What's in a Name?

Being born under the sign of Virgo, well, I've always regarded it as a misfortune; every Horoscope prediction for Virgo or summing up of Virgo's character is so dull - school report stuff: tries hard, persevering etc etc. Until I met this rose: it cost me 99p in B and M. It's called Virgo; it's an old rose first hybridised by a French nurseryman which gives it a bit of glamour! And it's beautiful, perfect buds open out to a rose with cheeky golden centre, the outside petals splashed with a pink blush as if Virgo has got something to hide...Hooray, hooray, that's more like it!! Never mind persevering....

FALLING

No, not snow, not leaves, not water down a hillside, but me, down two separate lots of stairs! Which is why there have been no new posts for a while. I have been in a lot of pain, and still am. Suddenly, it seems - and long before my time, I feel - I have a taste of what it's like to be semi-housebound. It's too painful to drive, too painful to walk far, too painful to garden. Even too painful to sit for long to write. I am getting help for it, and before long I am sure I'll be fine again. But how it makes me think of those who are faced with this every day, and for years. Do they do what I have done? Read and read and read: Murasaki, The Morville Hours, The Morville Year, Small island, Their Eyes were Watching God, The Tenderness of Wolves, The Stranger's Child, among a few of the books I've greedily ploughed through in recent weeks. What about the Telly you might ask? Well, I don't have one. I haven't had a TV for years now and don't want one. But I was very interested to learn that I am in that less than one percent of the nation who do not have TV! I have met 3 of that "less than". I wonder who are the rest? We must be a very select club. Or maybe you might think us barking mad...? Maybe, should I ever be housebound for real, I might change my mind... But not yet -oh no, certainly not!

Poetry Reviews

Feeling so angry!!! For weeks the Saturday Guardian has only given reviews of male poets, Paul Farley last week, yesterday Tom Paulin and so on and so on. Once there was a review of Mimi Khalvati's beautiful book "The Meanest Flower" but, as if influenced by the book's title the Guardian gave it only a mere, and mean, paragraph, whereas all these men Get HALF A PAGE. Come on Guardian, wake up to the fact that there are dozens of brilliant women poets out there. Let's see some of them reviewed...in half a page.

Much Wenlock

And a wonderful festival it was, too!
I went to hear Paul Henry who was excellent, just the right touch of warmth and personal anecdote; attended Ian Duhig's Ms. workshop and was impressed by Ian's tact, patience and dedication to his work.

Then Polly Bolton, Larks choir and I all burst variously into song and poetry readings on the Sunday, after which performance I have never in my life felt so hungry! The expression "I could eat a horse" wasn't far from it though I can't imagine ever eating a horse- I admire horses far too much.

My weekend ended with listening to Mario Petrucci's absorbing reading - I bought his book The Waltz in my Blood to study his new technique that he said was revealed to him in a dream (it's not an easy technique either! -taking already published earlier poems and rejigging them into a fractured kind of stream-of-consciousness is only a very small hint of what he is doing).

And finished the weekend in style by running off a high kerb in my car.There was a terrible bang and I thought 'Oh no, this is it, Goodbye to my venerable old Golf', but no, it was fine. As they say - "they're not made like that anymore".

The journey home was smooth and uneventful, made beautiful by the intense greens of April, and a view of distant hills. (They were not blue - the light was too sharp, so no Houseman experience)

This festival is pure delight, so much packed into a weekend, and the festival team is made up of incredibly helpful and pleasant people. How Anna, Liz, and Linda and all the rest kept smiling through such an exhausting weekend I don't know. Hats off to every one of them!

St Milburga and the Much Wenlock Poetry Festival

On April 15th singer Polly Bolton, her choir Larks and I will be presenting a joint performance of poetry and song on the theme of water, home, and St Milburga, the 2nd Abbess of Much Wenlock Priory. The Priory is an impressive building, what remains of it(and quite a bit does). It is huge and must in its day have been the equivalent of a sky-scraper in modern times.

Our performance is part of this year's Much Wenlock Poetry Festival, the 3rd year of the festival which was founded by Anna Dreda of Wenlock Books. St Milburga has many legends associated with her: she is recorded as having burst into flame when praying for the life of a child; she has a well dedicated to her in the town of Much Wenlock and also at Stoke St Milborough. At the latter, legend says that she drove off a flock of geese that were ruining a crop in a field nearby, and she not only saved the crop but made it come to yield, ready for harvesting, overnight.

The goose is her signature and the picture above was taken at the Stoke St Milborough well; it's the ornamental finial on the hand-rail leading down to the well.

You will find details of the festival programme on the website:

www.wenlockpoetry festival.org

Among the many performers will be Paul Henry, Mario Petrucci, Ian Duhig, ourselves as above of course! Jackie Kay, Martin Figura. And for all the other glorious performers ( so many!) please check their website.

Cheering!

Still looking a bit tatty, the garden, but how daffodils raise the tone!

Sharing Challenges in Poetry

On the website of Tears in the Fence, under Notes, you'll find Sheila Hamilton's account of sharing poetry challenges with me. We have been doing this for some time now and it has given rise to a great number of poems for each of us. Some of the poems have been good; some have been excellent enough to win the odd prize; many have been published; and some were complete failures. Both of us often found that when it was our own turn to set the challenge we ourselves got stuck. Much easier to respond to the other's task. But the best thing about it has been, as Sheila says in her essay, that it shakes us out of our comfort zones.

Our recent task was to write about paths or roads, creating a poem of over 50 lines or more. Curious that shortly after we set this, roads and journeys have cropped up in poetry everywhere... the Odyssey has been examined, used, and spoken of by poets, and Basho's Narrow Road to the North has been featured on radio. Is there really such a thing as a collective consciousness? And how does it work? The Green Man was popping up everywhere not so long back. Poems about cancer have been pretty extensively exhausted in the last few years (not so surprising since the disease is so common). Now it's roads/journeys. What next?

Meanwhile the best poem I know about roads is a poem called Those who Make Paths, by Catherine Fisher, from her collection The Unexplored Ocean (seren)