Media Matters: Readings from 'The Holy Place', Ipswich Community Radio

Preseli Bluestone at the National Botanic garden of Wales

My thanks to Mai and Gary who hosted the Friday Breakfast Show on Ipswich Community Radio this morning. It was good to be a guest poet on the show. It was my first live broadcast, and I have learned a few tips in case there is a future occasion ...

• to conquer the nerves, sit back (well, not too far from the microphone) and enjoy the experience, in the hope that a sense of enthusiasm will transmit across the airwaves! 
• to visualise the listeners ... 
• to mention my website!
• to have a couple of extra pieces up my sleeve in case there is more time than expected.

Mai and I talked mainly about my new chapbook, The Holy Place, co-authored with John Dotson from California. It was published in 2012 by The Seventh Quarry Press in Swansea (editor Peter Thabit Jones) in conjunction with Cross-Cultural Communications in New York (editor Stanley H. Barkan).

The chapbook is the 5th in the commissioned Poet to Poet series. Aeronwy Thomas (1943-2009), Dylan's daughter, was paired with Maria Mazziotti Gillan in Nightwatch (which is listed if you click through and scroll down), the 3rd chapbook in the series.

I read the following poems from The Holy Place:

• Weddell Seal at the Ice Edge 
• Lament of a Lewis Chessman
• Preseli Blue (about the bluestones at Stonehenge) ... this poem is on the Shabdaguchha poetry site, thanks to the editor, Hassanal Abdullah: to find it, click here and scroll down.
• Isabella Tiger Moth greets the Woolly Bear Caterpillar

Mai and I chatted about early poems, and I read my poem, Koala Bear (not in the chapbook), written in the 1970s at the age of eleven for the Sevenoaks Three Arts Festival poetry competition on the theme of 'animals'. It won me the Grove Poetry Trophy, a silver inkstand. These days I know that the koala is NOT a bear ...

If you have a query or would like to buy a copy of the chapbook (£3.50 inc. p&p in the UK), please leave a note in the comments section below this post, or alternatively you can find an email address for me by clicking here (it is on the left, once you have clicked through).