I spent my 60th birthday last Tuesday, and the rest of the week, in Northumberland with Lyn, in West Thirston, midway between Morpeth and Alnwick. We met up on the Sunday evening with my fellow Kingstonian poetry-, football- and cricket-loving pal Greg Freeman and his wife, Gillian. Most of the week, though, we either undertook long circular walks around the beautiful River Coquet or visited places: Alnmouth, Alnwick and Amble, all of which had their singular charms. That leaves Northamptonshire as the only county in England in which I haven’t spent any time (apart from going through it on the M1).
On Saturday, I went to Doncaster for the launch of The Fig Tree Women’s Poetry Anthology, available here, co-edited by Stephanie Bowgett and Susan Darlington and published by Crooked Spire Press. It contains 68 poems by 53 poets, including, as well as the co-editors and Julia Deakin who contributed a foreword, some well-known poets like Sally Baker, Claire Booker, Rachel Burns, Sarah Leavesley/James, Maria Taylor, Jackie Wills and Sarah Wimbush, alongside lesser-known ones equally deserving of having their poems selected for this excellent and timely anthology. About 20 poets read in Doncaster, the last of whom was Sarah Wimbush with an immensely powerful tour de force, her list poem ‘The Girls’.
I found out from another poet there that the poetry reading that I was due to be part of in West Yorkshire later this month has been cancelled by the organiser, which was news to me! I messaged the organiser yesterday to ask if that was true and she replied ‘Yes’, with no explanation nor an apology for not having informed me. All very disappointing and peculiar.
In happier news, I have a few poems and reviews due to appear this month, and I was buoyed by the news (thanks, Rod Whitworth) that Michael Laskey recently used one of my poems as a prompt in a workshop he was running.
I very much admire Clare Starling’s poems about her experiences as a nurse, here, published yesterday on Mike O’Brien’s Sixty Odd Poets Substack. Clare is a fine poet who deserves to be better-known. As is Mike himself, with whom I had a good natter at the reading in Doncaster yesterday.
Next Saturday, I intend to go along and see John Birtwhistle read in Sheffield. I (mostly) enjoyed his Partial Shade, subtitled ‘Poems New & Selected’, Carcanet, 2023; and the following Saturday, I’ve sacrificed going to see the mighty QPR play Birmingham in favour of seeing both Carolyn Forché and Kwame Dawes read in Sheffield, which will surely be amazing. It’s all happening.
Yesterday, Lyn and I walked a long way in the yellow sunshine, to the place where my favourite wild apple trees grow, and got a big rucksack-ful that ought to do us – well, me really – through to the end of November, I reckon.
In Northumberland, I read Skinship (Salt), Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana’s second, bumper collection, available here, in which she again explores cultural differences, the expectations attributed to roles as daughter, mother, daughter-in-law, etc., and much more, in a bewilderingly large range of (mostly Japanese) forms, and with admirable candour. I will have to read it again, as there’s so much in it. I’m very much looking forward to seeing Alex read, alongside my erstwhile Red Door Poets colleague Mary Mulholland, in York on 15th October.
I also read Thomas Powell’s second full haiku collection, from the otherworld, published by Alba, whose website is here. Thomas, about whose haiku I have written before, here, is as good as any English-language haiku poet writing today and I heartily recommend his new book. I also re-read U.A. Fanthorpe’s Selected Poems because it had leapt out at my on the shelf before we left home, and I especially relished revisiting her wonderful poem ‘Hang-Gliders in January’. The other week I read and enjoyed Ian Seed’s latest collection, Forgetfulness (Shearsman Books, available here), particularly his jaunty way with prose poems, and two list poems – ‘I Remember’ and ‘In Memoriam Gerald’ – which take the format of Joe Brainard’s 1970 stream-of-consciousness ‘I Remember’, to conjure poetry out of a series of not necessarily connected memories.
Finally, a shout-out for Lydia Harris, whose beautiful sequence of poems if she was my god has just been published by Scarlet Tiger Press and is available here. I wrote one of the two endorsements for the book:
As Orwell might’ve gone on to say, some poets are unique, but some are more unique than others: in her previous books, Lydia Harris has proved herself to be a very fine, spiritual poet, fully engaged with the nature, history, archaeology and femininity of her adopted home of Orkney. In if she was my god, Harris delves deep ‘into moss mind’ to explore ‘the hidden moss of moss / the slow work of it.’
This is true eco-poetry without proclaiming itself so: out in the mossy landscape, feeling its phenomenal power, and how it ‘contains storms and seasons.’ Harris’s language, diction, and forms are compelling and exquisite throughout. This is supranatural poetry of the highest order.
As you can see at the link, it also has gorgeous illustrations by the Finnish artist Sanni Pyhänniska. There is something mystical yet simultaneously fully earthed about Lydia’s mindset and poetry and if you haven’t read any of her books before, here would be a very good place to start.
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