It’s an annual ritual shared with an old schoolfriend. Charleston (Literary) Festival, at the end of May, takes place in the farmhouse once lived in by the ‘Bloomsberries’ – Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes et al. Several hundred people are accommodated in a marquee in the garden, with between-sessions visits toRead more ⟶
Author: Robin Houghton
Back
I haven’t posted here in a while, I actually took the blog ‘private’ for a few months, after a conversation with Catherine Smith about poets and blogging… she argued strongly for poets retaining a certain mystique and not baring their souls to all and sundry (or their weekly shop, or what they thought of theRead more ⟶
When my sister is old
I will wait at the door with flowers if she greets me at all it will be brief and cold as the Guildford house where the stairs stayed uncarpeted and the kitchen unmodernised, names and numbers taped on walls, coats and boots crammed under stairs. Her back will be bent like our mother’s, she willRead more ⟶
Invasion
It took three rows of barbed wire coiled round stakes, hammered at angles into sand and shingle. The beach packed and leaking like keddle nets of cockles in green buckets, for six summers. Wading off in gumboots, baitdiggers beyond the rocks held occasional wakes, observed by boys belly-down in the dunes with binoculars, swapping quietRead more ⟶
2 cosy cats
Olly packs em in at Lewes Poetry
Last night I nearly didn’t get a seat at the Lewes Arms for Oliver’s poetry night. Who were all those people? Where did they come from? I hate to say it, but having a few posters out this time (as opposed to none last year, despite my begging Olly to send me one to copyRead more ⟶
The key to writing better poetry is …
Saw a tweet about the new Arvon course list for 2012 being up. So couldn’t resist taking a look. I’m going through this thing at the moment where I feel a desperate need for some sort of mentoring, or at least workshopping, with better poets than myself. Better writers, more experienced… I guess I don’tRead more ⟶
The ups and downs of poetry submissions
Last week: issue 48 of The North failed to arrive, and when I asked for my ‘contributor’s copy’ I was told…erm… you’re not a contributor. The poem they’d asked for back in July 2011 had gone astray, and never made it into the issue. Boo! And now the next issue isn’t until October. Boo! ButRead more ⟶
T S Eliot prize winner
We saw him read on Sunday evening, alongside the other shortlisted poets. He was great, my money was on either him or Carol Ann Duffy to win (although I confess the only collection I’d read of the shortlisted ones was this…)
January weather
Could it get any worse?