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 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.

Todd Swift on the friendship between poets

Right: Nether Stowey, The Ancient Mariner Pub (click to enlarge)

One tends to think of poets as lonely souls who wander cloud-like through life's ethereal by-ways. Swift, however, reminds us of the very real and beneficial friendships that have bolstered so much of our literary heritage. We think of the poetically symbiotic relationships between Keats and Shelley, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Edward Thomas and Robert Frost - to name but three.

Swift's point in writing was, I feel, to explore the nature of poetic relationships in these days of nepotism in the world of publication. Politics aside, I know that I have benefited greatly from the tutelage of others and from the community of 'poets who blog'. I thought Swift's post was a good reminder of the help that we can be to one another as we pursue our passion to write.

When a (bucket and) spade is not a spade

Left: snow white on pecan pie or Little Egret in the Loughor Estuary?

Unlike fellow blogger and poet, Mistlethrush, home decorating is definitely not my scene. That's not to say, however, that I take no interest in material swatches or paint cards. In the course of my craft class work, I have greatly enjoyed looking at and developing colour schemes for particular projects. I was intrigued, therefore, by an article by Lori Borgman in The News & Observer on the 'poetry' of the extraordinary plethora of names for different shades of paint.

Modern poets try to restrict their use of adjectives for the sake of strength, punch and clarity. Are there times, I wonder, when names like those in the feature (e.g. Southern Pecan Pie, Sand Between Your Toes and Peach Slush, to name but three) are simply too irresistible to pass over?

In a recent draft of a poem as part of a Poetry Prompt Month for Sol Magazine, I found myself struggling to find a suitably dull alternative for the word 'beige'. Some colour names definitely seem to suit their respective shades, rather in the way that there can sometimes be an uncanny resemblance between owners and their pets. I should know about these things: many years ago, my Shetland Sheepdog won a green rosette in an exemption dog show class for coming third in the contest for 'pets who look most like their owners'!

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.

Global Poetry Prompt Appreciation Day

It's official: thanks to the folk at the word cage, we can all join in with their prompts and festivities.

The poem to the left is a first draft, taken from one of the prompts given by Mary Biddinger. The given words were: rubric, furrow, torch, balm and orchid.

The text will enlarge if you click on it.

P.S. August 15: I have just left a link to this poem on the 'Pen-me-a-poem' site for the Olympic games prompt.