Barbara Hepworth 2011 visit
I visited Barbara Hepworths’s garden in St Ives this summer and was very inspired. Even though there were crowds of people, the seclusion and beauty of the setting was very moving. I loved the way she matched the landscape and scale of her work together. My favourite piece lay at the front of a small lawn and contained a small pool of water in an oxidised bronze hollow. Ripples were reflected on the surface if you dipped your fingers into the water when the sun was shining. Perfect! I hate to say this but I think sometimes words can get in the way of an experience. Barabara Hepworth seemed to capture the complex relationship between self and landscape, the natural and human worlds within her work and space was as important as a solid form.
On another note, I am still touring my Some Girls’ Mothers event and project with my fellow writers in Yorkshire this autumn so please feel free to drop in any of the following dates:
MORLEY –LIT-FEST
11 October2010
Workshop (Char March ) 2.30-4.30pm: Bees Knees, 27 High Street, Morley, Leeds LS27 9AL
Performance - Char March, Clare Shaw, Anne Caldwell, Suzanne Batty
Morley Library – 7.30pm
Event location Morley Library, Commercial Street, Morley, Leeds, LS27 8HZ (The Baker Room)
Morley Litfest
Jenny-harris@blueyonder.co.uk (07505 127631)
www.morleyliteraturefestival.co.uk
Calderdale Libraries
12 October 2011
Northgate
Halifax
HX1 1UN
Contact:
Anna Turner - annaturner@calderdale.gov.uk
Wakefield Libraries- 19 October – 1.30-3.30pm
Workshop – Anne Caldwell and Char March
Stanley Library
Lake Lock Road
Stanley
Wakefield
WF3 4HU
Phone: 01924 303130
Email: stanleylibrary@wakefield.gov.uk
Tickets will be free.They will be available from Stanley Library and Drury Lane Library from 18th September.
21 October – 7.30pm
Performance – Anne Caldwell, River Wolton, Nell Farrell, Char March
Wakefield Drury Lane Library
Drury Lane
Wakefield
WF1 2TD
Phone: 01924 305376
Email: drurylanelibrary@wakefield.gov.uk
Ty Newydd rules!
I have recently come back from working at Ty Newydd with a fantastic poet called Mike Jenkins. We were working with pupils from the Newport area of South Wales and they all came up with some cracking writing. I have decided Ty Newydd is one of my favourite places in the world. I even managed to get some writing of my own done - mostly on the theme of hospitals after my spell in Huddersfield Royal earlier in the year. I am going back to Ty Newydd as part of a NAWE retreat in June, when all the flowers will be out and I look forward to writing and beachcoming. It feels easier being away from home, the tv, emails and being a mum to get work done, but I would not change the latter either. My theme for this year is to create more of a sense of balance.
In the Bleak Midwinter
This photo was taken up in Hardcastle Craggs this week to inspire a new personal writing project I have just started. I have decided to do the same route once a week for a year and write about this walk from different angles - observation, sensory details, diary thoughts and research. I am going to see what kind of material comes out, but I started this week in appalling weather and came across this extraordinary wall of icicles half way down the main route into The Craggs. It looked like the entrance to The Underworld!
I am also going to be working in South Leeds Academy this term with year 11 pupils. I am looking forward to meeting them all on the 25th January. I am running a writing project in Warrington for Anna Wenlock which will be open to local writers (and non writers). It is based at Birchwood Library and will look at unlocking creativity, helping new writers get started and building confidence and self esteem. I intend to do a mixture of poetry, creative non-fiction and short stories with the group.
I did a project last year at Birchwood as part of a ‘Some Girl’s Mothers’ tour, and had the best workshop experience I have ever had! It was a very mixed group of young people and retired people and they all clicked. The evening flew by.
A new term starts
I am teaching for the Open University this year and for Bolton University and have a really interesting bunch of students in both institutions. Teaching poetry is challenging how I write myself. I have always using voice, rhythm and half rhyme a lot in my own work. Trying to explain exactly how to two different groups of students is proving quite a challenge!
I am also beginning to put together my collection. The first step is to get all the possible material together and lay it out on the bedroom floor/bed/windowsill etc. Wish me luck!
The Poetry School’s guide has been recommended to me - on how to put together a first collection. So I am going to take a look at that this week.
Conversation on-line with writer Sarah Hymas
I have been having a really fruitful conversation about my work with poet Sarah Hymas this week, shortly to appear on her blog. http://sarahhymas.blogspot.com/
It has made me think about the roots of my own writing, and be able to articulate more clearly what I am trying to say in poetry, particularly around the idea of writing about the environment.
She has asked me about my first pamphlet collection - Slug Language.
If you would like to read some reviews of this collection, here is a sample:
A Sample of Feedback from Poets and Readers of ‘Slug Language’
‘We also enjoyed reading Slug Language - we both spent a happy hour on
Saturday morning reading it. It really is excellent, Anne, you’re an extremely talented writer, teacher, performer …’
Kaye Tew MMU
‘Congratulations. You’ve got a book of treasures in print. Such wonderful words coming from Slug Language – some making me goose-pimply – slime also very much appreciated!’
Susan Heyhurst
‘I’m so enjoying ‘Slug Language’ I think it’s a very strong pamphlet. I particularly liked
‘Touched’…Lovely’
Alicia Stubbersfield
‘What a stunning reading and luscious book!’
Mandy Coe
‘Love the chapbook. It is beautiful. Enjoy it’
Amanda Dalton
‘A strong collection. Takes your work to a new level’
Sarah Corbett
‘Just read your book cover to cover and think it’s genuinely beautiful. I haven’t read poetry I enjoyed so much in years.’
Beverley Ward
‘I love your poetry – sensuous, delicate, delicious’
Cheryl Moskowitz.
‘I very much enjoyed ‘Slug Language’. I have a terrible habit of turning down the corners of pages so that I can easily find my favourite poems again and your lovely pamphlet is sadly defaced. My favourite poems were Feral; My Mother’s House Falls into the River, Kist, Longing is Opened by the Wind and Mid Summer II. So glad Nell decided to publish this excellent collection.’
Maggie Butt.
‘I’ve read your pamphlet – and I really like it, especially the poems about your son (the reference to chisels and light bulbs was familiar/chilling!).’
Jonathan Davidson
New 2009 poetry
The River Ure in Spate, January 2009
I have just been on an amazing visit up Wharf dale in search of waterfalls. I had not done that trip in winter and the landscape was very bare, beautiful and most of the rivers were near to flooding point. I do not think this photograph does the scene justice!
I seem to have had a dry period over the festive season when it comes to writing, but here is something that I have managed to finish. I began this poem in a workshop run by the fabulous Ann Sansom at a National Association for Writers in Education’s retreat last year. Ann asked the group to write in the first person from the point of view of a baby about to be born, and read us a poem by Sharon Olds. I hope this is not too derivative of Sharon Olds (who does this kind of intimate poem so well it is difficult to know where you start yourself after reading her work, I think!). Please leave me a comment if you have a view on this topic.
Worcester Park General Hospital
I’m kept in a box. I blink.
Smell hot plastic. Stretch out my hand
to watch a pattern of light redden.
I’m a glow-in-the-dark; half-fish
with slithery lungs in a ribcage supple as a slipper.
My skull’s pointed, yet to harden.
My hold on life is lax.
Mother’s face rises like a full moon
and her eyes cloud over with green.
I’ve lost her metronome heartbeat.
I’ve no idea of the comfort of her milk-tipped
nipple, nor the crook of her arm,
nor the rhythm of a walk in the park
with sycamore leaves to soften the sun’s stare.
Anne Caldwell
Journal of a Trainee Editor part 2
I had expected the summer months to be quieter and less busy, but with two books now on the go this was always going to be unrealistic! I have been working with Helena Nelson from Happenstance Press on my first poetry chapbook, and we have finally decided a title ‘Slug Language’. The process has been one of very fine tuning, looking at grammar, imagery and finding the exact words for poems. I have also continued to work with Ian Daley from Route on ‘Some Girls’ Mothers’ - a collection of non fiction on the theme of mothers and daughters. It is now flowing in a good order, and is ready to be proof-read. A cover has been discussed and I have had the difficult task of writing an introduction and blurb for the back of the book.
Helena Nelson shares Ian Daley’s attention to detail but the process of working on a poetry collection as apposed to creative non-fiction feels very different. There is less emphasis on narrative, more on concise use of language, and rhythm. I have enjoyed both processes immensely, and both have been very personal because of the subject matter of my poetry and the story I have written for ‘Some Girls’ Mothers.
I have always been a very visual person, as interested in art as in writing, so looking at images for the cover of both these books is something I relish. It feels like they suddenly acquire their own place in the world and are much less attached to me!
29th May, 2008
I have been working in the North West for the National Year of Reading this month, running reading workshops and creative writing workshops on the theme of well being. I have met some fantastic readers and writers, and have been greatly encouraged by asking readers what they got out of coming to a group. Their replies were very varied but many people said the experience extended their reading habits and that they would now try a whole range of new fiction.
I have been finishing a story for a new collection of pieces on the theme of mothers and daughters that I am putting together with five other writers and found it a challenge moving from poetry to prose. I have been working on how to get dialogue to sound authentic rather than stilted, and also how to structure a story in a balanced way. I have also been writing a new series of poems exploring old fairy tales, such as the six brothers who got turned into swans, and poems from the point of view of animals. I have been reading a number of books about wilderness - including WildWood by Roger Deakin (which is inspirational), Alice Oswald’s book of poems, Woods etc and The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane whose prose is like drinking spring water. Why this theme? My good friends Karen Smith and Helen Beale pointed me in this direction, knowing my interest in contemporary ways to write about ecology and the natural world. I think I also have a bit of cabin fever, so have been vacariously travelling in my head by reading this selection of books.
Feeling the Pressure
I have been reading a fantastic book edited by Paul Munden over Easter called Feeling the Pressure, and published by The British Council in Switzerland. It includes new work on the subject of climate change interspersed with scientific fact and thoughtfully put together in a series of subject headings - such as Extremes and Impacts. I recognise many writers in this collection but had not read their work on the subject. I particularly enjoyed Neil Rollinson’s poem Amphibians which takes human beings in full circle and imagines them becoming toad-like again. The poems’ language is very guttural, physical and full of the sound of rain. I also love the front cover of the book which features a very tactile barometer.
-
About
Anne Caldwell is a poet and literature consultant. She works for NAWE and the Open University, Bolton University and runs workshops in schools and community settings.
Contact Tel. 07818 052108
email a.caldwell@nawe.co.uk
-
Read This
'A Wilder Vein' edited by Linda Cracknell
