Ice Floe Drifting

Wedding maps and menus are being posted as we speak, OFSTED paperwork is piling up for this week's inspection and my poetry event on Shackleton's Endurance story is not much more than a week away. Yikes! January is indeed a full-on month.

But I was given a huge boost recently when the editor of my Northern Lights book, Firebridge to Skyshore, offered to publish this new collection of poems as a chapbook. Sam Smith did a great job on my first book and I'm thrilled that this new sequence will find a home and a pathway into print with Original Plus Press. Look out for news of that later in the year.

That gives even more impetus to my frantic editing. Although I'm also finding myself writing new poems to round the sequence off - five in the past fortnight. I've been workshopping as many as possible at Leicester Writers' Club and this week at the new Poetry Stanza group in Leicester. This group of poetry enthusiasts offer detailed critiquing off the page so was very useful.

So I have to reflect on my great good fortune - not only to have an editor who is so supportive of my work but to live in a city where literature/writing groups abound. This week, I'm hoping to make it along to the women's poetry group Soundswrite, who are also bringing out a new anthology this year that will feature 3 of my poems.

Meanwhile, as Caroline of Stanza said, I am still on my ice floe. Here's a poem in progress:


WHITE WARFARE

they set off
to hoist a blue flag
in an empty country
a jagged ice-barbed
no-man's land

nineteen hundred
and seventeen
was a speck in the long
geological calendar
of the continent

which resumed
its freezing, melting, fastening
throes; its volcanoes
smudging black funnels
of smoke on livid skies ...

(to be continued )

May Day at Middle Stanley

Sunday May 2nd 6pm

Well, here I am in my little room at Middle Stanley farm, gazing out to a rolling Cotswolds hill and listening to the birds' evensong. And if that isn't idyllic enough, I've just finished typing up a half-dozen new poems at this writers' retreat. I'm here with Leicester Writers' Club for our annual May Day weekend of workshops, feasting and discussion.

We're very fond of this secluded spot with its wonderful converted cottages and barns and grounds that are a delight to explore in this spring weather. But it's as much the chance to socialise and share ideas and resources within our writing coummunity that makes Middle Stanley so special. And lest partners and pets are feeling neglected, here's a run-down of the workshops we ran this year:

Creating Your Characters' Story

Writing about the past

Poetry workshop on the theme of 'Still'

Social Media for Writers

Books in the Digital Age
Voicing Your Work

A Blind Reading
Where is Your Writing Going?

We rely on willing volunteers from our own ranks to provide these workshops (no fee – not even bribed with cake!) and it works really well. My job is putting the programme together and keeping things on track. For myself, I particularly enjoyed the discussion on Digital Books where Chris de Lacey drew on comments from his publishers and agent to give us the inside story; the sharing of writers' stories and tips in Where is your Writing Going?; and the feat of a sonnet in 20 minutes in the poetry workshop. One of my own workshops was Voicing Your Work - great fun with an enthusiastic group. It's now known as 'the Humming Workshop'. I even had them doing Intercostal Diaphragmmatic Breathing (not as painful as it sounds!) and here's the photo evidence.

Unusually, I gave myself sometime out for just writing this year and finally got a chance to dive into some new writing based on my trip to Iceland at Easter. So there's 6 poems for an Icelandic sequence – with an eye on our first Polar Poets gig – and ideas for more. They're rough drafts but it's a joy to be in the flow of a fresh project. Exactly why you sometimes need a writing retreat to get going.

And now it's my turn on the rota to help with preparing our final feast. Liz and Gwyneth, our indefatigable Middle Stanley organisers, have whipped up some kind of Hazelnut Dream Dessert to follow. But I think you'll agree we've earned our treats with 8 workshops in 2 days and a torrent of creativity behind the scenes. Thanks again to all who attended and made it so enjoyable – and to Nick, my unflappable chauffeur!

PS Liz's Hazlenut Bread & Butter Pudding went into my top spot of fave desserts - so much so I snapped a picture of it! - now uploaded with more Middle Stanley pics. ...

Paper Ceremonies

A book is launched. With warmth and cake, in a sunny hall echoing with chat, it is sent on its way. It's taken me, the author, three years and two trips to the Arctic, to get to this point. Now the book, Firebridge to Skyshore has its own journey to make.


Already it is en route to Bolton and Nottingham and Scunthorpe and Surrey. I was amazed and touched that family and friends came so far yesterday for the launch. We had a lovely gathering of 30 well-wishers – many of them fellow writers and poets – and when everybody was sweetened with Gloria's special Lincolnshire Plum Bread, I loosed some poems into the vaulted arch of the Friends' Meeting House hall. If I forgot my lines, readers jumped in as prompts. 'Eight,' said Audrey and I was away: 'Eight-nine hundred miles a second, a maelstrom of solar winds …'



I've also discovered a book launch, like a wedding or anniversary, is a good occasion for bringing family together. I was joined by by my brother Pat and my sister Dolores Logan with her partner, David. When the idea of the book was still an inkling, I had thought of getting Dolores to illustrate it. Because she is a talented artist specialising in print landscapes. I'm delighted she accepted the challenge of rendering the transparent beauty of the aurora into woodcuts. I've described these exquisite miniature blocks as 'Little ArcticWindows' that open onto the extraordinary world the book evokes.

Davina Prince and I were comparing notes about the process of manufacturing this object of paper and cardboard, the debates over ink colours, the tricky on-line proofreading. And in my litany of thank yous, I was singing the praises of small print presses like Original Plus Press, the first chance for most poets. Sam Smith, my editor, is running a cottage industry in his room at home, printing copies himself and sending them on to be bound. It is a labour of love. And if we find an extra blank page has crept in or the wrong ISBN appeared on the back, it only highlights how 'man-made' and satisfyingly concrete a book is.

My friend Rod Duncan was chatting about whether new breakthroughs in publishing – the digital download, print on demand, electronic 'books' – could mean more and more books appear in electronic form in the future. And would actual paper books, lovingly crafted as Sam's books are, become a niche market for those that can't resist the tangible object? When my own arrived, I sniffed it, listened to it, weighed it in my hand. And the pleasure of seeing the books yesterday fanned out on the table is beyond description. As good as Gloria's plum bread.


And that's one reason why, whatever the future holds, our book launches can never be virtual.

Chocolate Gothic

Imagine a house where every room has a writer tucked into a window seat with notebook or perched with laptop or a whole flock of them huddled in animated discussion. It's a 17th century farmhouse with flagstone floors and each Gothic window opens onto an expansive view of the rolling Cotswolds hills. The house itself is leaking stories – like the adjacent Thimble Cottage, built to house the mad mistress of a long-dead ancestor. Visitors sleep in the turret or rooms with gargoyles under the eaves.

It's the perfect setting for the annual Mayday gathering of the Leicester Writers Club. Here we plot murder and mayhem between communal feasts at the long dining-room table. 'How can we do a car crash on-stage?' one group debates. That's the 'Nuts and Bolts of Scriptwriting' workshop. In another room, someone edits an explosive scene about a Welsh mining community. Later we discuss Writers and Blogging. There are sessions on Writing Dialogue, Editing Your Poem and that writers' nightmare – How to tackle a Synopsis of your Novel.

Several brave souls volunteer to feed sixteen with their best recipes. Let me recall the home-made Polish barley soup, the sausage and pasta supper and the extravagant chocolate cheesecake... And we closed on Sunday with a 'Writing Feast' of the weekend's words. To my surprise, I'd managed a new poem and a monologue inspired by Middle Stanley's railway tunnel. Indeed the house fairly hummed with writing for three days. And in between dinners and redrafts and rambles round the lake – there was a community renewing itself in the shared pleasure of stories. Long may this May-time ritual continue.