Saturday 21 August 2010

Quest for an Even Keel





The last six weeks have been a rollercoaster and I really don't think my feet are properly back on the ground yet.
In the middle of July I did a week-long poetry workshop with Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke at Ty Newydd in Wales. It was just as inspiring and challenging as you'd expect, working with creative tutors and talented participants. I did an Arvon course with Carol Ann two years ago at Moniack Mhor and it took me about six weeks to get back to normal after that, so I did know what to expect. Even so, such an intense and wonderful experience still takes quite a while to come down from afterwards.
Hot on the heels of that, we went off on holiday to Mallorca. We haven't been abroad for three years, so that was another exciting experience, and challenging in its way as I'm not the world's most confident flyer.
The hotel we stayed in had a proper swimming pool - 25m long and 2.6m deep at the deep end. I had the blissful luxury of being able to swim outside - 1K or more nearly every day for 10 days. Given half a chance I think I could get used to that lifestyle...eating, swimming, reading books. Ahhhh dream on.....



3 comments:

  1. Sounds great. CAD is definitely on my list of people I'd been interested to meet, never mind study poetry with.

    Coming across your blog a bit ago gave me a bit of a nudge in this direction - and I thought you'd like to know I think I'm getting the bug...


    http://dominicrivron.blogspot.com/unusual-happenings.html

    Getting it bad. Started to read "Waterlog" too...

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  2. Glad to be of help Dominic!
    And Carol Ann is great fun to spend time with - and Gillian too - the atmosphere on their courses is truly amazing as they are so constructive and encouraging!
    Waterlog - now there's an alternative take on ' go and jump in a lake!', n'est ce pas?!!

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  3. Now, rereading my comment, I see why you misunderstood me. My fault. I didn't mean the poetry bug (had that a long time) but the swimming bug!(As you'll see if you scroll down my blog to August 17th - "Unusual Happenings").

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