Five Little Things - Frost in the Garden

 

At the moment we wake up to a white world every other day. The days it's not frosty it's misty and it feels a bit like living in the middle of a fairy tale. I love the crisp, cleanness of frost how it highlights the skeletal structure of everything. 

I took these photos in my pajamas with a very thick sweater and a coat over the top, gloves, a scarf and a hat! Afterwards as I looked through them words began to flow and I found myself writing a short poem full of the details I'd seen. One thing led to another and I found myself contemplating how we too get frozen in life, frozen into habits or frozen in the sense of not being able to let go of things. All this fed into my writing and from the frost in the garden I moved onto loss and the things we cannot let ourselves lose, those things we carry with us wherever we go - loved ones who've passed, very special memories, the vague souvenir of a feeling...  

This is just one way the writing process can work for me, from image whether photographic or seen live through very specific detail and description and often only towards the end the emergence of the philosophical or emotional which is what probably made me react in the first place. It's like passing through a series of rooms and seeing what's in each one. And I realise more and more that this journey that I take through writing is also how I make sense of my experience of life and this is probably the most precious gift writing can give me, to better understand myself and my world. This year I plan to travel through these rooms often.

 

Homescholing Mama : Poetry Masterclass Ty Newydd

Through the train window - Wales

Over the last couple of weeks it was my turn to further my education. I headed off to Wales to participate in a poetry master-class with the great poets, Gillian Clarke and Carol Ann Duffy, former national poet of Wales and poet laureate of England respectively. 

To say I had a great time would be a glaring understatement. I found myself thinking perhaps I'd died on the plane and gone to heaven! Surrounded by like-minded people, or should I say similarly bonkers people in a beautiful house I was told to treat as my home, there to write poetry and learn from the best - what more could I ask for. 

The view from the garden

Ty Newydd is a very special place, a beautiful, old house with a lot of character, it's been lovingly renovated with great care and attention paid to comfort. The result is a cosy, homelike haven in which people come to write and learn. It's rural setting close to the sea, surrounded by rolling hills and fields makes it very peaceful and refreshing. On my walks I saw wildflowers, herons, plovers and sheep (I'm rather partial to the latter who aren't so common here in Brittany).
 

The back of the house

With all that beauty around you, the inside more than matches up. After all, what more can a poet ask for than a room full of poetry books! The Ty Newydd library pictured below is probably one of the most beautiful and cosy rooms I've spent time in. It was the venue for nightly poetry readings firstly by Carol Ann and Gillian, then the wonderful Imtiaz Dharker and finally on the last evening, us - the participants. I loved spending all day working on poetry, eating a fantastic meal and then getting right back into poetry again right there in that room.  

View of the garden from the Library window

The other end of the Library

After a week of workshops, group work and rich conversation, I've come back inspired and invigorated with a bunch of new friends who are all as talented and amazing as each other. I feel very lucky to have had this time for myself; to learn, to grow, to meet new people and take a few steps further with my writing. Thank you to my family, especially Frank for managing without me for ten days and to all the wonderful people at Ty Newydd who really make the house a home from home for all who visit!
 

Greater Good Poem is Featured Entry on Hour of Writes

Once again I have the pleasure of being a featured entry on the great writing site Hour of Writes. I participate regularly with this project for several reasons. Firstly, it's a bit like doing a weekly writing workshop, a prompt is given and it takes my mind where it will go. It's not the way I work all the time but I have found it to be a good discipline. Secondly, the feedback. It's always nice to have some feedback on your writing. The poems I put up on Hour of Writes don't always end up being my final version of that poem. Sometimes the feedback I get can help me with the tweaking phase of poetry writing which usually takes me way more time than the initial draft writing. And thirdly, I enjoy reading what other people have to say about the weekly subjects which are often very thought provoking. There's a wind range of writing approaches being showcased on Hour of Writes and it's a pleasure to peruse them. 

So anyway, you can read Twenty Eight to One here. It's the featured entry by tinyfeetandbluebirds under the heading The Greater Good.

Why I love Notebooks

I own an inordinately large number of notebooks. While some people have cupboards full of shoes and others have toy trains or souvenir dolls, I have notebooks. Most of them are covered in scribbles, drawings, poems, lists, stories, addresses, names, books to read, places to go and things to see. They are something of great beauty to me and I never throw one away.

When I pick one up it is my very own time machine transporting me back to the time when it was The One. Battered and bruised, carried with me everywhere, slung in the bottom of beat up totes and hauled out in cafés and on trains, at the park watching my kids or over dinner with friends. The pink sequined number I wrote in French in the year I was studying psychology. Or the little muji Kraft books I had when the children were small and space and time a luxury. A Little Book of Sunshine, a gift from a friend that is growing, crammed full of words that refuse to be silenced. They are all special and I keep them all. Even the cheapo supermarket panic buy, grabbed when I forgot to pack one or ran out of space. Even the ones I used for morning pages when I tried that idea out. 

The other day I pulled out one of my current 'friends'- yes I have more than one notebook on the go these days. It was totally blank and a friend asked me if I always write on blank pages. Yes oh yes oh yes when I can. I love the scratch of the pen across the unwritten empty page. I love to fill that space. I love the way suddenly something appears out of nothing and sometimes, not always, but sometimes, that something is good, worth reading again, worth keeping. 

Oh and when there are no more blank pages? Then I write all over every inch of everything, filling the pages until they are black, scribbling on the curling corners of paper napkins and till receipts, even metro tickets and playing cards. 



Here's a photo of my current favourite, from muji - they really do have great notebooks. And in case you're wondering, yes I do give my kids a lot of notebooks too. They have these ones and the larger model for painting in - the paper is nice and thick. There are zap books for doodling in the car and homemade concoctions with weird and wonderful paper for creating in and of course many many beautiful notebooks that just grabbed my fancy. And yes, we keep them all. They are a record of our lives lived on the blank pages of our days.

Tipping the Balance

Check out my poem over on Hour of Writes about life and death. Yeah only the light issues! It's the featured entry from tinyfeetandbluebirds. Lots of other great stuff to read there too. Maybe you'll feel inspired to have a go too, here's this weeks prompt:

French Alps and Poetry

Holidays in the mountains are unlike holidays elsewhere at least in my case. Time seems to move more slowly and the fresh air and exercise doubles the effect of the break from routine. We are lucky to be in the French Alps just after a big snow which has transformed the world into a winter wonderland. And the weather is great too, crystal blue skies all day long and breathtaking star studded vistas at night.

The light is one of the things I find the most invigorating, the brightness of the glistening snow bouncing the sunlight back and forth across the landscape. And then the shade, deep and dark and cold, I love the contrast. Everything seems very crisp and clean. Light fascinates me and is a recurring subject in my writing. It rhythms are days, indeed our lives constantly and it is a constant source of inspiration and joy. I'm really pleased that a poem I wrote about hoping for light on a winter's day is a featured entry on a great writing site I really enjoy being a part of. The writing site is called Hour of Writes and you can read the poem here. There is a lot of great writing on the site - it's well worth spending a moment perusing it. 

The stars and the mountains are calling...

Winter's Morning, Run to the Shore

On the days when our hands freeze as we write
When our breath floats out and hovers in the air

Like so many gulls suspended in flight

Let us run to the beach.

When huddling by the fire is no longer fun

And itchy arms long to stretch their wings

In the soft and low slung winter sun

Let us run to the sea.

Don't say we should be doing something else

Like reading or writing or 'rithmatic.

Let the dishes pile up on table, in sink,

Let the work wait, come quick,

Let us run to the shore

And plunge our toes into the soft sand.

Let us race right up to the surf

Stare it down, feel how grand

It is. And run from it laughing.

There is only today, here and now.

Yesterday is long gone and tomorrow

Is just a dream not yet invented.