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.
Two events coming up this summer
I have just had a poem published in Magma no.44 and I am delighted as I think it is such a good magazine. I am going to its launch event at The Troubadour in London 8pm on the 22nd June. Please come and join me if you are around that evening. I will post up the poem once the magazine is in production.
I am also doing an event with Nell Farrell, Char March and others at the Lowdon Literature Festival on Saturday 20th June at 6.30pm. We are reading from ‘Some Girls’ Mothers.
I have been following quite a lot of material in the papers about the Poet Laureate and want to congratulate Carol Ann - this seems a very important step forward for women and poetry in particular and I am really pleased to see the raised profile the art form has. I just hope the actual Laureate post does not have a detrimental affect on her work. I wonder if there is a better way of celebrating poetry in this country? It seems such an archaic institution. I would prefer something that did not focus on one person and had a wider spread. I would be interested to hear what other people think.
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!
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.
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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
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Read This
'A Wilder Vein' edited by Linda Cracknell
