On Being Elsewhere

I haven’t blogged here for a while. It’s partly because WordPress isn’t such a great platform to blog on anymore – forgive the *moan* but it’s nowhere near as easy to use as it used to be – and it’s partly because I’ve been busy elsewhere doing lovely things. Last year, I published two poetry pamphlets with small presses, had two launches, and I was lucky enough to be invited to read at lots of different places which was a wonderful experience. I started teaching writing workshops again, which I love doing. I’ve met some brilliant, open-hearted people and it’s such a delight to spend time re-reading and discovering new books as I plan my workshops. I also went to Australia at the end of the year with my husband, Andrew, mainly to see a very special friend of his who is now living dementia. It was the first time I’ve been to that part of the world and my first trip abroad since 2019. I was also a bit ill, nothing serious but a horrible virus that took a while to shake off.

I’m now using Substack for my newsletter about Trowbridge Stanza and for news of my writing workshops in Bradford-on-Avon and other poetry and writing-related news that might interest people. I also post on Instagram quite regularly. I think of Instagram as a mini-blogging platform.

One of my New Year’s resolutions this year is to pick up a book rather than my phone. So far, it’s going well. I’m reading a lot of fiction – novels and short stories. I re-read Carol Shields’ story collection Various Miracles and Hilary Mantel’s final collection before she died, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher. With both writers, I was overwhelmed with the sense of loss that they died at relatively young ages while still at the heights of their writing powers.

The very best poetry reading I went to recently was Alice Oswald in Bristol. What made the reading so good? She read from memory, clearly, not rushed. She read each poem twice, which my brain thoroughly appreciated. I had time to imbibe the language, to make sense of it. I was moved to tears, unexpectedly, not because the subject matter was moving but because I had a physical, sensory reaction of pleasure as I listened. I’ve just seen that she’s reading in Bristol again in April for Lyra Festival and I’ve already bought my ticket.

[POSTSCRIPT – I’m adding a note to say that, in the above description, I’ve said that Alice Oswald ‘read’ from memory when, in fact, she ‘spoke’ her poems, without a book in sight. I’m curious as to why I wrote this! Perhaps I had a sense and vision of her books as she spoke, or perhaps it’s because I associate her with books and therefore imagined them as she was speaking. Anyway, she’s a wonderful writer and speaker of her work, in my opinion.]

To summarise this post – hello, again, and, as always, thank you for reading.