Testing the Water

Last night I didn't sleep too well as I knew we were swimming at Salford Quays this morning.

The session was from 7.30 until 9.00, we were up with the larks, rubbered up and into the waters of Ontario Basin at 7.48. Woo hoo!

I decided to wear my swim socks, but the water was surprisingly warm. In fact, I quickly realised that I'd rather have been swimming without a wetsuit. I know it's an aid to buoyancy - you aren't going to sink when you're wearing one - but it certainly interferes with my ability to swim as efficiently and really tires me out. Next year I think I'll invest in a thinner one. In the meantime I'm considering whether to cut the suit's legs off just above the knees to give me a bit more control when I'm swimming breaststroke.

Anyway, the whole experience was fantastic - I'm so glad we did it. Where Windermere is sweet, brown and translucent, the water today was sweet and green. At one point I thought I saw an eel swimming in front of me, but decided not to dwell on this as eels are a bit snaky and I didn't want to think about them too much.

The course was 400m, and 4 laps equals a mile - the length of next Sunday's swim. We decided to do 2 laps - which felt like quite an achievement after our limited outdoor swimming this summer.

When we got out we were buzzing, home for a high carb breakfast - I was ravenous - then the exertions caught up with me and I spent the afternoon sleeping!

A couple of pool swims, another trip to the Quays next Saturday, then the real thing next Sunday. I'm looking forward to seeing the venue taking shape this week!

Chauvinist Piggery

Guardian Saturday Poem.

Women 10, men 24.

Sorry, my patience has worn thin.

Poetry Launch

On the writing course at Ty Newydd in July, I had the pleasure of meeting Shirley McClure and getting to know her and some of her work. The grand finale of the week was a celebration on the Friday night, when everyone took centre stage (one at a time!) and read some of their poems to the group. The atmosphere was jubilant and everyone's work was fantastic, I particularly loved Shirley's poetry and engaging style of presenting. 

She's currently launching her first collection and my copy arrived from Ireland yesterday. Needless to say, I read it from cover to cover last night, and so did my daughter who found it hard to put down. Shirley's launching the book in various places at the moment, so if you get the chance to go along and hear her reading, grab it! And I strongly recommend the collection which you can get via her website.

Follow this link to read two of the poems from the book and one other for good measure!

Preparing To Take The Plunge

The weather is changing - blustery and autumnal but still with a warm wind - and Rainy City is living up to its name. However, we've committed to swimming in Salford Docks on the 26th, so we signed up at the watersports centre for Saturday morning's open water swimming session to familiarise ourselves with the water and a part of the course.

Saturday's session will start at 6.30am!! so we nipped down to watch the Monday evening session to prepare ourselves (didn't have time on this occasion to jump in).

The training takes place in Ontario Basin, which is where the Great Swim finishes

 and here are some people getting in ...ulp... look at those hardy souls in shorty wetsuits and those brave boys in their trunks...eek! I will be in full wetsuit, possibly two hats and at this point I'm wondering whether I'll wear the swim socks I bought in January. I do like the feel of the water on my feet though, so maybe not, we'll see.

I hope the organisers will have cleared these guys out of the way

they were looking a bit territorial...

Niamh from Words A Day visited my blog and mentioned The Handless Maiden by Vicki Feaver. There is a poem in this collection called The River God which is a great poem, but here's one by Stevie Smith which I believe Feaver was nodding to when she wrote hers. 

He is another character I'm hoping not to meet while I'm swimming...

The River God

I may be smelly and I may be old,

Rough in my pebbles, reedy in my pools

But where my fish float by I bless their swimming.

And I like the people to bathe in me, especially women.

But I can drown the fools

Who bathe too close to the weir, contrary to rules.

And they take a long time drowning

As I throw them up now and then in a spirit of clowning.

Hi yih, yippity yap, merrily I flow,

O I may be an old foul river but I have plenty of go.

Once there was a lady who was too bold

She bathed in me by the tall black cliff where the water runs cold,

So I brought her down here

To be my beautiful dear.

Oh will she stay with me will she stay

This beautiful lady, or will she go away?

She lies in my beautiful deep river bed with many a weed

To hold her, and many a waving reed.

Oh who would guess what a beautiful white face lies there

Waiting for me to smooth and wash away the fear

She looks at me with. Hi yih, do not let her

Go. There is no one on earth who does not forget her

Now. They say I am a foolish old smelly river

But they do not know of my wide original bed

Where the lady waits, with her golden sleepy head.

If she wishes to go I will not forgive her.

Stevie Smith

from Modern Women Poets ed. Deryn Rees-Jones

...see what I mean?!

Mile Or Bust

The pool was fairly crowded to start and we nearly settled for less, but we kept going, dodging the Monday morning jellyfish and clocked up our mile, as planned.

To Swim or Not To Swim?

that was the question.

To help us make the decision, I thought it would be a good idea to go down to the docks this afternoon and check out the course for the Great Salford Swim. After puzzling over the geography of the route, we asked at the water sports centre and suddenly it all made perfect sense...

Starting in Huron Basin between The Lowry and Media City - the new location for the BBC...

 ...the course for the swim goes down to Erie Basin

hooks round and left into Fisherman's Wharf...

where the water was clear with the sun on it...

and into Ontario Basin for a final triumphal circuit 

The course is varied and we felt excited enough to sign up, without further ado.

So tomorrow's task is a mile in the pool to get the next two weeks of training off to a cracking start...

Poetry Saturday - Goes Round Comes Round

Saturday Poem today is Miniature Poodle by C. K. Williams. (Bringing the count so far this year to women 10, men 23). As I don't know this poet's work, I had a quick spin round the internet and found him on poets.org. I only had time to listen to one poem so I chose My Mother's Lips. His voice is lovely, I felt a connection and wanted to read more of his poems.

When out and about on my own, as I was this morning in Chester, I can't be trusted not to go into a bookshop. So predictably, I went into Waterstones, only for a look, you understand. 

Of course there was no harm in just popping upstairs for a peep at the poetry, to see what's what. And to see if there was anything by C. K. Williams, which there wasn't. 

Then my eye snagged on Don Paterson, who I have mixed feelings about. The first of his poems I ever met was Imperial in Ruth Padel's 52 Ways of Looking At A Poem. I really didn't like this poem, a bit clever-clever and macho, so I left DP alone for a while. Some time later I read Why Do You Stay Up So Late, which I found beautiful and very moving. I warmed to him when I read Rain, the collection that this poem comes from. 

So today I read the title poem from The Eyes - a collection of DP's versions (as opposed to translations) of  poems by Antonio Machado, and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. This made me think of Emily Dickinson's maxim that she knew what was poetry because of the sensation of the top of her head lifting off! 

Spurred on by this experience, I took a look at Landing Light, by now moving towards an inevitable purchase. What finally made me buy Landing Light was that I noticed in it DP's version of Rilke's poem which I featured here yesterday. I just took it as a sign. 

(Skimming through Ruth Padel's book when I started writing this post, I noticed that she analyses Harm by C. K. Williams. I look forward to reading her appreciation of this poet, which I must have overlooked, first time round...)

Archaic Torso of Apollo
after Rilke


You'll never know that terrific head,
or feel those eyeballs ripen on you -
yet something here keeps you in view,
as if his look had sunk inside


and still blazed on. Or the double axe
of the breast couldn't blind you, nor that grin
flash along the crease of the loins
down to the low centre of his sex.


Or else he'd sit, headless and halved,
his shoulders falling to thin air -
not shiver like the pelt of a wolf


or burst from his angles like a star:
for there is nowhere to hide, nothing here
that does not see you. Now change your life.
Don Paterson

Poetry Hunt

If you were struggling to choose a poetry book to read, you might find this article in the Guardian and the readers' comments helpful. I think there are loads of really good suggestions there - volumes I know and love, some I've never heard of, but now feel inspired to seek out.

One such poem which I just tracked down this morning is this by Rilke, translated from German by Stephen Mitchell. Follow this link and you'll also find an illuminating commentary on the poem by Mark Doty. And some links to Mark Doty's poems - which are also worth a look! I always was a big fan of treasure hunts! 

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head

with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso

is still suffused with brilliance from inside,

like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise

the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could

a smile run through the placid hips and thighs

to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced

beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders

and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,

burst like a star: for here there is no place

that does not see you. You must change your life.

Rainer Maria Rilke

translated by Stephen Mitchell

Great North Saga

Two options have been offered in the aftermath of the cancellation - not a postponement - of the Windermere swim: money back or defer entry to the 2011 Great North Swim. We've decided to go for the defer option. 

And we're now weighing up whether to enrol for the Salford Great Swim on 26 September...

In Lakeland in Spirit

So. 4th September and no swim.

I am disappointed and also, in truth, relieved. I don't feel in peak fitness (ha ha). What I mean is that, although the physical act of swimming a mile would have been feasible for me, I didn't feel mentally prepared for the event. Again, if I'd had to do it, I'd have been able to, but I'm glad to have been let off the hook. The organisers will be in touch before Tuesday with some options which are likely to include: an alternative date for Windermere in the next couple of weeks, transfer of place to the Great Swim in Salford Docks (hmm...that  just doesn't seem to have the same ring as Windermere somehow...), transfer of fee to next year's swim, refund of fee. 

Not sure yet which of those I'd go for. 

This week I've been reading Intimates by Helen Farish. This book won the Forward Prize for best first collection in 2005. She had a residency in Grasmere and lectures on the creative writing course at the University of Lancaster. I love the direct style of her poems which are also intriguing and somehow mysterious. I like poems which manage to combine those elements. Here's a poem from the collection which puts us in the Lake District, to mark the day.

Brathay

I love to see the symbols on the map -

the cross, the less-than-4-metres-wide road,

the pub (named even). And I love

to see us as symbols and everything 

we saw: the two men

chess-playing at Skelwith Fold

in back-porch sunshine, mark it

with T for tranquillity. Put a P

in the graveyard for picnic (teabread,

coffee). An A just there on the verge

for sapling (ash) - how much growth

that summer? And the bend in the road

a double S for smiles (the greengold

light, the veneer of wood-water,

the tilt). And a capital J for summer

(joy), and a D for don't

(let this end), and a G and T left behind

at the pub (empty) and a capital U

for God saying I and the entire

universe wish this walk well.

By the Brathay and the underwater

bubbles that began us, an M

for completion by moonlight.

And all over, write, in full:

The Dazzle of this World.

Helen Farish

Intimates (Jonathan Cape, 2005)

The Clue is in the Picture

OMG as the young folk write...

This afternoon I checked out the Windermere weather station and saw that the lake temperature was a balmy 19C. Mmmmm.....just like a warm bath.....The webcam showed marquees going up, carpets running down to the lake and marker buoys setting the course.....everything tickety-boo...

At 18.00 hours a text from Great North Swim HQ arrived : swim postponed due to blue-green algae.

6000 swimmers now making alternative plans for the weekend.....

Pre-Swim Cold Feet

The last time I swam in a 'wild' setting was in Bala a couple of months ago. So I feel a bit daunted by this Saturday's swim in Windermere. Last year I got ready for the Great North Swim gradually by swimming in lakes and the sea on a regular basis in the months leading up to the swim. For one reason or another I haven't done that this year. Consequently, I feel a bit out of practice and nervous. Will I exhaust myself? Will a pike bite my toes? Will I see a dead body if I open my eyes when I do front crawl? Might I have a heart attack? And so on......Today the weather has been beautiful. I've decided to calm down and just let myself take my time on Saturday and enjoy the experience. All will be well.

For inspiration, I spent the afternoon at the Victoria Baths, Manchester's wonderful Water Palace, one of my top ten, no - top five, favourite buildings. All the scaffolding has gone from the Men's First Class Pool to reveal the sparkling, brand new watertight glass roof. I can't wait for the day when the pool will be filled and the public allowed back in.

In the sunshine, the whole building felt so warm and welcoming and the guide who showed us round was very knowledgeable. For the princely sum of £12 I signed up to become a Friend of Victoria Baths. My son enjoyed the tour and would like to have a go in the Aerotone - a prototype stainless steel jacuzzi. I decided to appoint myself as unofficial Poet in Residence, so I'll write some pool-themed poems over the next couple of months.

At this Sunday's Open Day at the baths (5 September) a special new stained glass window in honour of Sunny Lowry will be unveiled at 2pm. I'll be thinking of her when I'm in the lake.

The Family that Swims Together.....

Family outing to Hathersage today as it's our middle daughter's twentieth birthday and we often go there for a swim in the open air pool as part of her celebration. Three generations ranging from 81 down to 6 months - not everyone had a dip, but I think everyone enjoyed the day.

It was a bit chilly, which kept the crowds at bay, but when the sun came out - heaven in a pool. And the water, as always, warm and welcoming. Best bit of course was when the heavens opened. When raindrops hit the water it's truly wonderful to witness and be part of it at their level.

Next Saturday it's the Great North Swim and all our documentation etc arrived today. I feel very unprepared. To paraphrase Scarlett O'Hara, I will think about that tomorrow...  

Picador Poetry Prize

Only a few days left to assemble a sample collection of ten poems for the scrutiny of the judges of the Picador Prize. Incentives to enter this competition include - 

• NO FEE! 
• winner gets £1000 prize and   
• poetry collection published by Picador 
• under the eagle eye of Don Paterson who will edit the book!

Well, you've got to be in to win! Closing date 1 September.