Longenbach. I hope it's going to help me to understand enjambment better. I always seem to break the line in the wrong place!

Where Does It Go?

What happens through the door, is it for an arrival or a departure? And what has happened to time since my last blog?

The Aldeburgh music festival came round again and was as fabulous as always...even the sun gave a cheer or two along the way. Now I'm trying to get ready for Summer School at Lancaster. I'm editing all the poems I've written during the year; some are redeemable and some are going, or have gone, to be recycled as cardboard boxes, pulp or perhaps incorporated into a designer handbag and sold for a fortune. Sadly not my fortune, but somebody else's.

To get to Lancaster I have to cross London from Fulham to Euston during the Olympic road race which goes slap down the Fulham Road...I am expecting chaos and will have to trundle my books, poems, pc and hopefully some clothes across London, probably on foot.

Oulipo

I've stepped into new territory this week with an online course at the Poetry School called 'Adventures in Form'. The first assignment was to write an Oulipo (Ouvroir de litterature potentielle or Workshop of Potential Literature) sonnet. This involves choosing a sign or slogan which you use as your title and then writing a sonnet only using the letters available from the title. Does that make sense? I used a well known brand name in my title, not sure if I'm allowed to mention it here, but it was 'Things Go Better With C--- C---' and my first two lines were 'Scene one; a ghost town in Castilla/the off-stage chatter of castanets...' It took hours and I nearly gave up on it. You can play around a bit, and as you can see, I've already cheated in the first lines.

          The second assignment was to write an N +7 poem. This involves replacing every noun in a text with the 7th noun after it in a dictionary. The results are great fun and turn up some great juxtapositions. I used it on a poem I've been trying to write for ages about a boy who thinks he's a super-hero. I couldn't get the right quirkiness, and then using N + 7 it turned up some wonderful words that worked really well. I only chose the ones that I wanted. You can go from N + 1 to any number you want.

(I don't know why my formatting has gone wrong here, but I shall try and work it out!)

Bellbird

I've written three poems about the bellbird and am dissatisfied with them all. The first was a sonnet, the second a villanelle and the third, free verse and really stripped down to the minimum. His song is so ethereal and beautiful that it's hard to put into words. I tried to post my video here of him puffing up to pipe his tune but it took so long that I gave up.
Thanks to my tutor I've been reading Elizabeth Bishop and have fallen in love with her work. The End of March is one that stuns me with its imagery. I'm reading her poems in tandem with her letters in One Art edited by Robert Giroux...it's a feast.