Ah, Christmas. Busy busy. I still haven’t made a nice door wreath but when it stops raining I’ll be up the garden gathering foliage and berries. Next week I’m Christmas-crafting with the granddaughters (cutout snowflakes? stars for the tree? I think the only no-no is glitter… not sure anyone uses that anymore anyway!) A meet-upRead more ⟶
Category: Currently influenced by
A holiday and a vintage submissions spreadsheet
On a holiday Just back from a short trip to the Netherlands where the weather was spectacularly mild and dry for late October. I can’t recall ever being at the seaside in just a T shirt and jeans on my birthday! And what a seaside. It was my first visit to the Netherlands (I don’tRead more ⟶
Currently inspired by…
Writing inspiration comes in all shapes and sizes I suppose. I was recently at a Charleston Festival event (Sheila Hancock in conversation with Joan Bakewell – combined age 182 and a huge inspiration/advertisement for a good old age). But I digress. In the bookshop marquee I was casually browsing and came across a single copyRead more ⟶
Readings, decisions, fresh starts
I’m feeling very uplifted by real-life in-person poetry events. Last week in Lewes was the launch of three Frogmore Press publications: The Naming by Jeremy Page, Marion Tracy’s Evidence of Love and Neil Gower’s Meet me in Palermo. Strong readings all round and a cautiously-convivial atmosphere. Fast on this comes tomorrow’s Needlewriters event, our firstRead more ⟶
Trying to write the next poem
I’ve just been editing an interview I did with the wonderful Kim Addonizio recently, for Planet Poetry. I’m a huge fan of Kim’s and in my keenness not to sound like a goofy fangirl I’m slightly worried I wasn’t complimentary enough or warm enough. Which is probably silly. But there was something very reassuring aboutRead more ⟶
Currently reading: Kaminsky, Hickman
Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic came through the post from the Poetry Book Society, swathed in accolades. Looking at the title my first thought was of Raymond Antrobus’s The Perseverance, also a PBS Choice, but in fact the two books are very different animals. (I’m a bit sad I don’t have The Perseverance to hand asRead more ⟶
Discovering poetry podcasts
I’ve come rather late to the podcast party, although my good friend Lucy has often sung their praises. Before my longish train journey north I decided to finally download a free podcast app (Castbox, which works well on my Samsung Galaxy S6) and then went on the search for some interesting things to take withRead more ⟶
CIB: the distraction economy, empty living rooms & a toe-dip into poetry and polemic
I’ve shortened ‘Currently Influenced By…’ to CIB in the titles of these posts, because there are ‘rules’ about optimum length of blog posts titles and only a small percentage of people will read past the first couple of words, etc etc. It’s one of the symptoms of the Age of Attention, and what Aldous HuxleyRead more ⟶
Currently influenced by…Whitman, the sea & being unproductive
This is the first of a new series of posts inspired by Anthony Wilson’s fascinating ‘notebook’ posts, in which he shares phrases, thoughts, links to things that have struck him as interesting, that have got him thinking and/or writing. Anthony’s posts are full of brief, throw-em out there lines and ideas, thinking points that jabRead more ⟶