Matthew Stewart's Best U.K. Poetry Blogs of 2016

New Vistas (boardwalk to the bird hide, Tregaron, Wales)

It is the season of lists and annual reviews, and I am delighted and honoured to find that this blog has a mention in the Rogue Strands line-up of Best U.K. Poetry Blogs of 2016. Thank you so much to Matthew Stewart for this inclusion.

Thank you, Matthew, as well, for drawing my attention to the other blogs in the list. I have followed some of these with interest for a while, but the others will open up new vistas and provide fresh paths of poetic exploration in the days to come.

P.S. I cannot decide whether this is related or a bit 'off-topic', but I have just seen this list of favourite 2016 poetry book covers (I believe most, but not all, are North American) on C.A. LaRue's Bonespark blog. It may be of interest to you, as it was to me.  

Poetic Places (3): Hiawatha Country

'From the mountains, moors, and fen-lands
Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Feeds among the reeds and rushes...'

From: The Song of Hiawatha
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1807-1882

If you are a fan of Longfellow's Hiawatha poem, do take a look at the amazing photograph of the Minnehaha Falls on Ecobirder's fabulous blog here.

The full text of the poem can be located here.

Poetic People (27): Polar Poets, Susan Richardson and Siobhan Logan

Deep and crisp and even...

Caroline (in Arbeia shirt) with Susan Richardson at the Hay Festival, 2009

Why not pack your snow boots and leki sticks away for an hour or so, and join two polar explorers on their cyberspace journey of writing?

Polar Poets, Susan Richardson and Siobhan Logan are launching their exciting new blog this week, with the evocative strapline 'making wordprints across the Arctic'.

Susan and Siobhan both have first-hand experience of Arctic regions, and hope in their writing 'to evoke the unique appeal of one of the planet's last great wildernesses'. Be sure to keep an eye open for their interviews, quizzes and poems. The site is enhanced by photographs of Greenland taken by Paul Lomatschinsky.

I first encountered Susan as my creative writing tutor when I took part in Disability Arts Cymru's project, The Write Stuff, in 2003. This enterprise led to the publication in 20o4 by Parthian of Hidden Dragons/Gwir a Grymus (I still love the name!), a ground-breaking anthology of 'New Writing by Disabled People in Wales', edited by Allan Sutherland and Elin ap Hywel.

Since those days Susan and I have kept in touch via our blogs, enjoying the occasional chance to meet up over literature, coffee ... or chips ('my one weakness'), in Cardiff and Hay.

I have mentioned Susan's wonderful poetry volume before. For a veritable marine menagerie I would recommend Creatures of the Intertidal Zone (scroll down the linked page), published by Cinnamon Press. The poet follows in the footsteps of Gudrid, an eleventh century 'Viking heroine'. Within the pages of the volume you will encounter not only seals and cetaceans, but other creatures like the hermit crab and - of course - a colony of penguins.

Remember to keep an eye open for those footprints in the snow...

• Creatures of the Intertidal Zone (poem) by Susan Richardson on the Sea Stories site.
• Be sure to visit Susan Richardson's amazing website.

Postcript: you might also like to see the ice and penguins on Professor P. Brain's Swansea ecology blog here.

Poetic People (26): Kay Weeks

Happy New Year
from icy South Wales!

My apologies for the delay in this post. However, it has meant that I can now pass on guest access (courtesy of editor, Sharmagne Leland-St. John) for the January issue of Quill and Parchment.

You will find my interview ['Twisting and Turning' in the interviews section] with Kay Weeks, writer and poet from historic Ellicott City in Maryland, USA. Kay has two blogs, one about Camilla the cat; but I will let you discover all this for yourself...

You will also find my Bodmin Moor poem, Dozmary Pool (first published in Reach Poetry), about King Arthur's sword, Excalibur.

Empty Shoes, edited by Patrick T. Randolph and sold to raise funds for those who are hungry and homeless, is reviewed in this issue by Karen Schwartz. The book reached number 2 in the amazon.com pre-Christmas 'Hot New Releases' list of popular new books in the 'religious and inspirational' category. The anthology contains my poem, Stranger.

Please follow the link to the Quill and Parchment site and add the following guest passwords for the January issue:

NAME: january
PASSWORD: snowball

Enjoy!

Nature Blogs Network

My thanks to Mike and the team for inviting me to join the eco-systems section of the Nature Blogs Network with my Land&Lit blog. I look forward to networking and to learning more about the natural world.

RSPB 30 Countdown

The countdown is really underway for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch 30 this coming weekend. There have been more UK sightings of the Snowy Owl. The Weaver of Grass has posted a fine poem about a merlin. I spotted a red kite over the weekend in Carmarthenshire, my first one in 2009. I also noticed two little egrets enjoying the flood plains by Dryslwyn Castle.

Blogspotting (2): Galumphing

Left: a lamp in the Cathedral Close at St Davids, Pembrokeshire, Wales, UK. The reflection makes me think of Narnia and Mr Tumnus.

Galumphing: the title alone is a curious one, and it comes from The Jabberwocky poem by Lewis Carroll. It is the 'other' Lewis (C.S. Lewis), however, who features most prominently in this blog, along with a few others such as Tolkien, Homer and Shakespeare!

The blog belongs to Jeremy W. Johnston, a teacher of English and Classical Studies (two of the three subjects I trained to teach as part of my Exeter PGCE back in the 1980s).

On the subject of Tolkien, you might like to take a look at the blog entry for 18 August, entitled The Annotated Hobbit. I was particularly drawn to the words of Horace on the subject of reading and re-reading. If I really like a book, I like to read and re-read it. Do you?

Johnston highlights an interesting point about the etymology of Bilbo's name. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll were all masters when it came to making up names for their characters. How often do we attempt to create new words? In my craft class last week, I tried to think of a term I could use to describe my new technique of turning a photograph into an abstract greeting card design. I am not quite there yet ...

Johnston mentions Homer, and I was reminded of how much I fell in love with the tale of Odysseus as a result of a child's version of The Odyssey. Perhaps that was why I went on to read Classical Studies for my degree. You might be interested to read an article by By George Elliott Clarke about the universality of the Homeric themes in the Chronicle Herald.

Blogspotting (1)

I came across Professor David Morley's blog today. Having taken part in a recent outdoor community arts project, I was fascinated to read about Professor Morley's open-air poetry commissions. I was particularly interested in his Strid Wood and Bard Box project.