Category: Children & poetry

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Midsummer update: poetry projects, novel stuff, podcast…

It’s been a busy few weeks. Today started very well by my getting the Wordle in one – third time this year! If you don’t know what Wordle is then I apologise. But a ONE is pure luck. I danced around the room – Nick probably thought I’d got a book deal. Speaking of which:

How’s the novel going?

Thanks for asking! I finished the first draft in 9 weeks, and have been editing since, also writing a synopsis, researching agents and trying to come up with a title. I’m also itching to start book two. Which might end up being book one, if you see what I mean. Apparently many first books are rubbish.

I was being polite, I’m really only interested in poetry..

Oh well fair enough! A funny thing did happen the other day, I suddenly wrote four poems – a sort of sequence I suppose – out of nowhere. But I haven’t really given poetry writing a lot of headspace lately. The ‘sudden burst’ actually came after listening to an online book launch by Pindrop Press. I was enjoying poems by Lydia Harris, and was inspired enough to buy her collection, Objects of Private Devotion. I haven’t started it yet though, mainly because I’ve been ploughing though historical novels to try to gauge where mine sits. But also, I have two poetry books to review for the Frogmore Papers, plus Jill Abram‘s debut collection Forgetting My Father (Broken Sleep) waiting to be read. Patience!

Another project I’m involved with at the moment is an anthology that the Hastings Stanza is putting together, to be published in October under the Telltale Press imprint. There are four of us on the editorial “committee” and at the moment I’m busy on the typesetting. I think the standard of poems is pretty high, though I say so myself, so it’s a pleasure to work on.

Recent events I’ve attended include the 40th birthday celebration reading for the Frogmore Press, then Rachel Playforth reading at Needlewriters. Rachel has written this lovely sequence about her home town of Lewes, called ‘Twitten’…

As regards submissions I’ve still got a dozen or so poems that have been out for between nine months and a year. Talk about indigestion. I kicked a few others out the door recently. But who knows. My acceptance rate is a shadow of it former self. I think perhaps my poetry is out of fashion. Oh well! Like growing older. What can you do?

At the least the Planet Poetry podcast is on the up, according to download/listener stats. It’s hard work though. I’ve just had an exhausting month recording and editing two back-to-back episodes, both of which had technical challenges. The most recent episode is a ‘Bumper Children’s Poetry Special’ in which I talk to Rachel Piercey and Kate Wakeling. It was great fun to do! Nevertheless Peter and I are looking forward to our summer break…

Forthcoming poem alert: those lovely editors at Atrium, Holly Magill and Claire Walker, have taken a poem of mine, ‘For Sagra, at Port-Gentil on Midsummer’s Day’ to go live this Friday. “It was the closest date we could get to Midsummer’s Day!” they told me. Hurray for the longest day!

Right, now I’m off to buy a lottery ticket…

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Festive reading and giving

Hazel asks how does poetry work

The concerts are over – Sunday’s Lewes Singers event was a major thrill, and it was lovely and amazing to see Claire Booker there – of all my local poet friends, none has ever been interested in coming to hear beautiful choral singing, so Claire is a real one-off!

As the year closes out I’m reminding myself all the good things – as well as the music, there’s Planet Poetry which has just has just signed off for a wee break, although we’re back in January with Peter interviewing Mimi Khalvati. I’m really looking forward to it, especially as Peter and Mimi knew each other back in the day.

On the reading front, I’m strolling at quite a leisurely pace through a novel (yes I do read them sometimes!) called Drive your plow over the bones of the dead by Polish author Olga Tokarczuk. It’s quirky, and although there are a couple of (so far) unsolved murders, it’s hardly a page-turner. But however it turns out, it’s worth reading for the title alone. This book was a ‘secret Santa’ gift from my lovely friend Fiona at a recent get-together. We’ve been friends since nursery school – how precious is that?

In the post yesterday came the long-awaited new edition of The Dark Horse. The front cover somewhat dauntingly announces it’s a ‘Festschrift for Douglas Dunn – Poems, Affections and Close Readings’, teamed with ‘MacDiarmid at 100’. Despite my initial reservations I soon found myself enjoying very much the various recollections and essays about both of these (clearly eminent, but in different ways) poets. I’ve already been persuaded to order a copy of Dunn’s Elegies. And already I’ve spotted some lovely poems by Christopher Reid and Marco Fazzini, the former’s ‘Breaking or Losing’ I read to my (non-poet) husband who found it very moving. I like the way The Dark Horse is both a serious magazine and also warm and real – heavyweight contributions abound, but it’s never overly academic or esoteric.

Now, Live Canon do a huge amount for poetry. I know I’m a tad biased, as they published my pamphlet Why? And other Questions.  But even before then I was always admiring of their outreach work and their use of actors to bring live readings of classic poetry to a wider audience. During the pandemic they staged weekly readings via Zoom which attracted big audiences, with director Helen Eastman always creating such a warm and easy-going atmosphere.

As well as running regular competitions for adults, Live Canon also has an annual poetry competition for children. Considering the state of poetry in British schools (mostly non-existent, or taught to a tin-eared syllabus), opportunities such as these are crucial to help bring younger generations to a love of reading and writing poetry. Outside of the Poetry Society, I don’t know of any other organisation doing this much for children’s poetry on a national scale. You can probably guess where this is going. Live Canon are fundraising for their Children’s Poetry Competition and every little bit they can raise will help towards the costs of promoting the competition in schools, staging winners’ readings, producing the prize-winning anthology, paying judges etc. If you feel moved to give something you can so so here, where there’s more about the competition. I was also impressed with some of the comments of donors, about how it has given children the confidence to write and persevere with poetry.

So dear readers, I wish you a very Happy Christmas to you and yours, and if you can get to listen to (or better still, sing) any live carols this year I can highly recommend it! xx

 

 

 

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You win some, you lose some…

As a fresh writing impetus I’ve joined Bill Greenwell‘s online poetry workshop this term, a group I’ve been thinking about for a while. Abegail Morley always spoke well of the mentoring she had from Bill, and I have a lot of time for Sharon Black, under whose auspices the workshops are run. Wish me luck!

Meanwhile, Peter Kenny and I have been busy recording interviews for the new season of Planet Poetry. Watch out for the Season 3 opener later this week (hopefully!)

A lot seems to have happened in the last couple of weeks. Despite my previous blog post when I talked about going back to York to finish my MA in Poetry & Poetics, I decided to pull out. Let’s just say I couldn’t cope with the chaotic organisation there. I don’t think York is particularly geared up to dealing with part time students who commute long distances and have (what??) commitments in their lives other than university.

I’m very sad not to be immersed in the close-reading of poetry, and finishing the MA. But the stress of spending hours on Trainline looking for fares, losing money on non-refundable tickets that turn out to be useless because the timetable has changed again… on top of the considerable academic load… something had to give. Some people have suggested I move my ‘credits’ to another Uni, but I could only find two Universities in the UK (York and Belfast) offering this course. Now, if I wanted to do a creative writing MA, that would be a lot easier!

Soooo… actually I feel a weight has been lifted. More time to write (or think about writing!), more time to devote to Planet Poetry and my work on the submissions windows spreadsheet, plus I’m looking forward to all the music-related admin for concerts on the run up to Christmas, planning for Spring workshops, and enjoying my birthday in The Hague researching a future choral trip. I’m also still tied up with my sister’s estate as her co-executor (now is not the time to be trying to sell a flat).

On the good news front, a week or so ago I happened to check my email at lunchtime on a Saturday, to see that Visual Verse were running a competition – but it was only open for 24 hours. Visual Verse is an online magazine for ekphrastic writing – they post a new image every month and people respond to it. This was a bit different, in that there was only a day to write something and submit. I rather liked the image, so I had a go, and was one of the winners. It’s ages since I won anything so this was a really nice boost for me on National Poetry Day. It was also extraordinary to read the other winning poems and see how different our takes on the image were!

Speaking of NPD, the evening before I was at the Eastbourne Poetry Cafe awards night for their ‘Eastbourne and the Environment’ competition, handing out comments and certificates to the winners. The poems received in the Under 18s category were particularly encouraging, and lovely to see the two young winners take to the stage to read their work. I chatted to one set of parents, who were grateful for events like these to be happening. I know competitions can be seen as problematic, but they do at least give young poets (and potential young poets) a focus and (for the winners at least, but I hope for everyone) encouragement to keep reading and writing poetry.

Children & poetry/

A question about ‘poechreay’

I’m expecting my granddaughter to be offered a book deal any time now. Last week she gave me a card with a question written on it, somewhat out of the blue, and I wasn’t sure how to answer, so I did what any diligent nana does, I asked the Twittersphere:

How does poechreay work tweet

I was stunned by how much it was shared and liked, to be honest. Within a couple of days it had had over 100,000 impressions and nearly 10,000 ‘engagements’. But most of all I was touched by the replies. People really took time to answer helpfully, creatively and encouragingly. Someone even said they had thought about it all night before replying. Many of the replies were addressed to Hazel by name, which was lovely. Some suggested she had already written a poem right here. And the spelling of ‘poechreay’ went down particularly well (some read it as ‘patriarchy’ which was quite funny, another said she thought it said ‘peach tree’). Some people wrote their replies as poems. If you want to read them you can see the replies here.

Hazel is of course still only five, and both she and her mum are fairly nonplussed by it all. But I’ve been thinking about compiling the replies (there have been 69 so far and they’re still trickling in) in a little book that I can give her, perhaps when she’s a little bit older and can appreciate the wonder of it. I know it’s the sort of thing that I would have been amazed at if it had happened to me, but almost certainly not at the time.

I hope I’ve managed to thank everyone who replied. It’s the sort of thing that reminds me that lovely things do still happen on Twitter, and why I’m still there after fourteen years.

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On encouraging children’s interest in writing poetry

I recently had a text from one of my stepdaughters who was passing on a question from her five-year-old: “Nana, how are poems made?”

Hmm! I tried to think very hard before responding. How to say something encouraging and likely to engage a five-year old, while still being honest? No doubt there are teachers or ex-teachers reading this who would have plenty of good suggestions. All my teaching experience has been with adults, and having been a Brownie helper for a short time I learned very quickly that I had no idea how to seriously pique the interest of a 9 year old, let alone a 5 year old. The last thing I wanted to do was to say anything that would put my granddaughter off poetry for life.

I wish I could remember what I thought about poetry when I was five. Did I love nonsense poetry, silly stories and loony rhymes? I’d hate children to think that’s all poetry is about. Is it the only way ‘into’ poetry for a five-year old, or is that just setting low expectations?

Anyway I tried to say something funny and interesting and intriguing, about looking very hard at what you see around you and playing with new words to describe things, reading aloud and enjoy words that sound the same, all that kind of well-meaning nonsense. I never got a reply, so even that was probably deemed to be over the girl’s head, who knows!

So now, having volunteered to help Live Canon with its brilliant Children’s Poetry Competition, I find myself with a whole folder of poems by 5, 6 and 7 year olds to mark. Luckily we’ve been given pointers about the kinds of things to look out for and ‘reward’, which helps me greatly in terms of where to set the bar.

It’s great fun to do: very encouraging that so many children that young are writing poems and impressive how some are already capable of tackling serious themes. I’ll try not to agonise about the responsibility, as I’m really only ‘another pair of eyes’ and won’t have to make the final decisions. I’ll be interested to see if any of my favourites make it to the winners’ list though!