Tag: clare best

Inspiration/

Three featured blogs – writing and ‘X’

It’s funny how writing often goes together with a second passion or skill, and the ingenuity of bloggers in combining them in just one blog is often surprising and interesting. This week’s three featured blogs are to do with writing  & gardening, writing & swimming, and writing & animals.

OK so I’m not a great gardener. I used to love looking through my mum’s gardening magazines but mainly for the garden plans. Planning (on paper) was my thing. Nurturing living plants and learning their names has never worked for me. I don’t know what that makes me: a virtual gardener? However I’m very happy visiting or sitting in a lovely garden. More a garden reader than a writer.

But that’s not true of the first of this week’s bloggers.

Sarah Salway
Sarah Salway – writer and coach

Sarah Salway was the Canterbury Poet Laureate last year and is famous for her photographs of benches, among many other things! Living in Kent, the ‘garden of England’, she has an appropriate love of gardens. So much so that her recent project is Writer in the Garden, which she calls ‘an idiosyncratic literary tour around the gardens of England.’

Writer in the Garden
Writer in the Garden

Sarah’s enthusiasm and energy are wonderful and her adventures in gardens are clearly a strong creative inspiration.

The second ‘Writing and X’ blog is the simply named Writing and Swimming by someone calling herself rather coyly ‘Aquamarina’. Dear Acquamarina, I couldn’t find your real name anywhere on your blog, so if you want to make yourself known to me please leave a note in the comments, thanks!

Swimming & writing
Swimming & Writing

Aquamarina’s sidebar is a clever compilation of ‘Books featuring swimming’, ‘Films I like with a watery feel’ and even ‘3 swimming poems by Sharon Olds’. Clearly the blog’s author is a poet, and her watery writing-related posts are entertaining. (I was reminded of poet Clare Best‘s recent fundraising swimathon – maybe the swimming-poetry connection isn’t so unusual?)

Sheila Boneham is a prolific author “best known for her writing about dogs and cats for the past fifteen years”  as well as an experienced creative writing tutor. Her blog, Write here, write now, features guest posts, writing prompts, author interviews and all manner of musings and articles of interest to writers and/or animal lovers.

write here write now
Write here, write now

A quick search brought up some quirky blog posts, such as an article on photographing dogs and another about  New Year writing goals. My only quibble with Sheila’s blog is the navigation – most of the main menu links take you to her main website and away from the blog, and within the blog each time you click on a new post or search result a new window opens, so I ended up with rather a lot of tabs on my browser. But hey! That’s just the website pedant in me I suppose. I was interested enough in the content to keep clicking around, and that’s pretty important. Plus there were all those cute kitties.

if you’re interested in writing the odd guest blog post (great idea if you’re a writer looking to build your reach on the social web) then you may be interested in guesting on Sheila’s blog. Submission guidelines are here.

Readings/

Pighog night in aid of breast cancer charity

Charlotte Gann at the Redroaster

Charlotte Gann at the Redroaster

A very good evening yesterday at the Redroaster in Brighton: always lovely to hear Charlotte Gann reading, including some of the goodies familiar to me from her pamphlet ‘The Long Woman’ and some new poems I’d had the privilege of seeing ‘in development’. And she looks so striking under the lights! The photo is taken rather at a distance, sorry about that – but I opted for comfort over the benefits of being close to the action – the leather sofa at the back was just too tempting to ignore.

Clare Best explained her connection with the cause and read from her collection ‘Excisions’ – and just as at the launch of it at the Needlewriters there was such a charged silence while she read. Very moving. Plus Clare has such a calm, expressive voice – actually I could imagine her taking over from Harriet Cass at Radio 4. Must suggest it!

During the second half Kim Lasky spoke about her work with women undergoing treatment for breast cancer, and we heard poetry written by three of them, one of whom read her own material and told us she’d never written anything before this – testimony to the power of creative writing therapy I guess.

During the interval I had an interesting conversation with John Davies from Pighog Press, who said he’d heard my name mentioned in various places – ooh, I thought, that sounds promising – “what, you mean to do with poetry..?” “Um, no….” Oh well! At least I’m on the radar, sort of!

Very nice also to catch up with Julia ahead of our both reading at the Needlewriters next week – we swapped tactics although didn’t get as far as discussing outfits. He he!

Angst/

Please do not put me on after 9.30pm

Stephen Plaice

The autumn poetry scene has swung into action. On Wednesday evening Clare Best hosted an evening of readings at the Needlemakers – something enjoyable from all the readers, a good mix including Jackie Wills, John Davies and Clare herself.

I enjoyed it all but I do tend to very suddenly have a concentration crash at 9.40pm – nothing to do with excess alcohol, I can assure you (I came out with very little cash, and although Charlotte was looking after a basket of fivers – entrance money – for part of the evening, she kept me well away from it. Thanks for buying me a drink though, C!) Sitting with us was a non-poet neighbour-friend who asked us poetry questions which of course got us going. It was all very fine and civilised but I left making a mental note that I hope NEVER to have to read last at an event, and certainly not beyond 10pm.

Then last night was Lewes Poetry, the evening at the Lewes Arms run by Oli Gozzard, famous for its raucous interval limerick competition and near punch-ups during the judging process. I haven’t been to the last couple of events so was looking forward to it. Unfortunately we were late – I dragged Nick along, promising him it wouldn’t even have got going by 9pm, but when we arrived we were just in time for a long interval. Oh good, I thought, the limerick comp! But alas, it has been DROPPED due to ‘public demand’ – what? I miss a couple of sessions and my favourite bit has been ditched because someone got offended. This was Lewes Poetry’s USP, so a big mistake IMHO. Thankfully, Oli read a very rude poem involving ‘coalitions’ and ‘positions’ so managed to slip some welcome hilarity under the radar. I should also mention how fine it was to see Stephen Plaice there (pictured above) – back on the poetry scene, he tells me, so watch out for more from him.

But anyway, I just happened to have a short ditty in my back pocket (!) so when Oli asked if I wanted to read I said ‘yes’ – not thinking of course that being a latecomer I’d be on LAST.

So there I was reading at almost ten pm – so much for my resolve.