Today I’m delighted to welcome to my blog, Rebecca Gethin, whose second collection A Handful of Water, has just been published by Cinnamon Press. I enjoyed reading this so much that I asked our mutual publisher, Jan, to put me in touch with Becky so I could ask her a few questions. Becky lives on…
James Honeybill, Merchant Seaman – 8th March 1903 – 12th March 1993
Earlier in the year I promised to provide some biographical details about the men who are in the poems in Convoy. The only place to start is with my grandfather, Jim, taid as I called him (Welsh for grandfather). He was a merchant seaman all his life and first went to sea in 1919 at…
The Poem is a Question
Last Saturday I headed off to London for an all-day workshop all day workshop with Katy Evans-Bush. She has been immensely helpful is providing advice as I’ve been finishing Convoy but this was the first time I’d had the chance to go to one of her workshops. This was a reprise of a very successful workshop…
The writing week
Mine starts with an email from my publisher saying that at a book fair the previous week the sales reps had approached her having already picked up Convoy. They wanted to know more about it. You can’t have a better start than that. Gratified though I was I still had that feeling I got sometimes…
Girl in White – An interview with Sue Hubbard
Some months ago I mentioned Girl in White, Sue Hubbard’s most recent novel which was published in the autumn. Sue kindly agreed to be interviewed for this blog about her writing. What inspired you to write about Paula Modersohn-Becker? I learnt about Paula Modersohn-Becker when my first poetry collection, Everything begins with the Skin, (Enitharmon) was…
Honouring Issac Rosenberg
There is currently a campaign underway to honour First World War poet Isaac Rosenburg by erecting a statute near Birkbeck College and the Slade where he studied. I was rather shocked to learn that this will be only the fifth statute of a poet in London and only the second in Britain of a Jewish…
110 Days and counting
The useful thing about having your book listed for publication and appearing in ‘forthcoming titles’ is that some websites like Waterstones provide a form of count-down to publication so it’s 110 days to go. Between now and then I am going provide on this blog more information about the people who inspired the poems. There isn’t…
New Year’s Day
The year has got off to a good start, with some writing, cake baking and a long walk and I’ve just gone back to the draft of the poem I wrote this morning. That one is not ready to be shown to anyone yet so I’ve leave you with Kim Addonzio’s poem New Year’s…
Cecil Beaton and Edward Thomas
Yes I know they sound unlikely companions but bear with me… Earlier this week I went up to London for what turned out to be a double pre-Christmas treat. The Imperial War Museum (IWM), which is about to close its doors in January for six months, is currently hosting an exhibition of Cecil Beaton’s war-time…
And the winner is…. Vanessa Gebbie
I’m so pleased that Vanessa has won the Troubadour International Poetry Prize. The results were announced earlier this week and can be read on the Troubadour website. congratulations to the other winners all excellent poems http://www.coffeehousepoetry.org/poems