RSPB - a poem in: a poem out

This is not a good photo, I'm afraid, but Waxwings are hard to find this year!

I have donated a hand written copy of my Waxwing poem, 'Red Letter Day, Lattice Avenue', to the RSPB in the hope that they may be able to sell it and raise some funds for wildlife. My poem was first published in 2014 in Reach Poetry (Indigo Dreams Publishing).

By the same token, we bought a hand written copy of Professor David Morley's poem about Goldcrests. I am looking forward to its arrival from the RSPB. The Society had a file of bird poems (well, wildlife in general, but mainly birds) at the Norfolk Festival of Nature. Matt Howard, RSPB Eastern Region Community Fundraiser has been coordinating the venture. Poets who have donated work include Matt Merritt, Kathleen Jamie and Heidi Williamson. Wendy Cope had given a Haiku, which I expect will find a home before long.

'The Holy Place' chapbook: Review Corner

The Holy Place by John Dotson and Caroline Gill (£3.50 inc. p&p in UK)

Online Reviews

• Matt Merritt has posted a review (here on his Polyolbion site) of my poetry chapbook, The Holy Place, co-authored with John Dotson. The chapbook is published by Peter Thabit Jones (The Seventh Quarry Press, Swansea) in conjunction with Stanley H. Barkan (Cross-Cultural Communications, New York).

• Juliet Wilson's review can be found here on her Crafty Green Poet site. You might also care to read this (feline orientated) page on Juliet's blog. 

• Sally Evans, editor of Poetry Scotland, has just posted a review here on the Poetry Scotland Reviews blog. 

My thanks to Matt, Juliet, Sally. Further comments on the The Holy Place can be found here.

Copies of The Holy Place can be purchased (£3.50, inc. UK p&p) via the email link here.

Magazine Moment (11): TIPS for Writers 77

The latest issue [77] of TIPS for Writers (Wendy Webb Books) sports a fine watercolour drawing of Norwich Cathedral on the cover, from the hand of John Tatum. It is a view I know well and love dearly, from my teenage years in Norfolk.

The magazine begins with congratulations to Tina Negus, 2010 winner of the Margaret Munro Gibson Competition for a Comic Poem, adjudicated by Alison Chisholm. In this week in which Matt Merritt of Polyolbion mused (after the appearance of a Marmora Warbler on a certain hill beginning with 'B' near Abergavenny) on the pairing of Blorenge with orange, it was a delight to read about the Green-backed Turple who rhymes with purple! Congratulations, Tina, on a worthy win. I defy anyone to read the poem with a straight face...

Congratulations also to Peter Davies and Pam Gidney, whose poems took 2nd and 3rd place respectively. Incidentally if shelled creatures are your 'thing', you will also enjoy The Turtle by Geoff Williams on p.13. Voice of the Turtle by Norman Bissett on p.17 turns out to be about a Turtle Dove.

Despite the very English cover scene, the issue has a European flavour to it. Wendy has written Fib and Pleiades poems about Italy, and I enjoyed reading Norman Bissett's 'jaffa-hued' interpretation of the Duomo in Florence. The wry humour of Schoolboy Poet by Gerald Hampshire brings us back to the tower blocks and pigeons of home.

In more Romantic mode, we find Claire Knight's majestic Summer Moon sonnet, with its 'owl in silence on the wing'. The issue ends with a Foreword by Pamela Trudie Hodge to Wendy's new publication, How the Mermaid Lost her Voice, and a review of the Mermaid series by Bernard Jackson.

TIPS for Writers costs £3 per issue and is a print magazine. eTIPS is a free pdf which can be delivered to your inbox on request. You can find Wendy's email here if you would like to receive the monthly ezine or would like to take out a subscription to the full print magazine.

Media Mix (4): PoetCasting comes to Swansea

Alex Pryce, founder of PoetCasting (left), with me at the Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea
Photo: © David Gill 2009

Readers of my Land&Lit blog will know that it is Dylan Thomas Festival time in Swansea. David and I went down to the Dylan Thomas Centre on Saturday to meet Alex Pryce of PoetCasting.

Alex set up the PoetCasting project in April 2007, with support from Ignite! and NESTA. Poetcasting has received funding from The Arts Council England since July 2008. Ignite! promotes creativity in learning and encourages creative development in young people. Initially a pilot project at NESTA, Ignite Futures Ltd. now exists as an independent and not for profit organisation.

Alex, poet and podcaster, has been dubbed the ‘one to watch' in the art world by judges of the Women of the Future Award. Alex was awarded the Booz & Company Art and Culture Woman of the Future Award, and was the youngest category winner when she was 20 years old. The award was for her work in conceiving and launching PoetCasting, which showcases poets who share the medium of the internet as a place where poets can be read and heard.

David has developed a number of (audio-visual) Podcasts for teaching purposes, and was interested in the applications of audio poetry. I was particularly impressed by the range of poets represented by PoetCasting. I enjoyed listening to the poets reading their own work. It was especially good to find the familiar names of fellow bloggers, Susan Richardson and Matt Merritt among the cast of those who had recorded work for the project. The Dylan Thomas Festival is dedicated to the memory of Aeronwy Thomas this year, and I was delighted to read that Aeronwy features on the PoetCasting iPod Shuffles, alongside the voices of more than 160 other poets.

PoetCasting is an amazing initiative. Do go and discover more if you find that Alex is visiting your area.

Other links:

• Alex Pryce (website)
  

• The Association of Poetry Podcasting
  

Book Corner (1): Troy Town by Matt Merritt

Anne Hathaway's Cottage, Stratford, viewed from the Willow Cabin Arbour
(the maze is to the left, along the path and out of sight)


'Never too late to learn to trust the path
like rustics running the shepherd's race
at May Eve...'

Troy Town, Matt Merritt


'The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green,
For lack of tread, are indistinguishable.'

A Midsummer Night's Dream, II:II, Shakespeare

Troy Town by Matt Merritt, Arrowhead Press 2008, ISBN 978-1-904852-19-3

I wonder what images dance in your mind in response to Matt's evocative title, Troy Town. I have just finished reading this sparkling new collection and felt it would be good to share a few thoughts. Matt, a fellow blogger (at Polyolbion) and fellow graduate of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, has woven his thread, Theseus fashion, through the labyrinthine paths of landscape, love and loss.

Those who know Matt will not be surprised to encounter a barn owl buoyant on his tide of silence ('Skylarking'), the blackbird wrestling a worm out of the lawn ('Paradise Tanager') or Calidris canutus, king's men all, commanding the waves to turn back ('Knots') along the way; but birdsong is only one of many tunes - or half-remembered songs - that echo through and take flight from the pages of this book.

The volume has been beautifully produced, with a hard cover sporting a glossy photograph of the turf maze at Wing in Rutland on the dust jacket. Troy Town is prefaced with a quotation from A Midsummer Night's Dream (see above); and Matt's poem that lends its title to the whole collection suggests to this reader at least, that the essence of the work revolves, maze-fashion, around a movement from one place to another. This progression - in accordance with the nature of propulsion through a maze - is seldom linear. The quest takes the poet and his fellow travellers on what seems, perhaps, to be more of a metaphysical than a metaphorical journey, since all mental maps are redundant and all thoughts are put aside. We do not usually associate mazes with unfolding vistas of revelation, but Alison Brackenbury made the astute observation that somehow this work 'opens new horizons'.

This reader views the essence of Matt's poetry against the backcloth of his association with Poly-Olbion, the meandering epic of the landscape by Michael Drayton (1563-1631). Drayton's lines lead us along the highways and byways of a very different England. Drayton is long dead, but poetry - Matt's poetry - refuses to be moulded into dark places or squeezed into the cul-de-sacs of a maze.

Buy a copy to experience for yourself that canvas where moments fray to a fine thread, that place where the past is startled into a sudden eloquence so that nothing need follow.

Suggested reading:
Making the Most of the Light by Matt Merritt, HappenStance 2005