THE MICHAEL MARKS AWARDS

"The First Telling", which I wrote about in an earlier post, has won this tremendously generous award and I am reeling with joy! It was a splendid and glittery evening, a chance to meet everyone else on the shortlist, both poets and publishers and I very much enjoyed attending. Couldn't believe it when my name was listed as the winner. And I was delighted in a more sobering way as the first winner of this award was the late Elisabeth Burns, a very fine poet with whom I corresponded when she was suffering from cancer. She had seen my article on Louis MacNeice's poem "Snow" which sustained me greatly when I too was ill with cancer.
The winning of this award brought it home to me how lucky I am still to be here. Even luckier to be off to Greece next year to take up the 2 week residency at The Centre for Hellenistic Studies, Napflion, which is the second part of the award. I can't wait!

POETRY BREAKFAST AT BEATON'S CHESTER

A welcome start to a week, in Beaton's Tearooms, Chester, to gather a group of writers together, and share poetry and breakfast for an hour! The event was very well-supported, Beaton's breakfast was excellent - croissants, pains au raisins, toasted tea cakes or simple toast and jam, lots of tea or coffee, and the poems read were very good, our theme was City life and we had poems on the good side of city life and the dark side, poems about London, Prague, Chester and Liverpool, poems about trains, traffic lights, bridges and many more. An hour's worth of delight for all concerned! We also had poems on the city walls, provided by Julia McGuinness who is soon to launch her first collection, about our historic walls, on October 21st, at Alexander's jazzbar.

We'll be running another event on Monday 2nd November, when the theme is "The Zoo". Chester Zoo has just added an elaborate section based on islands of the world and we hope for some poems on this theme, but anything to do with zoos, zoo animals, zoo keepers, visitors, the human zoo etc, will be welcomed.

www.Beaton's Tearooms.co.uk
Julia McGuinness  www.creativeconnectioncheshire.co.uk

BUTTONS

Helena Nelson has recently posted an article about Buttons on her blog at Happenstance Press. She kindly included my poem "The Wayward Button" as an example of how buttons can pinpoint a memory.

It seems from the responses that many people love their old button tins, often passed down from Grannies, or mums. I had such a tin once but it annoyed me that  - all those buttons!  - and I could never find a suitable replacement button in it when I needed one, so I gave it to a friend who does craftwork.

However I did keep a bagful of very beautiful glass buttons. Which I'll probably never use....but I might.

INJURY TIME!

Haven't posted anything lately as I've been sitting with my leg up on a pillow after falling off a wall; it's been too painful to sit and type but things are improving rapidly now and I am hoping to continue my series of reviews of the work of contributors to "Caboodle" (Prole Books), very soon.
I have tweeted occasionally because that's quick!!
Been thinking about the word 'common' as a prefix to so many species - saw a 'Common Footman Moth' , my first, the other day and fell in love with  its elegant beauty - anything but common. And since we are losing so much now, nothing deserves such a prefix.
I have a poem considering this question in a forthcoming Scholastic publication for children - 'The Common Newt' which will appear in Funny Poems for Children, (Animals) in September.

TWITTER-ING

Did my usual "Sunday Posting" of tweets, mostly about country things, flowers, scenes, trees, quirky things noticed. I love wandering round with my camera taking pics of things that delight me, and tweeting is my way of sharing these with the world. Not that the world is very interested but that doesn't matter!

You can find me on Twitter   @mcevoygill

READINGS

I have some readings looming, hoorah!:

Bradford Lit Fest, 16th May: reading with fellow poet/ novelist Mandy Sutter at Bradford library, 2pm.  I'll be reading a selection of my poetry.

Barnton Library Cheshire, Monday 18th May, also with Mandy Sutter. As above.

Much Wenlock,   June 11th, 9.00am-10.00am.  Guest reader at Anna Dreda's Poetry Breakfast, Tea on the Square.

Ledbury Poetry Festival.    Sunday July 5th, 2pm, in the panelled room, The Master's House. I'll be reading from "The First Telling",  my recent Happenstance pamphlet.

CABOODLE REVIEW, PART 2

It's the turn of Russell Jones' collection "Our Terraced Hum", the shortest collection in 'Caboodle', consisting of 13 sonnets.
In her foreword to "Caboodle"  Angela Readman suggests the poems  have a slightly voyeuristic quality to them, since they are based very much on observations of other people's lives. I think I would say they are minutely observed by a poet with a very sharp eye for the goings-on of urban lives. In the very first poem the poet states 'I sit watching the lives of others, fan/ whirring, reeling in the sweaty cling/ of life.' But includes himself in that 'sweaty cling' by using the first person - it is 'our terraced hum', not theirs.

"The Flat Opposite" depicts a couple who've long lost interest in each other: the woman goes to take a candle-lit bath and when she reappears dressed only 'in the flowers of white smoke' she finds the man busy flicking through TV channels, oblivious to her presence , though the poet is not - he appreciates seeing this 'goddess' through his window. Voyeuristic perhaps, but you get a feeling of lost opportunity, an underlying wistfulness in the face of human indifference one to the other.

Jones has a good grasp of country life despite these sonnets having urban settings. In "The Back Room" an old mirror recalls for the inhabitant a country childhood rich with the smells of strawberries, memories of ploughed fields, summer bathing with friends. It is relegated to the back room, while its owner 'treads the torn beige carpet... a clock/ marking his exit through vast streams of corn,/ larks screeching'. Likewise in "Garden State" we meet someone who surrounds himself with wild flowers who 'swims/ in the rainbow of life that surrounds him'. Both poems remarkable for their countryside knowledge.

In three of the poems there is a strong hint at desire for escape from the urban scene of 'hot rod bawling down the road ....gaggles of drunks...brotherhood hymns from the football grounds'. Pigeons become angels, the reek and fume of the street become a dragon on whose back you could clamber and  name your destination "Above the 100% Human Hair Extension Salon". "Reflections on the Dog House" has a similar yearning where the dogs are tired of the 'bright and brash' streets, wanting to escape into 'a cradle of stars'. In "Loft Conversion, The Smoking Gallery" an ageing man pours a drink and remembers a stag he shot in '37 with the'old ghost of his gun'. His loft dwelling is a 'haven of eyes in the desert/ of a blind city.' as if he were still out hunting as before. What he has lost 'remains in the art of preservation', a hoof, antlers, a tail.

Russell Jones' language is terse and to the point,with a harsh urban overtone that sometimes peels away to reveal the nostalgic beauty of a far-off remembered world. A short collection but a very fine one.

CABOODLE, REVIEW PART 1.

Caboodle, published by Prole Books,  is an interesting and successful collection of the work of 6 featured writers.I am delighted to be one of them. I feel the only way to comment on the collection is to take each poet's work one by one so I'll begin with the first:

 Karina Vidler.

Her included pamphlet of work is titled "Facing", well-named as the poems face up very bravely to many truths about ageing, middle-life angst, the need for love, children grown and leaving home and  elderly parents dying - the classic middle-age sandwich.
In some of the poems there is a strong smack of the ageing cougar,  a woman who knows herself to have 'sags and bags and lines', rejecting men with 'sprawling gut, balding head' in contemplated favour of encouraging a young man to light  'his fuse to an experienced slow burn' Very French, very Collette!  (from "May I have an Arctic Monkey please?", Page 16.)

Vidler is not exactly kind to herself: in "Here we go again" she recalls past misdemeanours at school, and now, menopausal,  rushing to a poetry class she writes 'I am bad./ I have arrived late./ I must wait/ until the good students have read their poems.' A savage honesty is frequently found in these poems, they are like lemon juice without enough honey - shocking but sharply wonderful! And clever as they embrace humanely many experiences common to anyone getting older.

The child leaving home for example: in "Second" she and her daughter are waiting at Euston for the L'pool train, the mother worrying that nothing is packed in plastic bags and if the zip on the case snaps, there will be 'a fountain of lacy knickers' everywhere. The daughter tells how her boyfriend's mother wept in the car when he left, and they console themselves with the joke that the second child's departure is not so harrowing since the 'furrow' has already been 'ploughed' by the first.It ends with the mother saying to herself 'I can't tell you how this pain is not one bit easier/ not one bit less.' Deeply touching.

The need for love at any age is beautifully written about: in "Impossibility" she describes ' getting by on random scraps of love', the brush of an arm or a leg in a train, until a gay man at work shows her kindness, giving her cash for a BLT when she's left her purse at home, offers her 'virtual hugs' on a bad day etc. And the poem ends truthfully and wistfully "I must understand./Your partner is a very lucky man.'

"My Love Affair with Frasier" carries the same theme; in this witty poem loyalty to a TV series offers a kind of simulated love like the 'virtual hugs' of the former poem. 'I didn't mind when you started to repeat yourself;/ it was comforting knowing what you were going to say next.' And concluding 'as this nest finally empties/ I'm going to need you more than ever.'

The poems also display great tenderness: "Psyche Ranimee par le Baiser del'Amour" deals again with the 'hormone-fuelled cougar' but ends poignantly with reference to Canova's staue of Eros bending to awaken Psyche 'she's all yearning and straining' but the god 'holds her gently/ and there's no humiliation, only love.'

A strong, refreshingly honest collection of poems about what it means to be human. I really enjoyed these.

REVIEW OF THE FIRST TELLING

There is a very good review of 'The First Telling 'in the Dundee University Arts Review. (DURA).
Very pleased to read it! It's available online too.

OVARIAN CANCER AWARENESS MONTH, MARCH 2015

My mother, taken on her honeymoon. I do not have many pictures of her as a young woman, and, poor thing, she only just made it to pensionable age, which was then 60. She was diagnosed at 56 with terminal ovarian cancer, managed with the help of (then) brutal treatments to survive for four more years, seeing both the birth of my brother's first child and also the (ill-fated) wedding of Charles and Diana. She died a few days before her own birthday in September 1981.


She had a beloved elder sister who had died of this disease in her 30's. But as people spoke very little about cancer back then she did not recognise the symptoms in herself and by the time she was forced to acknowledge her illness it was almost too late. She was admitted for surgery but they could do nothing, it was so far spread. She had bloating, pain and breathlessness, all of which anyone a little clued in now would understand as very serious indeed. But she didn't know; I didn't know -
I didn't even realise it myself when in 2000, also aged 56, I too had the same symptoms.It was a veterinary friend who bluntly told me I needed to go to my GP pronto!


So I did and next day I was admitted to hospital, stage 3 ovarian cancer,  and shortly after that had surgery, chemotherapy, and became very familiar with the insides of various clinics. But I was lucky; the chemotherapy treatment was better than what my mother had and I survived.


The biggest shock was that, when I was diagnosed, my father told me candidly that my mother's 4 sisters had all died of Ovarian cancer. I knew about Beth, the beloved sister, but I certainly didn't know about the others.My mother's family was large, and I didn't know them all.

But once I had that information to hand I was whizzed off for genetic testing and found to carry BRCA2 . Important information especially if you have daughters: such a gene can predispose to ovarian cancer ( and in my family it has definitely done that) but in men it can predispose to prostate cancer I was told. So everyone should be aware of this. My family all know and one of them has discovered the gene in their own system

It shouldn't be the case though that only where there is a family history you become entitled to genetic testing: I feel any woman with ovarian cancer should receive this - ANY woman with ovarian cancer. It might save herfamily, her daughters, even her sons from a lot of nasty trouble later in life.

And I mean nasty: my mother's own illness was appalling; she shrank to almost nothing but skin and bone; she was constantly sick, nothing tasted right and anyway she couldn't keep it down; her lungs were full of fluid and breathing was very painful.She died in great pain.

If you have any reason to think you might be at risk, check out the signs at Ovacome's website. You can help your daughters to BEAT ovarian cancer if you let them know the signs.

TELLING YOUR DAUGHTERS TO B.E.A.T OVARIAN CANCER

For ovarian cancer awareness month in March, Ovacome, the UK charity for the disease, are urging mothers to tell their daughters about the tell-tale symptoms of Ovarian Cancer which are:

Bloating;

Eating less (no appetite);

Abdominal pain;

Talk to your GP!


It is, I feel, wrongly referred to here as the 'silent disease': in the USA it is called the 'whispering disease' and this I think is far more accurate.


Here is a poem, which is my way of telling:

Daughters, I need to tell you

about pain each time I bent over,

about being so breathless

I felt my lungs were leaving my chest.

About my stomach

huge as a full-term pregnancy.

About my surgeon’s eyes above his mask,

the brilliant blue of them.

About pressing the button

on the morphine pump –what you thought

was ‘courage/cheerfulness’

was simply outright stoned.

About the nights my body was so full

of knives I couldn’t sleep

and when death came in to tempt me

I almost welcomed it.

About the utter focus of my fight to live.

Daughters, I need to tell you this,

because I want it never to happen

to either of you.

 Gill McEvoy

ANTHOLOGIES

There is something joyful about an anthology - a handy source of poems for occasions/ reading groups/a happy-pick-and-chose for you to dip in and out of whenever you feel like it.

I've been fortunate recently to have several of my poems included in anthologies: The Book of Love and Loss (ed June hall and Rosie Bailey); Her Wings of Glass (Second Light ed by Myra Schneider, Penelope Shuttle and Dilys Wood); Blame Montezuma (a collection of poetry about chocolate, Happenstance Press);The Darker Side of Love (Paper Swans); Heart Shoots (Indigo Dreams); and, soon to come, Caboodle (Prole Books).

There's a further joy to being included: it's so good to see how other poets have tackled a shared theme. When you think there's nothing new to say about anything, that old Ecclesiastical gloom-thing, pick up an anthology and revise your opinion!

THE FIRST TELLING, how it came to be

This small collection of mine, a pamphlet published by Happenstance Press in Nov 2014, deals with rape and its aftermath. It is effectively a sequence of poems which are best read in order and at one sitting. And it has taken me 3 years to bring it to the state it's now published in.

Because I love birds I have always been fascinated by the myth of the rape of Philomela by Tereus, her brother-in-law. In the myth all the protagonists, Tereus, Pholomela, Procne her sister and  Itys, Procne's son, are turned into birds. Versions differ but Tereus, the perpetrator of the rape, is turned either into a hoopoe or a hawk, Philomela into a swallow or nightingale, likewise Procne, and Itys into a goldfinch.

When I first began writing these poems I wanted to stick fairly closely to the original myth so that I could use these birds as images. But I found that didn't work. So I updated the myth and made it modern. Keeping the same birds. And that didn't work either. I showed it to trusted writing friends, and they all said it had great power but that it wasn't right. So I went to Hawthornden Castle for an amazing month of being looked after hand and foot and buckled down to it. A lot of the buckling down consisted of walking in the woods and by the river in the glen there, thinking it through. And of course I watched birds as well (peregrines, kingfisher, heron, buzzards, sparrow hawk, goldcrest).

There is a huge amount to be said in praise of walking as an aid to thinking. After 2 weeks of this I began at last to get a stronger feel of how the collection should work. Then when I came home the news seeemd to be full of nothing but child abuse, terrible stuff. It began with Jimmy Saville and shortly after that revelation the skeletons came thundering out of cupboards. It made me so angry. Oh so angry, and there is nothing like a bit of rage for fuelling a piece of writing.

And now it's in print, still with bird poems in, though not quite the mythological choices (but close) and it focuses more on the aftermath of rape - the silences, the self-harming, and then with the help of a counsellor, the steps towards a healing.

The print run is small - Helena Nelson, of Happenstance Press, now does only 150 copies of pamphlets. Should you want one I do urge you to buy one quickly; 150 copies don't hang around long and I've already sold 50 myself.

I feel and hope, and so does Helena, that this is an important collection - so much in it needs to be said and more importantly it also should encourage belief in the real possibility of healing.

It is available from www.happenstancepress.com, price £4.

LAURIE LEE

Been feeling a little disappointed that more was not made of Lee in his centenary year - bad luck to have the same year as the First World War, and also Dylan Thomas.I know celebrations were held in Stroud and rightly so; I just wanted more!

But my poetry reading group spent a night looking at his body of work, including the radio plays, and I have recently written a sort of response to his poem "April Rise",a thank-you rather for the poem. It's too late for it to go anywhere as the year is heading speedily towards its end so I'll post it on this blog instead.

To Laurie Lee, from Llandudno, with thanks for his poem “April Rise”

(in honour of his centenary)

If ever there were blessing in the air

it’s here, in this quiet evening light,

moonstone-blue at horizon’s edge.

It falls like silk on my tired eye.

The shaven head of the naked moon

peeps from night clouds closing in

as one by one the lights blaze out,

are doubled in the glaze of sea.

The Orme’s great hawk-shape spreads its wings,

scoops up the town in feathered hug;

white gulls slice a path through air,

brightness fills their wake.

Flocks of oystercatchers now

darken the line of salt-flecked sand;

their wistful piping carries loud,

like blessing in the night.

Round lamps gild the esplanade,

lacquered by smatterings of rain.

We look out at the bay and know

if ever world were blessed, it’s now.

Gill McEvoy

POND

Spent much of last week watching the pond you can just see through the window here, of The Courtyard House, Pentregall, Wales.It was alive with bees, on the fleabane, loosestrife and mints growing round the edge, and absolutely thriving with dragonflies, from hawkers to darters down to blue damselflies. Many were busy mating, flying in tandem or curled in a wheel. It was one of the best ways to spend a holiday!

Although I also went kayaking thanks to the generosity of my family and I have to say I can't decide which wins: that, or the pond, for highlight. The kayaking was wonderful, out on the open sea from Fishguard, managed by Kayak-Kings, Charles and Anthony, who were wonderful guides and instructors. I learned about the lcihens on the rocks, especially the black lichen that looks like oil-stains, as well as edible seaweeds, sponges, barnacles and limpets.

This event was a surprise, and when I realised what we were going to do my heart stopped -  I'm not fond of water and I thought Oh Lord, No! But it was one of the best things I've ever done and not anyhting like as strenuous as I expected (probably because Anthony was my co-kayak partner!0
My thanks to both of them (and to my family) It was excellent.

Bell Foundry at Villedieu les Poeles, Normandy

This is the gate to the bell foundry at Villedieu les Poeles, part of it rather, it's a pretty big gate! I thought this man pouring hot metal was delightful.

Our guide could have entered for Britain's Got Talent, except he was French - he was a real entertainer, leaping about joyously from one item to another and regaling us with stories. We learned that this is one of only 2 bell foundries in France and of course most of the bells made will become part of a carillon, or will simply be tolled: I think it is mainly the British who exercise the skill of ringing changes.
In the courtyard there were plenty of bells available to try out: a friend and I landed a  rather heavy-handed clout  with the hammer on one very large bell and frightened all the waiting tourists with the vast booming swell of sound that shook the area (it frightened us too!).

SORRY PHIL

I did forget someone - Phil Williams, winner of last year's Cheshire Prize for Poetry - how could I?
Phil's poetry is bright, sometimes odd, and certainly powerful.  And he runs so many events in Alsager...

GUESTS AT ZEST!

I have been running Zest!, Chester's Open Floor Poetry night for over 7 years now. When I say I, I mean myself and my team: Judy Ugonna, Leih Steggall and Angela Topping. I have been responsible chiefly for setting up the dates, liaising with Alexander's, our chosen venue, organising the guest poets and compering. I have really loved doing it but now I feel it's time to hand over to someone else and there is someone in the wings.. more anon.

But I would like to say that we have had some wonderful guests: Matt Meritt who, like me, started off as a Happenstance poet, and now has 2 excellent full collections out plus he is one of the editors of  Under the Radar; Mandy Pannett who has several full collections out plus a novel, Pat Borthwick who has won several major prizes including the Basil Bunting and the Keats-Shelley; Joan Poulson who has produced so many collections of marvellous poetry for children; Andrew Rudd, John Lindley, Harry Owen, all previous Cheshire Poet Laureates; Mandy Coe, author of 'Clay' and 'Can you see Laughter', plus her poet friends Sarah Maclennan and Colin Watts who run Dead Good Poets in Liverpool (Colin is published by Headland); Roy McFarlane, former Poet Laureate of Birmingham and a great performer; Chris Kinsey, BBC Wildlife Poet of the Year 2008 and author of three full collections of poetry; Katrina Naomi, widely-known poet;and recently Chrys Salt, who was awarded an MBE in the Birthday Honours list. Congratulations to Chrys, ( it had nothing to do with Zest! alas!) and congratulations to all the above for what they have gone on to achieve. I only hope they remember their performances at Zest! with some affection...

I know I've missed some people out: Jake Campbell who now co-edits Butcher's Dog magazine and has a pamphlet out; Maggie Norton, former Poet Laureate of S.Cumbria; Liverpool's quirky 'poet from kent' David Bateman -  and if I've forgotten anyone please forgive me. (It's the heat!)

It won't be the end of my public life in poetry though: I am still running the Poem Shed, and the Golden Pear poetry reading group, and Poem Catchers' workshops, the latter with Judy Ugonna.. And I want more time to catch up wth my own writing. Organising anything, small or big, takes a lot of energy...


So I imagine Zest! will undergo some changes in the future, changes no doubt for the better, I'm sure.

I am very grateful to all those wonderful people who have come to Zest! nights just to listen. And there have been many of these

WOODLAND HUMOUR? OR ELVES AT WORK?

There was a sign on the bottom of the tree saying Boot Sale!

COLLECTING MY THOUGHTS AS TO...

Sometimes it's good to stop and consider what you've achieved so far/ recently/ this year/ last year/etc.

I remember saying once to the young poet Jake Campbell   "If you think it's good enough then keep it in the post." This year I have followed my own advice, with some really heartening results: poems have been taken for Envoi, the Rialto, the Frogmore Papers, the Journal, Acumen, the Interpreter's House, Antiphon, ink sweat and tears, 'And other Poems', and The Shot Glass Journal (the latter 4 are all on-line poetry magazines.)
Also I am one of 6 poets to be featured in Prole's forthcoming anthology "Caboodle" .

I simply decided to use up whatever I thought was 'good enough' of the poems which have languished in files for some time, plus new work. And it brought success. But like many poets I find the effort of submission tiring - all those SAEs, letters, newly printed-out bits of paper etc. So possibly that will be it for a while, a long rest is called for maybe before the next round? On the other hand, unless it's a question of e-mail submissions, it's good to help keep the Post Office in business. Not that this counts as big stuff, it isn't; to borrow a title from the above list, it's only 'ink sweat and tears' on my part!

Although this year, more smiles than tears.YES!