School's Out

Tuesday was my last Poetry School class with John McAuliffe, I can't believe ten weeks have flown by so quickly. This has been my most productive class to date, I've written a poem a week and received excellent feedback from John who's such a generous tutor. His comments have been really constructive and encouraging, his experience as an editor invaluable. I've redrafted four of the poems and got them ready to send off to Poetry London, so we'll see what Colette Bryce makes of them...

and now I feel quite bereft, what will I write about this week?...in Tuesday's class we looked at poems with a driving theme including one of my favourites, Seamus Heaney's Postscript. Somehow without the deadline of Tuesday's class I seem to have lost my mojo...maybe I just need a little rest and then get back in the saddle...

Money Well Spent

Four Poetry School classes this term and four poems in the can - I'm pleased to be on such a creative roll!  
Week 1 was the deconstructed sonnet (Rilke). Week 2 inspired by a piece of 'bad' art (Elizabeth Bishop). Week 3 an interaction with a gallery (WH Auden) - mine was the Whitworth, above and below which, when I visited, featured a wonderful fairytale forest (fairytale in a scary Babes in the Wood way). 
In week 4, after looking at some of William Carlos Williams' poems including The Hunters In The Snow (after Brueghel), we write our own about a Brueghel painting - in words of one syllable! Mine is done. I'm now engaged with the drafting, v. enjoyable as I can be fairly obsessive. 

Back To (Poetry) School

Some people sit down and poems seem to come to them, unbidden. I find courses help me to enlist the Muse's help - or is it self-belief? - and tap into my creativity.

After a fairly dry month poetry-wise, I started a Poetry School course with John McAuliffe last Tuesday evening. It's absolutely great to be back in the classroom! John is such a fun tutor - enthusiastic, energetic, knowledgeable - and how! But more importantly, supportive and encouraging. We took a look at Archaic Torso of Apollo by Rilke - a poem I love and which I've featured on this blog. Then Leda and the Swan by Yeats which was new to me. Our homework is to write a sonnet, but to deconstruct the form and make our own of it. Yikes! I left the class buzzing, but with no idea of what I would write. By the time I got home I knew what I wanted to write about and started as soon as I got in, aided by a couple of glasses of red wine, which I frequently find helpful! I woke early on Wednesday with more thoughts and by Wednesday night I had a first draft to work on. To me, this is always the start of the most exciting stage of making a poem. Now I've been through several drafts, my poem is looking in ok shape and I'm relieved to be back in the saddle.

Bless Me Father.....

One of the features of blogging anonymously is that you can be whoever you want to be.....
A casual observer of this blog might have noticed a lack of activity here of late, seen mention in recent posts of nanowrimo and deduce that I am now sitting back recovering with a smile on my face and a 50,000 word first draft under my belt. Oh, I could flesh out that image and no-one would be any the wiser.....however.....
you can take the girl out of the confessional box but you can't ...etc etc.
I got off to an enthusiastic start with my novel-writing month and it was great to reconnect with my story. Then I turned my attention to my weekly homework from my poetry school class with Shamshad Khan and quickly realised that I had a Harry Hill type fight on my hands - poems versus the novel - if you get my drift. It didn't make sense to have signed up for Shamshad's class and then not have a poem to work on each week. I decided to come back to the novel between classes - which gives me five weeks when this course finishes and before I start my next one in the middle of January.
So what have I been up to? Well, my decision paid off and I've written several poems, one or two of which I'm very pleased with. I've also assembled a small collection for the Poetry Business pamphlet competition. That's now in the lap of the gods, well, Simon Armitage actually, so we'll see what happens. 
Most exciting of all.....drum roll.....I've been asked to take part in a poetry reading in Liverpool next Wednesday! First gig! A poet I met a couple of years ago at a Poetry School class is setting up a new event and asked me to contribute a 15-minute spot. This weekend I'll be selecting a play list and weighing up my wardrobe.....
All in all, a firework-filled November!

(Now I must look at some of those Harry Hill fights I drew attention to earlier...)

Through My Letterbox

Shamshad Khan is teaching a course at the Poetry School in Manchester from October. As I don't know her work, I ordered and just received this collection to find out more about her.

I'm really impressed by her poetry and like it very much. It's easy to sit down and read the book from cover to cover. Follow this link to her poem 'pot' (commissioned by the Manchester Museum) which finishes with the following inscription: 
'Dedicated to a Nigerian pot currently incarcerated in the Manchester Museum without charge or access to legal representation'.