Sometimes

I haven't posted a poem on this blog for a long time, so while I have been thinking and writing about gardens and flowers, here's a garden poem:

Sometimes

all it takes to be happy
is a line of washing
drying gently in the sun,
a fork stuck in a border,
sunlight falling through leaves,

striking the gold rim
of the blackbird's eye
as it watches from the fence
for the digging to be done.



This is one of my poems that was set to music by singer and choir leader Polly Bolton and performed at the recent Much Wenlock Poetry Festival.

Weeks of Perfume

In Chester near where I live the lime trees are all in flower and the scent is magnificent. Bees love these flowers. Years ago when I was ill in a local cottage hospital the night nurse Theresa told me how one hot summer she came home one day to find her lawn covered in drunk bumble bees - they'd overdosed on the lime tree outside her house and couldn't move! A bit like the way humans behave on Friday nights in Chester....

It's a time of perfume; lavender is in bloom in my garden, the rose Albertine, and sweet rocket, that old-fashioned cottage flower that few people grow now but I grow it near a seat. At night its scent fills the garden.
Privet is in flower too and its scent always takes me straight back to a house I once lived in by the sea. It had a "burgage" garden, a very long, thin strip of land bordered by privet hedges (nearly three hundred yards of hedge- a lot of cutting!). In the evening, to stroll down the path was to be accompanied by the flutter and dart of hundreds of night moths feeding on the privet blossom. Further down the garden there was a dense bed of evening primrose and in June this was always the site of ghost swift moths dipping and lifting over the flowers, like frail floating scraps of paper.. I have always tried to plant my gardens to attract insects; a summer without insect hum and flight is no summer at all.
In my garden here I have a self-seeded thick stand of poppies and in the morning when they open the flowers are full of bees and hoverflies; as the day goes on and the petals fall on these highly ephemeral flowers the bees move on to the borage and the lavender. I so love to watch them. A good stretch of "sitting and staring", or standing and staring, as W H Davies recommended is called for in these fine summer days of glorious scent and fulsomeness.

Shoes to Die For?

This is a genuine pair of Christian Louboutin Shoes. They are not mine but I have tried them on, and oh dear heart, what a sensation - elegant, soft as a caress, amazingly easy to walk in, oh, shoes made by a man who really understands a woman's foot and body alignment. No wonder they are so expensive (it will never be my lot to own a pair!!) The red sole is his hall-mark.

I have referred to Christian Louboutin's highly glamorous and beautiful shoes in poetry workshops I have run on the subject of Shoes, but never dreamed I would ever try a pair on. And now I have and I felt like a million "million dollars", but alas the shoes have departed with their new owner. But I have tried on the ultimate "glass slipper" in foot-wear and could now die happy (except I'm not ready yet...)

Sentinelle Blog

Have just found three of my poems "gems from past issues" of Sentinel magazine posted on the Sentinelle blog. What a nice surprise!! And I love surprises.

A Splash of Happiness!

This spring I have finally succeeded in having enough lily of the valley in flower to call a display (more truthfully a splash). Various neighbours and friends have given me roots over the last 5 years and at last there is a considerable spread of them. In the language of flowers they indicate "the return of happiness", and I was certainly happy to see them bloom! The French are more accurate than we are in calling them muguets des bois, (of the woods), rather than of the valley as we do. They like a semi-woodland setting. Mine are under a shrub rose, a tall buddleia, and a tree of heaven. Heaven and happiness together - I wish!

But they have accompanied a period of joy - the other pic was taken at the British Academy where I went (for the second year running) to receive 3rd prize in the English Fellows' Prize for Poetry. It is a lovely evening of awards for poetry and for children's fiction. The winning poems are read out, and the winning and shortlisted children's books are set out on display. Walker Books did very well this year, carrying off several prizes.A very likeable trio turned up from their group and how young they all seemed! (How old I must have seemed...)

I met Frances Thompson who was the second prize winner. C J Allen, who won 1st, did not come - shame as I was intrigued to see who he was ( I think he's a 'he') as he seems to win a great number of prizes in poetry competitions.
The prizes were presented by Jane Draycott who was very embarrassed as she mispronounced my surname. I forgave her, of course!

I like the fact that I'm standing in front of a banner that says "at the forefront of English" though you can scarcely see it in the pic, but I know it's there -that's exactly where poetry should be: the late Josephine Hart wrote that poets are "the gods of language".
I don't feel much like a "god" but I do know that poetry is a gift and a very special one, and that it is never easy to write a really good poem. Brevity is very deceptive!

Scattering Notes like Bright Pennies

This is the title of the performance that Polly Bolton, her choir Larks and I did on May 1st at the recent Much Wenlock Poetry Festival. The programme that we collaborated on was based entirely on my poems, many of which Polly has set to music, and the result of her musical inspiration, my words, and Larks' singing was truly magnificent. I honestly think, from the enthusiastic feedback we got at the end of it, that our audience was very satisfied, or as some put it "BLOWN AWAY"!
Polly is on the left of this photo, in white, I'm on the right, in green. Larks were all wearing turquoise.
We were given Holy Trinity Church, the main parish church of Much Wenlock as our venue and what a venue- gloriously light and airy, with excellent accoustics. Larks' voices soared like the real thing! (The title of the event is taken from my poem The Skylark).
It is also a very large space and we were very anxious to begin with as we watched people filtering in, wondering if it would fill. And it did! I'd like to thank all the friends who came from the Chester area to support it, and also to offer my warm thanks to Larks and Polly for an amazing musical experience of my own poems. Not forgetting the Festival organisers for hosting us!

This festival at Much Wenlock is only in its second year but it is a real delight. The town is small and very friendly. A shuttle bus service is provided to take people from the town to the bigger events at the Edge centre just outside the town and the Festival team could not be more welcoming.I thoroughly enjoyed hearing Imtiaz Dharker, Jo Shapcott and Andrew Motion reading at the Edge, on the Saturday, and would have liked to have heard Mario Petrucci on the Sunday but his reading clashed with our performance. You have to decide what to miss, and I missed Roger Garfitt, Carol Ann Duffy, Paul Henry and Simon Armitage among many other events. But I had a really great time even so.It's just a great place! Put it in your diary for next year - I'm sure this festival will go from strength to strength.

Review of The Plucking Shed

Hoorah! A brief review of "The Plucking Shed" in Other Poetry says 'an astonishing focus on what, in the poems, seems to be the thinnest of gaps between human and non-human worlds......A very impressive achievement'

I have also had a great review from Abegail Morley on her wordpress site, and I know there will be one in the magazines Artemis 6 and Tears in the Fence, although with this latter I understand that David Caddy is having difficulty finding finance for the magazine. (If you're flush, make his day and buy a copy, or subscribe)

With Abegail's review I really felt my work had been understood. Occasionally people have dismissed my work as being about the domestic - it's not, it's far from that. It may take the domestic as a base but then it moves out to explore other things, often the brutality of nature red in tooth and claw, but frequently tempered by humour. It is as Helena Nelson has said "far from reassuring".