Poisson d'Avril

I was getting annoyed by this piece from the Guardian swimming blog about star signs and swimming. Then I noticed the date when it was posted .....

Bees in my Bonnet

Just finished watching the final episode of Martha Kearney's The Wonder of Bees on BBC4. 
I've been fascinated by bees for a long time and have enjoyed learning more about keeping them from this series. I'm planning to do an introductory course on beekeeping in September to find out more. My family are getting edgy and making jokes whenever I mention the subject .....

I read Sean Borodale's collection Bee Journal a while back but it irritated me, something rather disconnected, dissociated about his style left me cold. I may get it out of the library again and give it another chance .....

In the meantime, I've sown a mini-meadow in a raised bed - all the flower seeds that I've not got around to planting over the past few years. Most of them are long past their use-by dates, yet despite that, tiny plants are starting to appear - verbena, poppies, marigolds, nigella, snapdragons, pansies, cornflowers. I want to attract and feed the city bees and butterflies and to offer pleasure to our noses and eyes. It's too dark to take a photo now but I will log one here later in the week and monitor my meadow's progress.....

I took the photo up above in the entrance to Manchester town hall. The bee, representing industry, was adopted as one of the symbols of Manchester, a city built on the infamous cotton trade .....

And as for bee poems, no-one can offer a more thought-provoking and chilling take on the subject than Sylvia Plath.  

The Arrival of the Bee Box

I ordered this, clean wood box Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift. I would say it was the coffin of a midget Or a square baby Were there not such a din in it. The box is locked, it is dangerous. I have to live with it overnight And I can't keep away from it. There are no windows, so I can't see what is in there. There is only a little grid, no exit. I put my eye to the grid. It is dark, dark, With the swarmy feeling of African hands Minute and shrunk for export, Black on black, angrily clambering. How can I let them out? It is the noise that appalls me most of all, The unintelligible syllables. It is like a Roman mob, Small, taken one by one, but my god, together! I lay my ear to furious Latin. I am not a Caesar. I have simply ordered a box of maniacs. They can be sent back. They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner. I wonder how hungry they are. I wonder if they would forget me If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree. There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades, And the petticoats of the cherry. They might ignore me immediately In my moon suit and funeral veil. I am no source of honey So why should they turn on me? Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free. The box is only temporary.

(from Ariel)

Resting

Does writer's block exist? Probably not, but it's a seductive idea.

I like this motivational page on the subject by Amanda Patterson.

Between acting jobs, actors aren't unemployed - they're resting. At the moment I seem to be resting between my last poem and the next one, wherever that is lurking.
I do seem to write more when I attend weekly classes with homework and tight deadlines. Maybe the fact that I've just finished a fairly intense writing course means that my writing has dried up somewhat, but it's a temporary state and normal service will resume if I'm patient and stop fretting.

Mslexia have a memoir writing competition with a mid-September deadline. I've decided to take the pressure off the poetry and write something for this instead.
At the moment I'm reading Howard's End is on the Landing by Susan Hill. It's a bookish memoir, I'm really enjoying it. At one point she suggests it's perfectly achievable to write 50,000 words in three months so I've decided to be inspired by that and get on with it. Naturally, the central theme will be swimming. I'm limbering up to get started in the next week. (That's not procrastinating, I've made a new document and written the first sentence.....)

From time to time I get asked to participate in surveys from Mslexia. I completed one today on this very subject - writer's block.
Here's my response to Question 9 - I copied it to remind myself of things that help the writing process. (Others on the list also work well, but it says tick up to five, and Rules is Rules.....)

9. Have you noticed any factors that seem to cure, prevent or ameliorate a block? (Tick up to five answers)

Have you noticed any factors that seem to cure, prevent or ameliorate a block? (Tick up to five answers)Morning pages or some other daily writing practice The need to earn an income from my writing An unavoidable writing deadline Doing writing exercises Attending a writing group Contact with a writing buddy Competition or publication success Positive feedback by someone whose opinion I value Feeling loved and valued for myself Mood-altering medication A regular time to write A room of my own A change of scenery Solitude Remembering past achievements Encouragement from friends, family, partner Regular meditation Regular physical exercise Reading great writing I am hardly ever blocked (lucky me!) None of the above

Other (please specify)

Pick 'n' Mix

Our five-year-old nephew is addicted to collecting Match Attax football cards, just like our son at the same age. Our daughters had a dolls' house, and were similarly fond of collecting Polly Pocket dolls when they were small – I've still got three sitting in my kitchen cupboard.

Well, today at Drointon Primula Nursery near Ripon, I reconnected with that powerful urge to amass – those pretty little plants were completely irresistible!

We wandered through the display beds and the growing tunnels, admiring the flowers in their teeny pots, totally spoilt for choice. In the end we selected ten and took a catalogue so we could browse at our leisure and save up for another batch.

Here's a few of the sweet-smelling beauties we chose:

Langley Park

Nymph

Old Irish Green

Trudy

Hetty Wolf

Arundel Stripe

And the others - every one a poem - Cooper's Gold, Wild and Grey, Dick Rogers, Trouble.

This being a Bank Holiday weekend, maybe we'll start building a theatre tomorrow for our diminutive collection !

Auriculì, Auriculà

Who can resist the charms of the Dusty Miller, the Primula Auricula?

A favourite flower.

           Primula Auricula Hinton Fields

Tomorrow we're going to a primula nursery near Ripon for an open day.

I hope I'll have my very own theatre one day.

Ne'er cast a clout .....

Spring has sprung in Manchester, the temperature's rising, I've been casting clouts, but that's ok as the may is out now, looking and smelling totally gorgeous.
Here's Sharon Olds, her wonderful poem from The Gold Cell (1992). It always makes me think of those old photos of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes when they looked so happy and content.

I Go Back to May 1937

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father striding out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it –– she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it, I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

Why swimming is sublime ......

Tynemouth beach again at New Year

My writing has dried up  - has my pilot light blown out ?
At least I'm back in the pool - twice a week at the moment - and articles like this one just make me all the keener. Incredible writing.

To Boldly Go .....

Not bold enough for the Official TBR Challenge - some of the rules are a wee bit strict for me - I am going to have my own little Unofficial TBR Challenge in 2014.

I've chosen twelve neglected books off my shelves that I've not got round to reading yet. Now that the MA is done I commit to reading these over the next twelve months - and maybe then I'll post some reviews of them here.

I find writing reviews challenging - having to express OPINIONS !!! But I do want to get more confident at it, so this is a bold resolution.

And as for the chosen dozen - perched on my ironing board - here they are (not necessarily in reading order) :

1    How To Be A Woman - Caitlin Moran

2    Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal - Jeanette Winterson

3     East of Eden - John Steinbeck

4     Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel

5     The Golden Gate - Vikram Seth

6     The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry

7     The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Rebecca Skloot

8     Reality, Reality - Jackie Kay

9    Waterlog - Roger Deakin

10    Mary Swann - Carol Shields

11    Stepping Stones: Interviews With Seamus Heaney - Dennis O'Driscoll

12    The Invention Of Everything Else - Samantha Hunt

Now I must away to Jools Holland and his Hootenanny - 

A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYBODY !!!!!

Semester's End

Tynemouth Beach at dusk - or was it dawn???

I handed in my dissertation on 2 December so that was the official end of my MA course at the Centre for New Writing. A collection of 21 poems, some new, some not so new.

My library books were due to go back in January, but this week I received an email saying they have to go back today. I can't bear giving library books back - some of them have been on an extended loan, no-one else has wanted them so I've been able to keep on renewing Philip Larkin, Elizabeth Bishop, Kathleen Jamie, Robert Lowell. No matter that I don't look at them that often, I just like them being there. The empty half shelf where they've lodged makes me sad and excited. Now I'll have a place for the pile beside my bed, and room for some new books to gather. Maybe I'll start writing again.

The process makes me think of the TV programme Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners which I've watched (obsessively) for the last couple of months. The people whose houses need clearing/cleaning inevitably have issues to do with grief and loss. The cleaners whose houses are spotless also have issues around grief/loss. Some days I think I fall in the hoarder category, some days I think I'm a cleaner.

Perhaps the library is doing me a favour recalling those books ... it was never going to be easy ... and now that I've lifted Robert Lowell off the shelf I've discovered this poem, which I'd probably not have found if the library hadn't ordered me to return him ...



The Mermaid Children

In my dream, we drove to Folkestone with the children,
miles of ashflakes safe for their small feet;
most coasts are sand, but this had larger prospects,
the sea drained by the out-tide to dust and dunes
blowing to Norway like brown paper bags.
Goodbye, my Ocean, you were never my white wine.
Only parents with children could go to the beach;
we had ours, and it was a brutal lugging,
stopping, teasing them to walk for themselves.
When they rode our shoulders, we sank to our knees;
later we felt no weight and left no footprints. ...
Where did we leave them behind us so small and black,
their transistors, mermaid fins and tails,
our distant children charcoaled on the sky?

Robert Lowell (The Dolphin)

Lines Underwater

One of my poems - My Father's People - has just been published in this gorgeous anthology about mermaids. The writing in the book is complemented by the most wonderful artwork - I am thrilled to be featured in such an appealing and irresistible collection! I would say that, wouldn't I?! But find a copy and see for yourself - treasures from the deep!

Ieuan Edwards - My Underwater Love

Gone fishin'

The Fish

I caught a tremendous fish

and held him beside the boat

half out of the water, with my hook

fast in a corner of his mouth.

He didn’t fight.

He hadn’t fought at all.

He hung a grunting weight,

battered and vulnerable

and homely. Here and there

his brown skin hung in strips

like ancient wall-paper,

and its pattern of darker brown

was like wall-paper :

shapes like full-blown roses

stained and lost through age.

He was speckled with barnacles,

fine rosettes of lime,

and infested 

with tiny white sea-lice,

and underneath two or three

rags of green weed hung down.

While his gills were breathing in

the terrible oxygen

––the frightening gills

fresh and crisp with blood,

that can cut so badly––

I thought of the coarse white flesh

packed in like feathers,

the big bones and the little bones,

the dramatic reds and blacks

of his shiny entrails,

and the pink swim-bladder

like a big peony.

I looked into his eyes 

which were far larger than mine

but shallower, and yellowed

the irises backed and packed

with tarnished tinfoil

seen through the lenses

of old scratched isinglass.

They shifted a little, but not

to return my stare.

––It was more like the tipping

of an object toward the light.

I admitted his sullen face,

the mechanism of his jaw,

and then I saw

that from his lower lip

––if you could call it a lip––

grim, wet, and weapon-like,

hung five old pieces of fish-line,

or four and a wire leader

with the swivel still attached,

with all their five big hooks

grown firmly in his mouth.

A green line, frayed at the end

where he broke it, two heavier lines,

and a fine black thread

still crimped from the strain and snap

when it broke and he got away.

Like medals with their ribbons

frayed and wavering,

a five-haired beard of wisdom

trailing from his aching jaw.

I stared and stared

and victory filled up

the little rented boat,

from the pool of bilge

where oil had spread a rainbow

around the rusted engine

to the bailer rusted orange,

the sun-cracked thwarts,

the oar-locks on their strings,

the gunnels––until everything

was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow !

And I let the fish go.

Elizabeth Bishop

from North and South (1946)

Picture This

I'm excited to be reading some of my poems at the Didsbury Arts Festival this year - this is the publicity photo for the event.

Beltane - again!

Today Boots offered me Double Points for the whole of May - my birthday month -
Woohoo!!
I might go a bit quiet again now because I'm going to concentrate on Underwater Gardener for a while.

Is this the way to Amaryllis?

Who are you? I hear you whisper.

Apologies for such long absences. Over the last twelve months I've not done one single outdoor swim. And very few indoor ones, come to think of it. Also, precious little writing.
However, I have been putting effort into promoting my back catalogue, finding homes for poems already written. It has been a bit of a wilderness time, but productive, and a few of my poems are now very well placed. I feel quite the Mrs Bennett, with my daughters out there, making their way in the world.

I also know, if I didn't before, that when I'm swimming, my writing benefits and vice versa. This dry period has seemed like a  phase I've needed to go through, so now I feel like I want to be writing more again, and swimming. I hope that means I'll be posting on the blog again. I've continued reading blogs, all the while, but writing is the exercise that begets more writing.........

I've also had some good adventures, been across to Dun Laoghaire twice, soaking up the literature festival last September, and enjoying a number of great poetry events back here in England. Our eldest daughter (real life, not a poem - Happy Birthday Nell !!) is also on an adventure at the moment, teaching English in South Korea, so as you might imagine, that is keeping us right on the edge of our seats .......

All in all, a lively time, even if somewhat quiet here on the western front .......

Why the strange title for this post? Oh, I bought an amaryllis bulb at Xmas and the photo above shows it now. It's so beautiful I have to sing that song (customized words) every time I walk past it. As I seem to have lost my way of late, Amaryllis seems as good a direction to be heading in as any ........