The final years of the last millennium feel like a febrile time now. Although the US and UK governments were far from being left wing, after 18 years of Conservative rule beggars couldn’t be choosers. Blair had come to power promising progressive policies (warmongering wasn’t in the ’97 manifesto), a Democrat was still in the White House, and 9/11 was beyond the horizon. I was working for the New Economics Foundation (NEF), which promoted a more social and environmentally responsible economy to the one that had emerged in the slash and burn free market of the 1980s. NEF’s philosophy was founded on the principle of ‘small is beautiful’, which grew out of the eponymous book by EF Schumacher. Here, the maxim was ‘act local, think global’; if small businesses, community organisations, individuals, acted together in consideration of the planet before profit, then we all could thrive. Such think tanks…

The Family Matters tour has been travelling around the country, bringing these highly personal stories from four of London’s best-loved poet/writers (Agnes Meadows, Patricia Foster, Janett Plummer and Linda Shanovitch) to life.

Here are some pics from the Winchester performance:

Patricia Foster performs
‘A Caribbean Pied Piper’

Janett Plummer performs ‘The Unhappy Mother’

Agnes Meadows performs ‘Love on the Eastern Front’

Agnes Meadows

These astonishing stories are drawn from the writers’ own families, illuminating the ways in which we are all connected. Join them for a revelatory ride, as the cast spill family secrets, and they examine the ties that both connect and bind us.

There’s still a chance to catch them here:

Thursday 21 May – Burgh House & Hampstead Museum, New End Square, Hampstead NW3 1LT, 7.30pm – 9.30pm. £8. To book, call 020 7431 0144 or buy online @ www.burghhouse.org.uk

Wednesday 27 May – The Library @ Deptford Lounge

Roger Dennis has recently won the National Poetry competition and his poem, Corkscrew Hill,  is on my Featured Writer’s page. Until now I thought of him as an artist and I’ve heard from several people that he is a great art tutor: he lives in Ashburton which is my main shopping town. I love his paintings which seem very diverse in style and tone.  I really didn’t know he wrote and it seems this was the first poem he sent out into the world.  It’s the kind of miracle everyone would dream of!

I took advantage of knowing him to ask him a few questions about the enigmatic poem and his writing ….

Q1.  What is the relationship between your writing and your art?

 
I can see that this is naturally one of the first questions people have when they realise I both paint and write, but…

Last night saw the launch of Crystal Voices, an anthology of poems and stories celebrating ten years of the arts organisation and publisher based in the East Midlands. You can check out the list of writers in the anthology and order a very reasonably priced copy here.  

The launch took place at the Western pub spoken word night, Shindig! and followed readings by Jo Bell and Jonathan Davidson, whose new books, Jo’s ‘Kith’ and Jonathan’s ‘Humfrey Coninngsby’ I can highly recommend.

Shindig! is a regular open mike  with guest readers,  an event jointly run by Crystal Clear and the wonderful Nine Arches Press, and over the years the list of visiting readers has begun to look like a who’s who of contemporary poetry.

One of the most valuable aspects of these readings is the sense of community that has built up among the attending writers and readers over the years, with familiar and new faces gathering at the bi-monthly events…

Lighthouse, A Journal of New Writing, is a beautiful and exciting literary magazine published by Gatehouse Press. I’m incredibly proud to have a poem included in this issue (8).  It is so cool on the outside… and then when you open it there’s something about it makes me feel all excited as if I am a child again about to enter  a world of story with a blotched treasure map to be found inside.  It must be the magical  font: IM Fell English. That, and the paper they have chosen which is all grainy and the page-edges look as if they have been handcut. It smells properly of book as well. I haven’t had time to read it all yet but the few poems I have read are remarkable. I must get on with it right now…..     thought you might like to know about it so here is the link where you can download a free…

There has been a lot of discussion recently on how poems which rely heavily on others should be attributed in work that follows it. There are people who say they work from a starting point of someone else’s poem and change words until they make it their own. I do not see that as creating, but learning how to write, and not to write something that could be submitted for publication. Poet means ‘maker’, not ‘alterer’.
Those who aspire to write poetry must read it and aim to learn from poets who have spent time learning their craft. Expertise cannot be gained overnight: it comes from years of practice and reading, experimentation and critique. Those who have immersed themselves in poetry absorb much. They don’t sit and write with other people’s poems to paste in or alter, unless they are doing cut ups and collages – and in that case…

In the past, I have been careful about writing about the current poetic trend of workshop culture. Running workshops is a primary (and much-needed) source of income for a great many professional poets. Sometimes it can become a means of gaining personal prestige. There is certainly a market for workshops. A great many people want to learn how to write poetry, and that is a good and noble goal, but there is a difference between learning how to write poetry and attending a workshop.

A student learns how to write poetry by applying themselves to the study of poetry, by reading vastly, deeply and well. A good student reads considerably more than they write, and they read the classics as often as the works of their contemporaries. A student of poetry (of any age – we aim, as poets, to be master and student at once, and all our lives)…