James Nash Blog

A camouflage for bones..

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2013-05-13T09:40:14+01:00

After reading at the University of York last October, I was asked whether I could write something about ‘coma’, and its aftermath, for a very fascinating conference to be held at Cardiff University. I think this came about because I had a collection published some time ago entitled ‘Coma Songs’ and also because the reading in York demonstrated that, like most poets, my writings often deal with issues of mortality.

Entitled the ‘Before I Die Festival: a festival for the living about dying', details can be found below. I’ll be reading my new poems, amongst others, this coming Saturday between 4pm and 6pm in a concert of music, poetry and song.
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/beforeidie

Like most commissions of substance the writing had many scary moments. One wants to say something ‘true’ and powerful but also show respect to those whose experience is more personal, more ‘real’ that one’s own as an imaginative writer.

Here is a sonnet from my collection, ‘Some Things Matter: 63 Sonnets’, which demonstrates my fascination, in the words of T.S. Eliot, with the 'skull beneath the skin'.

I asked a famous writer once what she
Wrote about. And she paused and took a breath,
Eschewing blandness she confounded me,
When her answer came as, ‘sex and death’.
And yes, artists deal with mortality
And the consequences of love and sex,
But in this stage of life, I seem to see
Time in everything, and its effects.
My life-span is long enough to measure,
The growth of the great trees, and how they’ve spread
In the churchyard where I pause at leisure,
To muse on the now, not so recent dead.
While love still flowers around the stones,
I see only a camouflage for bones.

A poem finds its illustration

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2013-04-15T17:04:07+01:00

Last week I had a splendid time at the Scarborough Literature Festival, hosting five events and meeting up with old friends, and making new ones.

One morning early I made my way to Sewerby Hall, on the outskirts of Bridlington, for a little photo-shoot as part of the promotion of the Bridlington Poetry Festival from the 14-16 June this year.

http://www.bridlington-poetry-festival.com/index.html

As I stood in front of the magnificent eighteenth century house I felt a bit as if I was posing for a Gainsborough, needing only a rifle, a dog and a brood of children to complete the scene.

At the end of our session Simon Kench, the very talented photographer, generously took four or five shots of me with some of the dog statues in the grounds of the house.

One photograph particularly struck me from these images. It seemed to perfectly illustrate a sonnet of mine from some time ago…here it is, from 'Some Things Matter: 63 sonnets' from Valley Press [October 2012]

I still sense him everywhere I go,
Shadow moving behind me silently,
Sombre elegance slipping to and fro,
But vanished when I turn to check and see.
In addition to this gentle haunting,
From him whose love I had for just a year.
I see him in a Georgian painting
Prancing ready to test the heath-land air.
Or in an ancient fresco on a wall
Of mounted warriors with sideways glances,
Whose bows and spears are bristling tall
Amongst the horses’ hooves he dances.
Caspar’s noble spirit is with us yet,
We shall remember him. We shall not forget.

Life is sweet...

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2013-04-05T10:33:07+01:00

I found entry into 2013 surprisingly difficult, like diving deep into a chilly lake without breathing equipment, and coming to the surface freezing and fighting for breath. As if I had left 2012 as a poet, but had been asked to be a nuclear physicist on my return from the Christmas holidays. For weeks I seemed to stare at things glassily as if trying to work out what was going on, unable to gather pace, unsure of my next step.

And I don’t even have a physics O Level.

Then some time late in January I started enjoying things again, or perhaps started seeing things clearly once more. 2012 had been a year of very hard work, culminating in the publication of ‘Some Things Matter: 63 sonnets’, by the excellent Valley Press. Getting the slim volume ready was probably the hardest work of any story or collection I have ever been involved in.

And I regained sight of the fact that I am probably the luckiest person in the world in loving what I do, in working with fabulous people, in engaging with books and writing every day of my life, and being involved in so many great projects in the year ahead.

So here are some of the more public events I’m involved in, or have been, in 2013, which have bought a twinkle to my rheumy old eyes,

The Huddersfield Literature Festival, where I interviewed fabulous writer Joanne Harris.
www.litfest.org.uk/

The Headingley Literature Festival, where I am working with three local primary schools on the 2013 festival theme of ‘Lives and Loves.’
www.headingleylitfest.org.uk/

The Scarborough Literature Festival, where I’m interviewing a host of great writers.
www.scarboroughliteraturefestival.co.uk/

The Bridlington Poetry Festival, where I’m running a sonnet-writing workshop and giving a reading.
www.bridlington-poetry-festival.com/

Writers Holiday, Caerleon, where I’m giving a talk to the lovely delegates.
www.writersholiday.net/

The NAWG Festival, where I’m running three poetry workshops
www.nawg.co.uk

The Ilkley Literature Festival where I will be doing my usual hosting with my writing heroes, old and new.
www.ilkleyliteraturefestival.org.uk/

In amongst all this I’m working in schools, with a variety of writing groups, performing my work at various venues, writing a commission for a conference in Cardiff in May, judging various poetry competitions and trying to get on even further with my adult novel.

Life is indeed sweet. But no physics please….

'Some Things Matter: 63 sonnets' Launch

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2012-10-15T11:41:00+01:00

Poets can sometimes wait years between the publication of their slim volumes so I feel very lucky to have two collections from Valley Press out within six months of each other.

The first ‘A Bit of an Ice Breaker’ came out on Kindle in April and the second, ‘Some Things Matter: 63 sonnets' is to be launched on Wednesday 17th October in the cafe at Heart, Bennett Road In Headingley, Leeds 6, from 7.30pm. I’ll be talking about, and reading from, both collections at 8pm, and there’ll be signings from 8.30.

The event is free and EVERYONE is welcome…

http://www.heartcentre.org.uk/conta...

Wakefield Lit Fest: writer in residence

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2012-08-03T10:06:52+01:00

I've just been appointed as Writer in Residence for the first [ of many, I hope] Wakefield Lit Fest, a festival of reading and writing. There's a wonderful programme of events for the last week in September at various venues around the city, which culminates in a Readers' Day at the Orangery, a little oasis of green in the city, on Sunday 30th September.

Wakefield, full of history and yet cutting edge in terms of the Hepworth Galley and its ilk, has long been a favourite place of mine. I know there is a wealth of literary talent, a forest of keen readers, and wonderful performers, all of whom will make the festival an unforgettable experience.

I'll keep you posted as more details of the festival come my way.

A Mixed Bunch

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2012-08-01T11:08:14+01:00

One of the great privileges for me in the last year has been working as writer in residence with the massively-talented Otley Courthouse Writers. Invited to work with them last September, we have spent many happy and laughter-filled Friday afternoons, exploring different genres, whether it be poetry, short fiction or memoir writing.

My job has been to gently steer a group, whose vision and energy created the inaugural and wonderfully successful Otley Word Feast Festival in the spring of this year. It has been pure pleasure.

So it is with a great deal of pride that I announce a special event, a reading of our latest work, ‘A Mixed Bunch’ at the Washburn Heritage Centre [Swinstey Church] on Wednesday 8th August at 7.30pm.

All proceeds from this reading and sale of the anthology will go towards the centre. Refreshments and wine are included in the ticket price £7.50 members/£9 non- members. And the anthology {pictured} will be on sale at a special price for this launch: £3.50 (rrp £5). The publication has been sponsored by Zoflora as part of their 90th anniversary celebrations.

Booking is essential on 01943 880794.

To my slight embarrassment I am mentioned individually in the programme, and on the front of the anthology, apparently causing someone to say to a member of the Courthouse Writers,

‘James Nash, how did you get him?’

My reaction when I was told about this, was,

‘It’s simple, you just ask me and I mostly say yes. And a positive response is absolutely guaranteed for a fiver.’

Only joking….I'm very proud.

Our hearts beat as one...

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2012-06-19T14:59:41+01:00

Who likes the sound of their own voice? I can remember teachers at school who appeared to LOVE the sound of their less than dulcet tones, and it’s obvious that certain [often male] politicians wallow in their own vocal gorgeousness like hippos in the mud.

But most sane and modest people are slightly aghast to hear recordings of themselves.

Last Sunday I sat on the wall outside my house feeling slightly nervous.

I was waiting to be taken by Mik Davis [above], the charismatic leader of fabulous band The Utopian Love Revival to his studio/ rehearsal room in Bradford to record some vocals. Joolz Denby [below] had written a beautiful poem and it was going to be part of the launch of ULR’s new album later this summer. It all felt very rock and roll being picked up by Joolz and Mik in the band bus, though perhaps my clumsy grappling into the [not very high] front seat was slightly less so.

And then we were in the studio, tucked away in one of Bradford’s many beautiful old mills, and I started to relax. I felt in safe hands with two top artists; perhaps having my voice likened to certain extinct Welsh actors helped. But the ambience of the space, full of art and inspiration, was a major factor.

Mik recorded me reading the lovely poem three or four times. It’s an hypnotic piece redolent of old hippie days, full of wonderful images and beautiful words, which begins

Golden days flow past blessed in the
Toffee coloured sun-dazed high,
The lapis eyed dandy boys tripping in some
Bronze judder of sound falling from
A guitar played like crimson light,
Brown hands moving like the twist
Of partly reclaimed memories

Having it played back to me was a mingled pleasure and embarrassment, but Mik showed me what he could do with the sound by adding music and rhythm, and it all started to sound rather wonderful.

I’m looking forward to more joint projects with Mik and Joolz. As artists our hearts seem to beat as one….

Joolz Denby’s album The Black Dahlia will be out later this year on Attack Attack Records.

Poetry, performance and other pleasure

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2012-06-11T14:34:12+01:00

Last week I had the great pleasure of visiting York Writers in their upstairs meeting room at Brigantes, Micklegate in York. I was the first to arrive and sat in solitary splendour for about ten minutes, with just enough time to get slightly nervous about my evening’s tasks.

Firstly I had to talk to the group [who were of course friendly, warm and unthreatening] about their poetry competition which I had just judged, give feedback on the poems and announce the winners. Like all reputable competitions all the entries had been anonymous, and I had had no idea of the identities of the writers of each piece, even though I do know individual members of the group.

Apart from being stunned by the quality of the entries, every single conjecture about who the writers were proved to be wrong!

Then I read some of my poetry, old and new, feeling very 21st century and radical, reading off my kindle and my iPhone. From there we had a lovely shared conversation about our writing, and I toddled off to catch the last train to Burley Park in Headingley where I live.

On Saturday I set off to for the Manchester Independent Book Market 2012 ,where I was going to read al fresco, and meet up with some publisher friends. Reading in the rain proved to have a peculiar charm all of its own, with a lovely crowd there who seemed to like my poem from ‘A Bit of Ice-Breaker’ and the sonnet from future collection ‘Some things Matter: 63 sonnets’.

But the real pleasure of the day was to have my kindle loaded up by Comma Press, the organisers of the wondrous two day event, with an ebook made up of poems and prose from all the fab writers who had read over the two days of the market.

I got it for free, but it can be yours of Amazon for 77p,

'The Hat You Wear: The Manchester Independent Book Market 2012 Sampler (The... via @amazonuk http://t.co/R9Fecwix

To Ullswater with year 10 students

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2012-05-30T07:43:15+01:00

It’s Saturday morning and I’m on the 6.50 train to Penrith. This has meant a very early get-up, though the sun is already pounding away, and my jacket grabbed in a ‘just in case’ way is already looking redundant, and slightly silly.

I’m off to Ullswater in the Lake District to meet students and staff from the very wonderful Millfield Science and Performing Arts College. My task is to be inspirational, creative and generally fizzing with energy and bonhomie.

I feel every single day of my sixty-three years.

And then as the train leaves Yorkshire and starts climbing across the centre of England something magical happens, as if I am part of many other journeys while the landscape from my train window gets more and more dramatic. I think of Larkin’s poem which begins, ‘Coming up England, by a different line’, and possibly because I’ve just begun to really wake up, I feel full of promise and possibility.

Getting off the train at Penrith, my taxi driver is already waiting for me with my name on a board, and we set off together on our adventure. On the last mile or so of the journey we strike off from the lake and up into the hills along a track. I think we’re both feeling very intrepid now, me because I spend most of my life in a big city, and him because he’s worrying about his back axle.

And then I meet the ‘kids’, [sorry students] and they’re delightful, as are the teaching staff. I ask them to do twenty difficult things and they just say, ’Ok’ and get on with it. I’m getting them to think about writing a short story, so we’re looking at creating characters, setting and plot.

I’ve brought my characters with me in my bag; fifteen or so photographs of different people, cut from magazines and newspapers, with one wild card, a picture of me aged five, wearing a bow-tie.

Thanks Mum.

We spend the morning and early afternoon together, perching on a flat rock in the sun to share our emerging stories, as I ask them more and more questions designed to add texture and depth to what they are writing.

And, boy, is their writing good. I love that look of pleasure on a writer’s face when they read out something which surprises them with its quality and flair. I am giving special mention to three of the best stories, just as my taxi scrunches up the drive behind me. There’s just time to say thanks and good-bye as I hurry away to catch my train home.

But I have some great memories of the day to keep, and hopefully another session next year to look forward to.

And my tomato head has at last stopped looking such an angry red…

Interview with poet Jo Brandon...

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2012-05-24T11:00:52+01:00

Wise and thoughtful words from Jo Brandon, whose collection Phobia is out now from Valley Press, and also as an ebook for Amazon Kindle.

When did you start writing? What kind of things did you write?

I started writing poetry when I was nine and it was my way of processing the big things around me. My first poem called ‘Life’ (sweeping title!) was written while I was watching the news. I also wrote a lot about myths and legends as I found all those sorts of pseudo-historical things fascinating. Before then I also used to invent these really detailed narrative games which I’d convince my brother to play too and at around ten I began to turn one of them into a novel. It was about a young orphaned girl and her brother who ended up dying and visiting heaven and hell and purgatory and eventually made it back to earth with the knowledge to live happily and survive by themselves – I was quite a dramatic, tragic sort of child. I pity my parents a bit in retrospect!

Do you have a writing routine?

Not a consistent one. I love routine but I like to vary it often and the same applies to my writing but this is one area where I’m trying to be stricter with myself. I like to really immerse myself in a project so I tend to write quite a lot in short periods of time and then have a little gap and then write in another block. That’s why I like to have different external projects on the go because when you’re writing to a deadline or as part of a collaboration I find I do write more consistently and more often.

What part does reading play in your life?

Reading is really central to my creative and day-day life. I go through cycles of inspiration and I know when my writing begins to dry up I need to go through a reading binge. I love to research history, psychology, and philosophy, read novels, poetry – whatever captures my imagination at the time and then my way of processing what I read is to write. At the same time I also like to visit new places like museums, galleries or parks and be around people in cafes while I read. I have the temptation sometimes to withdraw into my own little world and this is my way of keeping my mind supple. It may not instantly get me writing but often it gets me thinking in the right way. I feel that reading is so central to expanding my thoughts and ideas but it can also be a real sanctuary and place of escape.

Are there any writers that you go back to/have influenced you/inspire you?

I could give you a ridiculously long list here but some of my key and continuing influences in terms of poetry have definitely been Sylvia Plath, Linda France, Denise Levertov, Geraldine Monk, Jackie Kay, R.D. Laing, Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage, Moniza Alvi and Philip Larkin. I’ve also been really influenced by a number of prose writers, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison and Angela Carter, in particular and I also continue to be inspired by a good deal of medieval female devotional writing like that by Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich and Marguerite Porete because the imagery they use is so fresh and convincing. I also find song lyrics really inspiring and love listening to people like Joni Mitchell and Alanis Morisette where there is often a really sincere and emotive narrative. These are the sorts of writers that I like going back to and keep finding new depth in as I get older.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m working on quite a few things at the moment so feeling very productive. I’m working with a composer, Ella Jarman-Pinto, who I met through the Leeds Lieder+ festival and we’re developing a song cycle inspired by Pope Joan. I’m also starting to draft poems for my next collection, which has a working title of Cures.

Aside from writing I’m also involved with some great poetry projects and events this year. My publisher Valley Press has organized some events which I’m looking forward to performing at.
the Manchester Book Market (8th June),
Bridlington Poetry Festival (8th-10th June)
and the Hull History Centre (2ndJune),

I’m also facilitating a poetry competition for Southwark Cathedral, which will be judged by Carol Ann Duffy and I’m a young Producer for the Poetry Parnassus taking place in London this Summer. I’ll be updating my website www.jobrandon.com with news about these events too.

Is there a particular poem you’ve written which you’re proud of? [Do you want to quote from it and give details if it has been published?]

There are two poems in my collection Phobia that I feel particularly proud of for different reasons. The first is ‘Arachne Phobia’ which was one of my first ‘phobia’ poems and it has been the poem that gets the most personal response from other people. I think people can identify quite strongly with that change from child to adult and I’m pleased if people feel it’s capturing a sense of an experience we all go though. The opening lines ‘Caught in a lattice of change/gangling growth of limbs’ probably best represent some of the central ideas in the poem.

The second poem is ‘These Bones’ which I feel the greatest personal connection to. I think it’s a poem that can seem very simple at first, there is a very childlike quality to the persona but it deals with some of the biggest questions I ask myself. Questions about religion, belief, the physical versus the spiritual and overall the poem is about how difficult it is to articulate these questions, and how we try to find the answers or some kind of proof within ourselves.

Have you any advice for writers at the beginning of their career….

In a lot of ways I still consider myself to be at the beginning of my career too but there are definitely a few things that have helped me get to this point of having published a first collection and being involved with some fantastic writing experiences. At fifteen I joined a local writers group and this was invaluable for encouraging me to write new material regularly, learning how to perform my work in front of groups of people, learning to deal with constructive criticism and about how other people write. Submitting to magazines that offered editorial feedback was a great help and offered me an extended writing community. In my case it was Cadaverine Magazine that really supported me - they published my work, gave me feedback, put on open mic nights and I was so inspired by what they did I went onto join the editorial team and eventually become General Editor. If you are a ‘young’ writer (under 30) then I would definitely take advantage of any young writer development programmes or workshops you come across. The young writers Hub and NAWE have great listings as does the Ideastap website. The Poetry School also produce excellent workshops for all ages and I think attending local literary festivals and listening to and meeting other writers is incredibly inspiring.

Finding a way that you’re confident performing your work is also really key. Whether that is learning to memorise and perform work or learning to read in a clear and engaging way as long as you do what best represents the work you’re reading. I’ve learnt that it doesn’t really matter if you mess up in front of an audience as long as you’re reading with conviction and look as though you enjoy being there.

Scarborough Literature Picture Parade

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2012-04-23T09:01:30+01:00

Some wonderful pics from my recent jaunt to Scarborough, where I hosted many events and had great fun.

The photographs are by the wonderful, and very smiley, official photographer Liz Cawston. There will be a prize of several of my books, plus a copy of my new collection some things matter: 63 sonnets, when it comes out in October, for anyone who can name all the authors in these images.

I love these photographs, after the usual, initial discomfort of coming to terms with what one really looks like...Thank you Liv.

Adventures in Creative Writing

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2012-04-17T11:46:26+01:00

Many of us feel we have a poem, a story or a book in us. It’s not quite knowing how to access it, or needing some feedback or support at the different stages of writing, that can often be quite challenging. I’d like to tell you about two courses I’m running in the Leeds area, over the next month or so which will support writers and help them find their writing voices.

One is a continuation of my initial six-week course at the Bowery in Headingley, which begins on Thursday 26th April from 7pm-9pm. The group is friendly, talented and very supportive of each others’ writing, and you would be most welcome to join us.

For more information check out www.thebowery.org or ring Sandra on 0113 224 2284 to register your interest.

The other is a new departure on Friday mornings at the Otley Courthouse, an arts venue in Otley just outside Leeds. It’s organised by the WEA and will initially run for five sessions, beginning on Friday 4th May, from 10.30am to 12.30pm. The course is entitled Adventures in Creative Writing and is open for everyone who wants to write, from beginners to more seasoned writers. It will cost £30 for five sessions.

If all goes well it will start up again in September 2012, same time and place, and run for twenty weeks.

Contact me via my website, email me on james@jamesnash.co.uk if you have any questions about either course.

Scarborough Literature Festival 2012

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2012-04-17T17:31:34+01:00

This was probably one of the busiest and most successful literature festivals ever for Scarborough. For me the pleasures of working with the same amazing team of library staff and volunteers, the great programme [with something for everyone], the beauty of the town itself, and meeting so many fabulous authors made it a personal best.

There were some challenges, but they were mostly to do with travel.

So when my train was cancelled and no-one knew if there'd be another that day, I got a cab across Leeds to the bus-station and made the Coastliner Bus with minutes to spare. Coastliner [motto possibly, 'We visit every village in Yorkshire before we deliver you to your destination'] was an unexpected treat, as I sat upstairs and was driven through the most beautiful Yorkshire towns and countryside. On Friday I left Scarborough for Wigan where I was doing an evening event with the lovely Sarah Waters, and with enormous luck managed to get home in Leeds by midnight that night, only to have to get up the next morning and off to Scarborough again.

Is there any particular highlight of this marvellous festival I should mention? Perhaps it was the ending of my event with Kathy Lette, Jojo Moyes and Rosie Thomas when Kathy jumped onto my knee, followed by Jojo and Rosie to the delight of the audience. Later a friend had to dab my face and head with her hanky to remove the lipstick.

This never happened when I interviewed Andrew Motion!

I'm gonna live forever

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2012-04-17T09:34:28+01:00

The pleasures of seeing yourself in print are not to be underestimated. There was the time I was 17, and was up for cycling along a no-cycling path at Uxbridge Magistrates Court, and carefully removed the court list from the noticeboard [one brass drawing-pin] so that I could put it on the wall of my 6th Form classroom. This was not the beginning of a life of crime, but the beginning of a life of part-time narcissism, which is the writer’s lot.

If I’m in print I must exist.

Later seeing a collection of my poetry books in the Leeds Borders [of blessed memory] window I felt a huge rush of belief in my own existence . Even seeing battered copies of my books from ‘sellers’ on Amazon has its own bitter-sweet, super-charge of reality.

Last week a collection of my poems went straight to kindle; I must point out this is not the equivalent of a Steven Siegel film going straight to DVD, though we are both bulky men of a certain age, who should know better… A Bit of an Ice Breaker is a collection drawn from earlier books with some until then unpublished poems. It’s a kind of warm up to the main act in October when my new sonnet collection will be published Some Things Matter: 63 sonnets by the excellent Valley Press.

Oddly enough, as I do with any new books, I raised the kindle to my nose to sniff my new collection. It smelt fantastic, plastic with the heady extra of coffee splashes and ginger biscuit crumbs.

I’m gonna live forever!

Glorious interview with poet Pippa Little

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2012-04-05T16:15:03+01:00

I recently interviewed poet Pippa Little, thinking that I might edit down her answers to my questions, but as you can see her responses were magical; a tonic for all writers.

'I started writing stories when I was about eight. I used to make up tales and illustrate them! I loved exercise books which I could fill up with long sagas about families and intrepid heroines. I also liked to design fashion collections and draw maps of imaginary islands. One of my best Christmas presents ever was a child’s typewriter which I got when I was ten and I used to type out long stories on that, but I really preferred writing in the exercise books with my biros.

I write or think about writing every day. I don’t have a routine as such. I was struck recently by something John Glenday said about inspiration being an active rather than a passive thing – you can’t wait around hoping it will appear! So even if I am having a bit of a writer’s block I still try to write something, just to keep the process active. If not writing something from scratch, then there is always correcting, editing, drafting, trying again in a different tense or voice.

Recently I’ve taken to thinking for longer about a poem I am going to write – let it come in its own time rather than rush to put it down on paper. Walking the dog is a kind of writing for me, when I think about words and ideas, make connections and notice what’s happening around us.

Reading is very important in my life. I used to read a lot of fiction but these days I find I read more poetry and non-fiction. I’ve always read a lot of poetry, I’m always curious to discover voices new to me and it’s a huge pleasure to visit charity shops and bookshops where I can find collections and anthologies, old and new and in between! I couldn’t or wouldn’t write myself if I didn’t read poetry widely. It’s a replenishing and an invigorating thing. It’s also a great way to learn about craft and forms, whether you realise it or not as you’re enjoying the words and images!

Reading aloud is also important – whether at event, informally in a workshop or earlier on in the process, alone in your own space. You can discover what works and what doesn’t by listening to your poem as it emerges in your own voice.

Returning to familiar poets is comforting. I often revisit Neruda, Frost, Dickinson,, and many others according to my mood or need. It’s a bit random. I seem to come upon something in a pile that I didn’t know I needed to re-read until that moment. There are specific poems I love and need to go back to – Cavafy’s’ Ithaka’, Charlotte Mew’s ‘Rooms’, Tennyson’s ‘The Crimson Petal and the White’, Frances Horovitz’s ‘Rain : Birdoswald’, Matthew Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’ come to mind – but on another day, the list would be quite different!. Then there are poets like Larkin – I love several individual poems more than his whole. Some poems connect me with people I’ve loved, like Edward Thomas and Gerard Manley Hopkins with my father, or a time in my life, like Adrienne Rich, when I was researching feminist poetics.

I’ve begun a collaboration with an American poet called Angie Vorhies as part of the ‘Conversations Across Borders’ project, a worldwide attempt to connect disparate areas through writing and photography. Angie lives in San Diego, near the Mexico/US border walls. We are working on ‘what washes up on different shores’ which includes the broadly political such as pollution issues, as well as the politics of migration/immigration controls and the fact that we both live near borders (mine is the England/Scotland border with the presence of Hadrian’s Wall still evident) and near the estuaries of rivers which constitute borders – the Tijuana river and the Tweed. We are thinking about how you can establish a border line in water…I’m really enjoying this. I’m going to do a guest blog for the project soon.
And I’m also thinking about a sequence of poems about space, the invisible thing that defines us, or we, it – invisibly. I saw an exhibition last year at the Barbican called The Surreal House which really fascinated me.

The following poem won the Norman MacCaig Centenary Poetry Prize. I was able to spend a week up at Glencanisp Lodge in Assynt on a writing retreat and to take part in the MacCaig Festival there, where I met and read with Liz Lochhead, Alan Riach, Alan Taylor, Colin Will, Mandy Haggith and Sandy Moffat. It was a wonderful experience!

Coal End Hill Farm 1962

I don’t remember the Beanley orra-man,
his boots down the lonnen black as a wet day, his caravan
under a butchered elm’s imaginary wingspan,
rusted, cantankerous: ‘all that can’s been done’,
my mother said, then, low, ‘he’s God’s own one’.
I can’t recall his singing of the Kingdom come,
or whispering from underneath his hands
‘if my soul the Lord should take’, or how he crept away
like Billy Blin, awake long hours before the blackbirds, eager to begin
carving off a dead lamb’s skin to roll one barely-living in
under a dazed ewe, force tongue to tit, tit to tongue :
mole-blind he’d move, from east to western sun, more whole
in his Gomorrah than the doucest thing, but slow,
immortal, helpless as his beasts to conjure up tomorrow.

(Published in The Best British Poetry 2011, ed. R. Lumsden, Salt, and in Overwintering, Oxford Poets/Carcanet 2012)

If I have any advice to new writers, it’s to try to be as kind and encouraging to yourself as you can. Don’t be afraid of the times when you feel you have nothing to say : it’s all a part of the creative process, trust in yourself and allow the fallow times to come and go. Stay connected with writing, though, through reading, going to hear other poets, writing a diary or even just bits and pieces of things – you never know what treasures you might have to return to later.

It’s easy to listen to the self-critical voice in your head, but don’t let it take up too much room. Be glad for yourself and celebrate success! Also, I don’t think you can over-estimate the importance of other people. It’s so much harder to do it alone. Join a group or a workshop or an online forum, and share!
Have faith in what YOU do – don’t imitate others, compare or wish to have their path. You are the only person in the world who can write what you write! I’d also say it’s important to be open to learning and improving and able to take on board valid and constructive criticism from those you trust!

nce of other people. It’s so much harder to do it alone. Join a group or a workshop or an online forum, and share!
Have faith in what YOU do – don’t imitate others, compare or wish to have their path. You are the only person in the world who can write what you write! I’d also say it’s important to be open to learning and improving and able to take on board valid and constructive criticism from those you trust! '

It feels like spring...

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2012-04-05T09:57:20+01:00

Yesterday was cold and snowy; my office hummed with the heat of two oil-filled radiators, and the sound of my brain struggling to keep up.

It was hand over time and James Ward, the wonderful creator and manager of my website, was showing me how it all worked. How to blog, upload pictures, keep it all up to date etc. etc.

Brain, struggle, struggle. Light dawning dimly. Brain, struggle, struggle…

We’ve worked together for five years or so, and have created something that we can both be proud of, with forty plus podcasts with interviews both of the very famous, and of those at the very beginning of their writing careers.

But things change and other projects beckon for both of us.

I need to think of fresh ways to communicate using my website. So I intend to archive the podcasts from time to time, so that the best and most interesting interviews can be easily found. I intend to use my blog to advertise forthcoming events, and to share thoughts and inspirations. There will be the occasional book review, and a monthly interview with a writer or someone who works in the book or literature world, which will replace the podcast. In the next day or so I will publish a fascinating interview with writer Pippa Little.

Curiously today I can see sunshine in my garden from my office window and it feels like spring...

The Long Weekend -Scarborough 2012

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2012-04-05T12:12:42+01:00

It’s Scarborough Literature Festival time, The Long Weekend, which runs from the 12th to the 15th April. I’ve been associated with the festival since its inception and it’s a great thrill to be involved with it still, as a host and presenter of events.

In such a fabulous array of distinguished writers, who range from Joan Bakewell to Susan Hill, and from Andy Kershaw to Roy Hattersley, it’s going to be hard to pick out whom you might want to see. I would want to take in all the above but also Marina Lewicka, Kate Atkinson and Susan Hill on the way. This year’s festival is blessed with novelist Patria Duncker as Writer in Residence, and even has old friend Val McDermid popping up to chair a crime panel.

To be honest I can’t do justice to this year’s festival; it just gets better and better. See for yourself on

www.scarboroughliteraturefestival.co.uk

And although I’m a bit biased about the Yorkshire coast, how can you beat staying in elegant Scarborough for the festival in one of the many wonderful hotels and guest-houses and perhaps visiting the beautiful Wolds countryside [I’ve just been to see Hockney’s latest exhibition of paintings and artwork at the Royal Academy] at the same time.

Writing for all in Headingley

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2012-02-06T18:19:56+00:00

I’m starting a set of six week courses for writers [of all abilities and at different stages] at that very creative hub in Headingley, The Bowery. The Bowery Café, with its art and gallery spaces, seems to be part of the renaissance of LS6 over the last few years . Headingley was always a great place to live; with the Bowery it just got better.

My classes will run from 7-9pm in the café area on Thursday evenings. They begin on 1st March, so do come along if you want to find, or flex, your writing muscles. We will be looking at a range of genres in what will be a creative workout with lots of fun.

Ilkley LitFest

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2011-11-04T12:24:20+00:00

Here's a lovely interview I did recently about the fabulous Ilkley literature Festival

http://www.pickledegg.info/2011/10/interview-literature-festival-interviewer-james-nash

The jolly photograph is by Alan Carmichael

To Kindle or not to Kindle

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2011-09-30T16:35:28+01:00

There’s a low-key debate going on in the press about the death of the book [journalists just love working up a sensational story from nothing; remember how facebook was once seen to be the end of all social life, signalling the rise of the lonely nerd who would only ever know cyber-friendship]. The sad demise of the book is also a conversation I’m having with individuals in classrooms and libraries, and across my dinner table.

Is the book OVER?

Is that it for the printed page?

Are bookshops so yesterday?

Am I, by owning a Kindle, responsible for the potential closure of Waterstone’s?

I remember being one of those ‘I love real print, the smell of new books, the heft of them, the sight of them all gathered together like friends next to the bed’. And I still feel all those things when I hold a book and enjoy its physicality, before I start my new reading journey.

But here my philandering nature comes to the fore. I also love my Kindle, with an immoderate passion. It delivers one of my daily newspapers to me in the middle of the night. It is full of poetry, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, loads of crime, and, joy of joys, all the rubbishy books I love but might feel embarrassed about being seen reading on the train.

This week I’ve read a paper back crime novel by Robert B. Parker, a Jill Mansell novel on my Kindle, and delicious hardback copies of Alan Hollighurst’s latest ‘The Stranger’s Child, and John Sutherlands magisterial and fabulously unsnobby Live of the Novelists [both for events I’m hosting at the Ilkley Literature Festival over the next few weeks] and loads of poetry in the loo. I’m also looking forward to reading the latest Julie Myerson, and Joe Simpson’s foray into fiction, both in hardback. But I NOW have that reassuring feeling, known to all addicted readers, that I will never run out of things to read, and that when I go on holiday I can have a dozen new things to read, in a wonderfully compact, light casing of charcoal plastic….

My feeling is that the book isn’t dead, it’s just undergoing a bit of shape-shifting. And for those who think that Kindles don’t allow you to browse and make impulse buys, you just need to look at my bank statement which is a forest of small amounts payable to Amazon. The publisher and writers win, Amazon of course wins, but then so do I.

The Future of the Book - a debate
Mon, 10 October, 19:30 – 20:30
Quaker Meeting House 10 St James Street, Sheffield, S1 2EW (map)
Description
Contact
Off The Shelf Festival Office
Tel: 0114 273 4716
offtheshelf@sheffield.gov.uk

With advances in smart new technology such as the eBook and Kindle does the good old printed book have a future? Noel Williams from Sheffield Hallam University and Lesley Gunter from Sheffield Libraries will be arguing the case for new technology, whilst Richard Welsh from Sheffield’s children’s book shop ‘Rhyme and Reason’ and novelist Rachel Genn show their support for the book. Hosted by West Yorkshire based poet James Nash join what promises to be a lively and engaging debate and have your say on this topical issue.

The bendy blog

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2011-09-17T10:03:52+01:00

You wait six months for a blog, and then two come at once!! In fact it’s not two. but one long bendy one.

There are two things for me that are like breathing: reading and writing. These give me more pleasure than practically anything else… and the truth is that I am very privileged that my professional life and personal life intersect so strongly here. Here are two events that I am lucky to be part of, which demonstrate this.

Crime Scene Saturday

24 September 2011
John Willie Sams Centre, Dudley, North Tyneside

On September 24th I am privileged to be hosting a day in North Tyneside called Crime Scene Saturday, where a bunch of highly talented Macmillan crime writers [amongst them the charming Ann Cleeves whose Vera Stanhope character is now known to many after the recent TV series set in the North East]. This gives crime readers a chance to meet favourite authors and get to know new ones, and a chance for the writers to emerge blinking into the bright light, away from their computers, and meet their readers. A whole day talking crime, and for me just an hour away from West Yorkshire on the train to Newcastle, to spend a day of utter bliss.

If you have any questions about the day please contact either:
Joanna Parker joanna.parker@northtyneside.gov.uk
(0191) 643 5835
or
Ruth Walton
ruth.walton@northtyneside.gov.uk
(0191) 643 2075

Shared Dreams

30th September 2011 at 7.30pm
Heart, Bennett Road, Headingley Leeds 6, West Yorkshire

I’m a long term resident of Headingley. And when you regularly perform and host literary events up and down the country, it is delightful to be sharing some of your writing on home ground, as a fund-raiser for Heart, which is the very wonderful Arts and Business and Community centre in the centre of Headingley.

As support I have friend, and singer Jessica Egbuna, accompanying herself on guitar, and making some of her special musical magic.

The lovely café will be open for simply delicious food and drinks before and during the performances. And you don’t need to book for food or for the event.

I’m hoping for an evening of shared dreams and laughter.

Valentine’s Day

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2011-02-14T15:35:30+00:00

It was with a great deal of pleasure that I accepted an invitation to be guest poet on the Leeds-based community radio station elfm for their Word Salad programme this Sunday evening. The theme, totally appropriately on the eve of Valentine’s Day, was love in all its guises. I found myself moved and cheered in equal measure by bracing poems from local school children, tales of long marriage from senior Leeds residents, and great poetry, stories and drama from writers up and down the country.

The radio station small, friendly and packed with lovely people, offered me strong tea and chocolate biscuits. The programme, ably and warmly presented by Peter Spafford, embraced its many visitors and contributors.

Can I thank everyone, from the witty technical staff to the talented young students on work experience, for making the two hours pass so pleasantly for me.

Listen Live on their website, www.elfm.co.uk, or Listen Again to Sunday evening’s programme.

Here follows my Valentine’ s Day poem for 2011.

silver birch for Valentine’s Day

There’s a beech tree nearby I feel is mine
Though sovereign in its pomp and power;
Some trees have magnificence, they are fine
Palaces of dream, whose seasons inspire.
We are not such trees which fill all with awe,
We have different grace, a slighter mode,
A sparse copse of silver birch, blown and raw,
Half-anonymous by an urban road.
But through successive years we are as one,
Our moonstruck trunks are neighbours, leaves entwine,
We share the winter winds, the summer sun,
And our roots grow deep as our hearts combine.
Thank you then, for what you have given free
In your faithful sojourn here, next to me.

© James Nash 2011

My fave 100 books

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2010-11-29T14:27:00+00:00

Facebook friends have been sharing a list with me of a 100 books that someone somewhere thought we should read. As an addicted reader of approximately 57 years I had read about 87 of them. But the list felt a bit strange, a bit lumpy, a bit white, and can I say it, a bit heterosexual. Series of books were mentioned as one entry on the list, and then a book from the same series as another.

But it set me thinking.

So here is my first attempt at My 100 fave books, to be thought about and completed over the next few weeks. It has had the result of making me look again more closely at the books on my double-stacked bookcases, and also to think how I would categorise my favourite books of all time.

I’m going to go a bit chronological, because the books I’ve read have formed part of my autobiography; they have been absorbed into my blood-stream and consciousness, they have given words to my experiences, and they have developed my language and ideas as I have changed and grown.

So here, as a starter, are the books that have stayed with me from different periods of my early life.

Books from Childhood

Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
The Weirdstone of Brisangem by Alan Garner
The Castle of Adventure by Enid Blyton
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
The Future Took Us by David Severn

Books I read before I went to university

Persuasion by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
The Prelude by William Wordsworth
The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin

Books I read after meeting my great friend Patricia Pitman in 1969

The Good Companions by J B Priestley
Bright Day by J B Priestley
South Riding by Winifred Holtby
The Diary of a Nobody by Grossmith
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
Strangers and Brothers by C P Snow

Books from my English degree

Bleak House by Charles Dickens and about another dozen or so to be named.

So 25 down and another 75 to go, and I’ve only got up to 1970.

To be continued…..

Writer’s Retreats in November

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2010-09-27T10:59:17+01:00

Sometimes creative folk need an injection of inspiration. During November I’m running four short, residential writing workshops at Woodlands House, just outside Settle in the Yorkshire Dales.

When owner, and very good friend, David Sexton and I first discussed the possibility of these overnight writing sessions I hadn’t yet been to Woodlands. After a spectacular train journey, of just an hour, from Leeds, David showed me round the lovingly restored Edwardian country house. And I knew immediately that Woodlands House would provide the perfect getaway for writers. An elegant old building brought back to life by the David’s creativity as a designer, it is set in beautiful countryside just outside Settle.

It was easy to imagine how writers would be inspired there, and the work of a moment [well several actually] to plan for the workshops.

The workshops include an introduction to writing, poetry, short fiction and memoir writing. There will also be opportunities for free writing, and one to one tutorials with me.

With a great bunch of people all keen on writing, I’m expecting to be pretty inspired too!!

Find out more and make a booking on The Woodlands House website or by calling David Sexton on 0113 216 7899.

Life After Life After Death by Felix Hodcroft

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2010-09-22T13:04:13+01:00

Felix Hodcroft's poems in this collection are full of wonder, beauty and humanity. They are also unnerving and spine-tinglingly unexpected. I am a great devourer of fiction and poetry; I think they help me to understand a little more about the great mysteries of life [and death too]. Hodcroft's poems share some of his discoveries with his reader, all mediated by his calm, non-judging wisdom.

Felix Hodcroft says of ‘Life after Life after Death’ ,

It’s a selection from the poems I've written over the last ten years or so. An important reason why I write poetry is that I need to try and understand and give expression to the griefs and joys, rages and confusions I feel and see within and all around me.

This was my beach-side read on a recent trip to Ibiza amidst a slew of other holiday makers reading brightly coloured airport books. I know which one I'd rather have been reading. Again I can only agree with Hodcroft when he says,

For me, poetry isn’t dusty books in a library. It's here and now, it’s a vital tool in the struggle to connect and to speak of what we really think and feel.

A terrific debut collection [which doesn't feel like a debut at all]. You should read it!!

Buy from Amazon for £5.99.

The Ted Hughes Festival

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2010-09-17T16:56:29+01:00

If you live in Yorkshire there are so many places associated with writers, the Haworth of the Brontes, the Bradford of J B Priestley and more recently the Leeds of Alan Bennett’s memoirs and the York of Kate Atkinson’s ‘Behind the Scenes at the Museum’.

I can still remember the thrill a few years ago when I got off the train at Mytholmroyd and walked through the village up to Calder High School where I was working for the day.

Because Mytholmroyd to me means the poetry of Ted Hughes.

That morning the whole place seemed full of memories and references to perhaps its most famous son, whether it was the selections from his great children’s classic ‘The Iron Man’ at the station or the sense of ‘his’ landscape and architecture which I breathed in on my walk.

Imagine then how honoured I felt this year to be asked to run a performance workshop, and poetry slam, on Sunday, October 17th as part of the Ted Hughes Festival run by the Elmet Trust. The workshop is from 4.30 to 6.30 at the Erringden Room [Church Street] and the slam from 8pm.

Perhaps you’d like join me there to perform from your own work, or just to enjoy the inspiration and writing of others.

www.theelmettrust.co.uk

More thoughts on the potential closure of libraries…

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2010-09-02T08:54:02+01:00

One of the things I mentioned in my recent podcast was the potential closure of libraries in local authorities’ attempts to save money. Money which has had to be found to haul us out of the financial ditch left by bankers who have been playing poker for very high stakes with other folks’ investments.

The bankers continue to get paid bonus after bonus, while many local services and charities will in all probability shrivel and die.

I have heard that one small, local authority may have to reduce library branches from about fifteen to five. This is an authority spread through large towns and relatively small rural communities. The old and the isolated and the small towns, for whom the library is a cultural hub of reading and writing groups, will suffer terribly if and when those libraries close. And like a lot of services which will go to the wall in the next year or so, we’ll never get them back...

I would very much like to get your views on libraries and the part they play, or have played, in your life. Join in the discussion on my Facebook Page.

Minotaur – how a poem becomes a poem

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2010-08-21T16:52:43+01:00

I’ve been putting my poems, as they come, onto my Facebook page, and the one that has caught a lot of attention recently, is my latest sonnet ‘minotaur’.

Where do poems come from? It’s a mysterious business, as any artist will tell you. I described my poems recently [tongue slightly in cheek] as a journey though my conscious and unconscious minds, and I also referred to what Beryl Bainbrigge [of blessed memory] said when someone asked her what she wrote about. Her answer was succinct, rather like her novels, ’What everybody writes about, of course, death and sex.’

I felt very bruised last week, sensitive soul that I am, by the mutilation that a neighbour carried out on their front garden, dragging out beautiful, though untidy, flowering plants and chopping back an ancient rhododendron to within an inch of its life. It felt like an assault on life and living things, by someone who did not understand their beauty and their essential messiness.

As I write this little piece, weed-killer and concrete are being applied liberally to finish the job, and garden off, properly!!

I went off for a couple of days in London wondering how I was going to write about this assault, suspecting that this would be a better way of dealing with it than trying to get help from Victim Support. ‘Well, no, I wasn’t actually mugged, but there’s a garden in my road that has been.’

I thought about it all weekend, as we walked around the Saatchi Gallery and the Royal Academy, and then the next day off to the Barbican for a surrealism exhibition. All the usual suspects were there, Magritte and Dali, with some Joseph Cornell, Bourgeois et al. And there in a room in the gallery in a glass case, were some magazines with pictures of the monster from classical myth, The Minotaur, half man, half bull and trapped in a labyrinth or maze.

There was an almost audible ping in my brain….PING!! And I realised that I had got my image, my idea. Here follows the poem, half-written sitting on a bench at Kings Cross, and finished in my office at home. It’s in the first person, so that I could inhabit the head [an uncomfortable experience] of my character and write from his/or her perspective.

minotaur

I love this dark, each granite twist and turn,
Long since gave up meadows for this maze,
And if at times for company I yearn,
There are those poor, lost ones on whom I graze.
I do not miss the sun, the burnished air,
My knotted heart cannot conceive of love,
I have taught myself to be happy here,
Not pine for, or miss, the world above.
But sometimes as I wander through these halls,
A green breath of spring can seep below,
I shrink, my horns scrape useless on these walls,
Against my will let out a muted low,
Then snort and bellow, toss my bullish head,
I hate such signs of hope. I wish them dead.

© James Nash 2010

A writing holiday in Wales, and new friends

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2010-08-19T16:43:24+01:00

I went down to South Wales from Yorkshire in the last week of July to give a talk in Caerleon about my life and work as a writer, as part of Anne and Gerry Hobbs’ wonderful ‘Writer Holidays’ (www.writersholiday.net).

It was one of those train journeys across the heart and belly of England and on into South Wales which always make me think of those lines from Philip Larkin’s great poem ‘Whitsun Weddings’,

‘All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept
For miles inland,
A slow and stopping curve southward we kept’

And then I arrived in Newport, and took a taxi to the atmospheric, stone-built Caerleon College, which has its own ghost and everything. The first person I came across, literally as I climbed out of my cab, was my lovely friend Lynn Hackles, and all the childlike worries I’d had, about being lonely and on my own, disappeared. In fact once I had met the fabulously eclectic mixture of writers, all there to run or take part in workshops, to listen to the guest speakers, and just re-charge their writing batteries, I felt completely at home.

I gave my talk, which seemed to go well. Phew!! And then in the evening sat with my new friends to listen to the Cwmbach Male Choir sing all those songs that were played in our house every Sunday morning by my Welsh Dad. I had to keep rubbing my eyes. Must have been hay-fever.

Thanks for your feedback

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2010-03-25T17:55:02+00:00

You may have noticed that there has been no podcast for the last month, and indeed there will not be one in April. This time off, after two fantastic years, has given me time to take stock, and ask my listeners if they had any suggestions on how to improve the quality and content of the podcast.

To my great relief the lovely folk who responded to my pleas for feedback were unanimous in their liking for the author interview . This is after all the main part of the twenty-five minute show, giving me [and the listener] a chance to engage with the writer concerned and ask the questions we all want to know about the writing process, about inspiration, and how writers start off in their careers.

So in my next podcast I’m hoping to have slightly fuller book reviews, a bit more news of literary events, and perhaps greater focus to the interviews.

A special thanks to all those who said that they liked me reading my own poems in the Poem of the Month slot. It’s a lovely, low-key way for me to share my writing.

And lastly congratulations to James Garside, one of those who gave me feedback on my podcast. His name was drawn out of a hat, and he will be receiving his £20 Amazon voucher soon!!

Holocaust Memorial Day 27th January 2010

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2010-03-01T17:15:45+00:00

Sometimes I get a writing commission which is both thrilling and scary to do. The sense of being entrusted with writing something ‘important’, for public viewing or hearing, can both stretch one’s creativity to the utmost and bring with it huge responsibility. The fear is part of the creative process, driving one harder and harder to try to meet the needs and requirements of those who commissioned the work, and those who will receive it.

You want to do your subject justice!!

I felt all this very keenly in January of this year when I attended an evening commemorating the holocaust, at the Victoria Theatre in Halifax, to read a poem I had written for the occasion. I listened to the moving testimonies of those whose experiences of holocaust still seared sixty-five years after the event, and of those who had suffered in recent years from the deaths of the children through racism and homophobia. And all the time I listened, moved by their powerful stories, I was thinking, ’but I only made up my poem, they actually experienced all the things they are talking about’.

Let me know what you think...

Three Sonnets for Calderdale National Holocaust Day 2010

humanity, remembrance and the future

I am human, with chambers in my soul
Where love and beauty live, and also joy,
I am human, which some have tried to steal
From me, piece by piece, and to then destroy.
My lungs are ash, my skin is cracked and seared
Everything gone I thought was mine,
The storm is here and it is all I feared,
My eyes are burnt and blind with what I’ve seen.
I am in a place where God does seem to live
Where my heart and soul are not recognised,
I am in a place with no rights and no reprieve
Where nothing that I have is prized.
I am human, but some do not seem to care
That there are so many things we share.

2.

Tree roots wind tight through our ribs and spine,
Their tendrils clutch us hard and strong,
While above the ground there is not one sign,
Our voice so weak, you might not hear this song.
Sometimes a creature stirs within our skull,
And we are reminded of what we would not know
The sudden bullet-cracks, and then how full
The pit we had dug in the tousled snow,
Dying screams cut short, and when no-one came,
Companions in death, then tangled bone.
It has been so long, no-one knows our name,
As if all trace or dust of us has flown.
Remember us in what you do or say,
We who sleep nameless beneath this tree.

3.

Sometimes when rays of sunshine warm our skin,
Or when we feel love and pleasure in a friend,
We hope that such things can go on and on,
The year has just begun, it cannot end.
But winter storm clouds might still bruise the sun,
Young and green shoots be frozen and then die,
If we are ‘other’ and not like ‘everyone’,
Some can our humanity still deny.
We have learned the cold lessons of the past,
And to be free must be prepared to fight
For a growing season which will outlast,
In its promise and hope, all lies and hate.
In spring-time we must still be on our guard,
For the old frost-king might yet stab us hard.

© James Nash 2010

Foot-prints

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2009-12-27T08:09:10+00:00

Sitting here in my office, looking out over a snowy garden, it feels as if this is the first time I’ve been still, and in one place, for many months. I am enjoying the temporary respite before the New Year to catch up with myself and review the year just slipping away now. 2009 was a year of big birthdays, and great parties. It was year of exciting projects, where I had to pinch myself quite often to check on whether I was awake or dreaming.

I have nearly finished the re-write of my teenage novel The Champion; after taking so long to write it, it’s so close to the end that I can’t quite believe that I’m nearly there. I have also written over sixty sonnets in the last year, with a special commission which I will be reading at Holocaust Day in Halifax for early in 2010.

Here is one which contemplates mortality, as poets and artist are inclined to do, and feels appropriate for my contemplative mood at this time of year

Foot-prints

Early morning, as I make my escape
Towel-wrapped from the bathroom shower,
Stopping briefly when I see the shape
Of my wet foot-prints on the floor.
My toes, the soles and heels of my two feet,
Like something from a children’s story book,
With perfection in the silhouette,
As if an autograph, my own true mark.
When I return I find that they have nearly gone,
Dried up and leaving just a watery tear,
To vanish later in the morning sun;
And I wonder what I’ll leave behind me here,
How light the traces I have made since birth,
Evaporating on the sun-baked earth.

© James Nash 2009

Reminder of a happy experience

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2009-10-26T10:55:07+00:00

Occasionally a photograph is sent to me which reminds me of a very happy experience. Photographs can do that, can’t they?

Here I am with one of ‘my objects’ working at Teesside High School with a Year 6 class, as part of the children’s festival held there this year. It was all in all a wonderful day with terrific young people who wrote some great poems. And the bonus for me of a photograph which doesn’t make me cringe and want to hide!!

New poetry competition from inspirational charity Village-to-Village.

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2009-09-03T14:02:03+01:00

This year I feel very honoured to be judging Village-to-Village's first annual poetry competition alongside the fabulous Brian Patten.

The charity thought that an inspirational poem would be a perfect motivator to involve more people in volunteering.

All winners will be invited to read their poems on National Poetry Day in Leeds. The deadline for the competition is the 30th September and winners will be announced on a poetry evening at Seven Arts Centre in Chapel Allerton, Leeds on National Poetry Day, 8th October 2009. I will be reading for about twenty minutes, followed by an Open Mic session.

More details about the competition can be found on the Village-to-Village website.

Monies raised from the competition and poetry evening will help to support the English Club Village-to-Village runs and help the charity buy new books and open the library to the whole village of Uchira in Tanzania.

Why don’t you have a go?

Where I write

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2009-07-31T09:29:35+01:00

When a friend contacted me and said that it was a good article in Writers’ Forum [Aug/Sep] it took me a time to work out what she was talking about, and then I remembered that earlier this year I had been interviewed by Phil Barrington as part of a series of writers talking about the rooms they write in.

Wonderful photographer, Kevin Hickson had taken some snaps of me inside and outside my office, and there had been a whole host of questions from Phil about this very special room. I just popped into town early today to pick up my copy of the magazine, and am very impressed with the job that Phil has done in making me not only sound coherent but also like myself….

Writers’ Forum out now, full of tips from writers in every genre, also contains interviews with crime novelists Jacqueline Winspear and Peter James.

Poetry Competition

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2009-07-03T13:04:19+01:00

I'm looking for poems to read in the Poem of the Month slot on my monthly podcast.

If you'd like to write a poem [or have one fresh off the quill] and would like it to be considered just send it to me to james@jamesnash.co.uk, and I will pick one for August's podcast. It can be on any topic and probably no more than 20 lines.

The poem will be read by me, and the winner will get my copy of Never the Bride by Paul Magrs which I reviewed this month.

Get writing... entries in by 21st July please!

LeedsLieder+; speed dating and classical song

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2009-06-16T12:36:34+01:00

Saturday morning found me in a large room at Leeds College of Music, with eight other poets and nine young composers, all showing each other what we could do. The aim was to get student composers from the major music conservatoires in the UK to work with poets ‘in a creative venture to encourage the composition of a new art song’. The students looked very young while the poets, with a few notable exceptions, were a more seasoned bunch. We listened to each other’s poetry and music in quiet amazement at the quality of the words and the formidable talent of the composers. And all the while I was listening, I was having a slight worry about how we might be paired up, which of the composers’ music I really liked, and which of them as individuals I felt I could work with.

It was all resolved at lunch-time where over a buffet it was clear that we were to be part of speed-dating exercise where we were meant to be talking to each other and making some pretty quick decisions about whom we would like to work with. The organisers pushed us writers out of safely chatting to other poets, and like parents with shy children, encouraged us into conversation with the composers.

Munching on finger food, I found myself chatting to the amiable Alastair Putt [www.alastairputt.com] and very quickly we realised we were on the same wavelength; he comes from a tradition of church and sacred music and a lot of my poetry at the moment deals with knotty issues of faith and belief. So together we are going to produce a classical song [for voice and one other instrument] which will be part of a Composers and Poets Forum on 3rd October at the College of Music in Leeds, and performed at a 6pm concert on the same day, along with all the other songs produced from these exciting collaborations.

This venture is all part of the LeedsLieder+ exciting weekend of classes and recitals. I can’t help thinking of the lieder of Schubert which I love; it remains to be seen what kind of Goethe or Schiller I make….

You can book for the day’s Forum [10am to 4pm] and for the concert from 22nd June on 0113 222 3434 or on www.lcm.ac.uk. Check out the rest of the LeedsLieder+ programme; it’s full of great artists and fabulous music.

Inspiration and going with it

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2009-06-11T14:38:24+01:00

Writing sonnets seems like a strange thing to do in the first decade of the 21st Century, when Shakespeare’s sonnets were published all of four hundred years ago. But somehow, at this stage in my writing life, it’s what I want to be doing.

Inspired by writers like Don Paterson, Edna St Vincent Millay and the old boy himself, my teenage novel has been put aside for the moment, and I’m enjoying the sensation of writing two or three sonnets a week, the ideas for which keep coming and coming. I’ve decided to allow it to happen; such huge bouts of creativity come very rarely in a writer’s life, so I’m just going enjoy it. So what do we have? About forty sonnets written in four months, on topics ranging from religion, to sexual politics, to stories I’ve held close to me for many years, and surprisingly quite a few nature poems.

After years of writing free verse I’m working in a very strict form and finding the discipline is creating its own energy and creativity. I’m finding just how exciting and rejuvenating being newly inspired can be; it’s not exactly making me feel like a teenager but I do feel I am kicking up my heels in the air again…

PS: Check out my poem ‘twelve lines and a couplet’ on my Facebook page; it’s an attempt to describe the new discipline.

My name is Bob, apparently

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2009-06-03T10:47:01+01:00

Hilarious and great time yesterday with Year 8 pupils at one of my favourite schools in Calderdale, Holy Trinity High School. It all started when a girl from my workshop group came into the classroom at the beginning of the day and asked me in all seriousness if my name was Bob. Apparently I look as if I’m called Bob. Often bald people are called Bob. Apparently. The logic was hard for me to see.

The joke re-surfaced very now and again throughout a day of really hard work and creativity when each of the youngsters produced two poems of high quality and read them in performance at the end of the session. Their dedication to the editing and re-drafting stages of writing led to some fine poetry, as did their understanding that planning and thinking have an important place alongside inspiration..

I caught my train back to Leeds a tired, but very happy, Bob.

Examination nerves

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2009-05-22T09:43:00+01:00

It felt like waiting for my French A Level Oral examination about a hundred years ago; as if I was about to have my basic and [ let’s be honest here ] pretty shaky, spoken French tested by someone who, if not a native speaker, had an awesome fluency and an encyclopedic vocabulary.

I was waiting at 7.25am this morning to interview by telephone the iconic broadcaster, and interviewer par excellence, Libby Purves for my June podcast. I have met her on a couple of occasions and she has always been unfailingly lovely and easy. Perhaps there was something about waiting with headphones on, and microphone about 15cms from my face, which made it all the more nerve wracking, as if I was pretending to be Radio 4.

In the event the interview went like a dream; she was wonderfully honest and said some fascinating things about her latest novel Shadow Child. You will be able to hear it on June 1st.

I’m not sure whether I achieved a very high grade, but I think I may have passed…

Rock music and bird-watching.

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2009-05-15T14:24:51+01:00

Just to let you know what my usual work-place is like; it’s an old wash-house at the end of my garden, very sweet and tucked away with a great view and loads of light. There is also a very comfortable bench outside for cups of tea and biscuits. Sometimes I come out expecting a seat and find the two cats and our dog occupying it.

It’s a kind of writer’s paradise….but with rock music and bird-watching!!

Writing sonnets on a 30 inch screen

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2009-05-13T14:18:54+01:00

I have decamped; left my little office at the bottom of my garden and have taken up a desk at Old Broadcasting House on Woodhouse Lane in Leeds. Every morning at 8am I pack my sandwiches and a banana and get onto my bike and cycle up from home to my ‘new work environment’.

Basically my old iMac has died [after seven years of hard writing and beginning to creak and protest a bit when I try to do more than one thing at a time with it] and I’m hiring the use of the super technology here, and enjoying the endless free coffee, until I bite the bullet and get myself a new Macintosh computer and can return to the comparatively rural environs of Headingley. I reckon it’ll be sorted by the end of the month.

The new office is fab, full of lively designers and creative folk who all seem very young and fresh-faced to me. It’s in a bit of an iconic building, once home to the BBC and Radio Leeds, it was originally the old Carlton Hill Quaker Meeting House, looking a bit like an imposing chapel in soft coloured stone not far out of the city centre.

I’m surrounded by building work as Leeds Metropolitan University takes to the sky, and in spite of the noise am getting loads done here. There appear to be no disadvantages to this temporary arrangement apart from the fact that when you write a sonnet on a 30 inch screen, anybody passing can read it over your shoulder. It can make you feel a little shy…..

Sowerby Bridge and Copley Valley

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2009-04-04T14:50:54+01:00

I spent a Saturday in March at Copley Primary School, talking to members of the public and viewing an exhibition of suggested design ideas for the Sowerby Bridge Copley Valley Transformation project. I used this experience as inspiration to write a triple sonnet recording people’s responses to the potential development. The intention is that this sonnet will be engraved on a plaque to accompany a tree planted in the development.

‘Yet some maintain that to this day
she is a living child,
that you may see sweet Lucy Gray
upon the lonesome wild’

from ‘Lucy Gray’ by William Wordsworth,
written after a tragedy that happened at Sterne Bridge in Copley in the early 1800s.

1.
We all need safety, we all need chances
To live in a place and feel part of it,
Not to rule somewhere, like kings or princes,
Hoarding its treasures in our hearts, but yet
To have for a while, and to explore,
To look after well and keep as our trust
To give to our children, for them to care,
When we blow round this valley as part of the dust.
Our touch must be kind, it must be subtle,
With the birds and the beasts as part of our plan,
We are the curators, we must be mindful,
Of the needs of woman, child and man,
To feel a belonging, and to expect
The best for a place to which we connect.

2.
Talk to the woman who walks in the woods,
Who greets all the seasons as her friend,
Tramping the paths and the fields with her dogs,
Where past and present and future blend.
Walking where she walked five decades ago,
Where the kingfisher darts, vivid blue flame.
Her life in this valley, sunshine and snow,
Is engraved on her face, by wind and by rain.
People and places share geology,
In each line on the face, groove of the beck
The wearing of time is clear to see.
We walk through the woods, with no turning back,
Our lives as fleeting, but somehow as true,
As the kingfisher’s sudden flash of blue.

3.
Take notice how near we are to the edge
Of open country, river, wood and field,
Between Copley village and Sowerby Bridge,
How soon the houses to nature yield;
And how much memory haunts and clings
To trees and grass, to breeze and river flow,
Down here where a blackbird full-hearted sings
In early morning amongst the dew.
And will that magic be augmented,
By the cries of children playing here?
As the days move on, let each one be granted
A life in this tapestry from year to year,
Holding the past, and yet endeavouring too,
To stitch in the future with threads of the new.

© James Nash 2009

Sonnet for Valentine’s Day

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2009-02-14T14:55:54+00:00

If you should ever go, my heart would break,
Leaving a house of empty rooms behind.
If you should go, be careful what you take,
Some things matter, but others I’d not mind.
So take the books, the CDs and the fridge,
The pictures from the wall, the bathroom sink,
Take the front garden, and the laurel hedge,
These are not important things, I think.
But leave your imprint upon the pillow,
And the faded tee-shirt you wear in bed,
Leave the battered sofa, and its hollow,
On the arm, where you always rest your head.
For if you should go, there is no doubt,
In truth, it’s YOU I could not do without.

© 2009 James Nash

WTBT

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2009-01-30T09:22:56+00:00

A couple of weeks back I was running a writing workshop in a lovely, snug little Leeds pub in the heart of Woodhouse. The Chemic is one of those real assets in a community, a proper old-fashioned boozer with live music and loads of interesting customers, ranging in age from students to near death. I noted for future reference that you could buy fish and chips in the little chippie next door and take them into the pub and consume them with your beer. How civilised is that?

It’s also the meeting place for Leeds Writers, a group set up by the inspirational Lorna Hutchinson, where every fortnight a group of amiable folk meet up and talk writing. I was a bit nerve-wracked to tell the truth; I was sure they there’s be a few Plaths and Hughes amongst the assembled ten or so there. And I was worried that I would sound a bit lame in the presence of genius.

I took them through a few writing exercises and we talked about different aspects of writing poetry from generating ideas all the way through to shape and form, ending up discussing the editing and redrafting process. I took a couple of artefacts in with me and they provided a good starting point for writing. One of them was the clay head, a favourite object of mine, and the other was the little plaster bust [ pictured] which seems to come from a different artistic and cultural tradition and provides an interesting contrast.

It became very clear that there were some excellent writers in our company and their work stood up brilliantly when it was read out in its very embryo form. One member worried that they sometimes spent lots of time thinking about what to write, and never actually got round to the writing. [ My apologies if I’ve paraphrased them very badly.] With my own agonisingly slow writing of my novel The Champion at the forefront of my mind, I offered them the advice of WTBT, or Write the Bloody Thing.

It was also a reminder to myself.

Though I’m more inclined to say savagely under my breath, WTFT. I think you can work that out...

Young writers show what they’re made of

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2008-12-17T11:41:47+00:00

I’ve just finished a short story writing project at Allerton High School in Leeds. I started working with a dozen or so Year 10 students in the summer term and the project ended, now they‘re in Year 11, just last week. It was fabulous to see, on my final visit, the finished anthology of short stories and witness how each of them had developed and grown in confidence as writers over the five months we worked together.

At the heart of the collection is the demolition and rebuilding of the new school which was well under way when we started. In the early workshops we talked about this theme, but also looked at issues of plotting, character and setting. Our first sessions were in the old library of the school and our final two took place in the sparkling new building.

All the fictional characters in the stories had some connection to Allerton High, either as pupils or staff, past and present, and it was fascinating how differently each young writer tackled their short story. Some are witty or laugh out loud, others touching and full of feeling.

It was a real privilege to work with these young writers, brilliantly supported by librarian Anne Walker and Head of English, Martin Clark.

The anthology ‘A Change of Seasons’ is available from the school, price £2.50.

Autumn / Winter poem

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2008-12-15T22:44:15+00:00

Just found this poem again; it was written after a train journey from Headingley to Harrogate where you travel through beautiful Yorkshire countryside. It sums up quite a lot of my feelings about the turning of the seasons and the changes that come with age.

My hands are bark and twigs,
while warm flesh and muscle
glove your fingers.
I can feel the pulse,
the summer movement of blood through
the root of your thumb,
see it beneath your skin.

We stand in an open doorway,
while outside
leaves like rusty terriers tumble
under white boned birches,
quarrelling at their tips,
and bushes are clotted with
crimson berries and scarlet hips.

And through the pewter of an autumn sky.
in a temporary torch-beam of sunshine
I see fruit, like yellow light bulbs,
flickering amongst the half-stripped silver leaves
of an apple tree, nearly over.

But you have to go.

Stay a moment more with me,
warming my hands in yours,
before, howling, I blow into winter.

Editing and redrafting – the essence of good writing

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2008-12-03T11:56:04+00:00

One of the things I am always stressing in writing workshops is the importance of editing and redrafting, and how difficult it can be, sometimes, to get pupils in schools [and adults] to move from an entrenched position of, ‘it’s done, and nothing needs to change’, to looking at their work again, realising that it’s only a draft, and deciding what it is they are trying to say, and if they are saying it as well as they can. I always show them the first draft of my poem petals and its final published incarnation.

If you look at the two versions below, you will see how the first draft is carved and shaped, and very much cut down, to get to the final version. I also found a new stronger, starting point for my poem, and made it move from a purely autobiographical to a more universal [I hope] meaning. It took a month or so of thinking, considering, and generally playing about, to get it to its final form. See what you think of the two. Many, many young people in schools prefer the first version!!

Petals – first draft

I am trying to find a way to tell you I still think of you,
sitting here, peacefully in my house.
We were together for a long time,
and I pick up the old cornet you gave me all those years ago.

It is beautiful as an object,
I have it hanging on my wall.
And though I have never played an instrument
and neither did you,
we played a kind of music together
in the house we used to live in.
We spent time together doing things we loved,
whether it was gardening, or watching the birds which came to our bird-table
Do you remember all the things we used to do?

But the garden is untidy, and though birds still come to feed,
The music has stopped and the cornet no longer
has the piano to accompany it.
A long time has passed, and the cornet hangs like a brass rose on the wall with the other horns and instruments
like a complicated radiator.

But I still hear the music we played,
though there have been other tunes between,
and I always will.

petals

Remember the music we used to play?
The instruments still hang on the wall,
a trellis of brass roses
or an exotic vine with bugle flowers.
Like plumbing but not joined up,
and silent now.
And the lid of the piano is down.

The tunes still prickle in my blood,
and though blooming less
each successive year,
have kept a scent of you.
And the truth is
that I have grown older and loved others,
but I shall always carry some notes of your music
in my pockets, like petals,
wherever I go.

© James M Nash [Deadly Sensitive, Grassroots Press, 1999]

English teachers of the future

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2008-12-01T11:54:46+00:00

A few weeks ago I gave what has become an annual lecture at the University of Leeds where I talk to about seventy graduates, who are training to be English teachers in high schools. I was never an English teacher myself as such, [spending much of my career working with children with learning and behaviour difficulties] and I always feel a pressure about giving this talk which I don’t normally experience when I’m working in schools, performing or hosting literary events.

And yet what is it I’m trying to do in this lecture? I suppose I’m trying to give them a flavour of my professional writing life, and to talk about what I do with pupils in schools to help them develop confidence in their writing skills, and to learn some useful techniques in a variety of genres, from poetry to journalism.

The students at the university turned out to be, as always, a lovely bunch who good-humouredly had a go at the writing and performance exercises I gave them, whether it was writing a poem about a plastic decoy crow [pictured] or working as a team to bring a poem to life, from a small collection I had given them. These little performances of Spike Milligan and Stevie Smith poems were remarkable. I was utterly blown away by several groups choosing to do my poem, male bonding from Coma Songs, and was genuinely astonished, and humbled, by what they found in the poem to illuminate.

The following week I met one of the students I had lectured several years ago at the university working in a Halifax School, who told me how she had tried out some of my ideas in the classroom and how well they seemed to have worked. Phew, that’s a relief!!

Writing down your memories…

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2008-10-24T10:01:23+01:00

I spent a couple of hours on Monday afternoon, in the library of the village of Walsden just outside Todmorden. This tiny but vital building, was stuffed with eleven folk who had signed up for my workshop on memoir writing, as part of the Calderdale Word of Mouth Festival.

The group ranged from their twenties to seventies [and perhaps beyond] but they were all there to record their stories, perhaps for their children and grandchildren before they were lost for ever, or perhaps just for themselves.

I had brought in a couple of old sepia photographs, which I had found at a car boot sale, for them to look at and then write about. I asked my writers to imagine the names and lives of the young man and woman in the two pictures. This felt like a ‘safe’ way to begin our thinking and writing, rather than diving straight into our own personal histories. When the group read out these first efforts it quickly became very apparent that there was real talent in the room.

I then asked them to think about a photograph of them from the past, and then write about what was happening in the picture. I wanted them to start thinking about themselves as a character in a story. I wanted to give them ways of beginning the process of sifting through their memories. We talked about a sense of place, and how to capture this in their writing. And we touched on ideas about ‘plot’ and the machinery that makes a reader want to carry on reading a story….

To illustrate these points I used my two pieces in Four Fathers [‘Exile’ and ‘In loco parentis’] not because I thought they were examples of the best memoir writing, but simply to show what I was trying to do in these pieces.

We also talked about great memoirs we had read. Mentioned were Bob Geldof’s autobiography and Sheila Hancock’s ’The Two of Us’, and we discussed how helpful it is to see how other writers tackle their own history.

It was a great privilege to be at the beginning of these writing journeys with such a talented and brilliant bunch of people!!

Some thoughts on literary prizes

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2008-09-15T20:02:27+01:00

The shortlist for this year’s Man Booker Prize was announced last week, and I find myself engaged in the same internal debate I have over any literary prize from the TS Eliot Prize [for poetry] to the Orange Prize [for women’s writing].

Quite simply how do you decide between wildly different writers and books and come up with THE BEST? And why does a brilliant writer like Rose Tremain win the Orange prize but doesn’t appear anywhere in the shortlist for the Booker?

I’m also fascinated by the ‘branding’ of different literary prizes whether linked to phone companies, breweries or coffee shops. I would love Russell Hobbs or Jacobs Cream Crackers to ‘host’ a prize.

But then I’ve always thought that the long-lists are often more interesting than the short-lists and bring all sorts of ‘new’ authors to my attention. And it’s good to hear people talking about books around the time of each competition. So more power to them I say.

Now come on Jacobs, how about a prize for the ‘best slice of literary cheese’? I can see it already, a gilded cream cracker mounted on a piece of sustainable forest wood. I can almost predict its first recipient. Who, you may ask?

Now that would be telling…

This 2008 Man Booker Prize shortlist.

Aravind Adiga - The White Tiger. Published by Atlantic
Sebastian Barry-The Secret Scripture. Published by Faber & Faber
Amitav Ghosh - Sea of Poppies. Published by John Murray
Linda Grant - The Clothes on Their Backs. Published by Virago
Philip Hensher - The Northern Clemency. Published by Fourth Estate
Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole. Published by Hamish Hamilton

Three ideas to improve your writing

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2008-09-11T17:06:43+01:00

I just got back from a weekend in Durham where I was part of the NAWG Festival of Writing. I ran three workshops in the beautiful leafy setting of one of the colleges of Durham University. To give you some idea of what I was doing in the workshops there are descriptions below of each one, just as they appeared in the festival brochure.

All I need to say about the experience was that the weekend was full of fun, creativity and good fellowship. And what a wealth of talent there was, with delegates ranging in age from 18 to 90.

The clay head was used in the Headspace workshop to start the process off.

Transforming your performance

Selecting and getting the best out a 'set' of your poems. Reading your poetry to an audience might be their first experience of your work, it’s therefore vital to choose the right poems and know how to deliver them in a way that gets the best out of them. Group members should bring along a portfolio of their own work, from which they are will select and perform.

The Poetry Gym

We think nothing of taking regular exercise to keep our bodies in trim. Try this poetry work-out which will wake you up, make your brain tingle and get the creativity flowing . This workshop will look at ways of keeping creative when you feel you’re feeling uninspired. You will come away with lots of ideas and, the beginnings of many new pieces. There’s also a chance to share ideas, as group members are invited bring along a favourite writing exercise to share with each other.

Headspace

Getting into the head of your character- writing character poems in the first person. Think about the dramatic monologues of Robert Browning, TS Eliot or Carol Ann Duffy ; how would you go about writing one yourself ? This workshop will generate ideas for the prose or poetry writer. Bring along a photograph of a person, from a magazine ,newspaper, or photographic album [perhaps even a reproduction of a favourite portrait], and begin to explore the inner world of your character.

Out of the blue

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2008-07-10T12:56:40+01:00

Some of you may remember that I did an event with Alice Sebold, author of Lucky, The Lovely Bones and The Almost Moon, late last year as part of the 2007 Ilkley Literature Festival. We had never met before, had only twenty minutes to chat before the event, and then talked on stage in front of a packed hall who listened in rapt silence to what she had to say, and to her breathtakingly good reading from latest novel The Almost Moon.

And it seemed to me that we had made a connection, just the two of us, on the stage talking easily in front of the audience like old friends.

As usual at the end of the event there was the confusion of author signings, chatting queues around the bookshop and technicians packing away the sound equipment. In a brief lull she managed to thank me, ask me if I had any poems to show her, before disappearing into her public role again. I had by chance a battered reading copy of Coma Songs in my bag which I handed over slightly self-consciously.

Imagine my surprise when last Saturday, seven months later, I received a buff coloured card in a matching envelope through the post. I sat at the kitchen table unable for the first few minutes to work out who had sent it. It was from Alice Sebold and it thanked me for the way I hosted the event and said,

’A rarity for me to find someone who gets it all: the work, the life, the human world we all share.’

And on the envelope, a rather wonderful postscript,

“I would list the poems I found brutal, funny, biting, joyful, f-cking awesome but there would be too many. Perhaps enough to FILL a book’.

I hope Alice Sebold won’t mind me writing about her communication and actually quoting her. It was such a thrill to receive her card, and to have something confirmed.

We had made a connection.

Waking Early -
Post Performance Stress Syndrome

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2008-07-04T16:59:18+01:00

This morning I woke very early, at around 4am. I would like to say it was the birds shouting away in the trees which woke me. They were indeed making a racket. But actually it was because my system was still flooded with adrenaline after a performance in Leeds last night, at Borders bookshop, with the incomparable Joolz Denby.

It was a great evening.

The Borders staff were amiable and helpful in setting up the event. At one point there were about six of them putting the sound system together, prompting one to say, ‘How many Borders staff does it take etc. etc. ‘

Joolz was on stunning form; the fact that this was part of a gruelling schedule over past weeks, curating an exhibition, ‘The Body Carnival’ for Cartwright Hall in Bradford [opening in August] , appearing at Glastonbury etc. etc. did not dim the quality of her readings which were beautiful, human and witty. They can be heard on the spine-tingling CD of her work [with music by Justin Sullivan] Spirit Stories.

I read, among other things, from a short story I’ve just sent off to a publisher and a poem written to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Alan Sillitoe’s novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

For most writers readings are a rare treat when you can meet like-minded folk and see how your writing works when you are communicating with a live audience. And last night’s audience was a good one, slowly growing, so that every time I looked up there were more people in front of us [and listening up the stairs, onto the first floor] somehow appearing from behind pillars and the bookshelves at the sides of the store.

But the aftermath [and it’s not an awful one] is often waking at dawn still popping with energy and deciding whether to continue in bed and listen to the birds singing or get up and write something. This morning I got up, made some tea and readied myself. The light was silvery when I first came down the path to my office, and as I opened the gate into the back garden I saw the washing lines hung with half a dozen vintage swimming costumes, moving and expanding in the breeze.**

It was a surreal and strangely beautiful sight, and I felt the adrenaline calming in my body, as I thought to myself, ’Remember that sight, and its effect on you, and write about it sometime soon’.

** This is not as random as it might seem as my partner runs a vintage and retro shop in the Hyde Park area of Leeds

Advice for new writers

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2008-06-30T18:07:44+01:00

Talent can be found gleaming in all corners of your life. I am very conscious of how lucky I am to be engaging so regularly with young people and discovering creativity they did not know they had.

But sometimes it appears unexpectedly. One of my recent ports of call has been the very wonderful Ebor Gardens Primary School in Leeds, where I have working with Year Five pupils to produce an anthology of folk and fairy tales. One lunch time at the school, a very smiley woman [who turned out to be the family liaison worker] approached me and asked if I would look at her poems. I took her collection home with me that evening, read and enjoyed her writing very much, and returned them the next day with some suggestions.

I am sure Annette won’t mind me using the notes I gave her in their entirety in this blog as I think they contain good advice for any writer beginning to take themselves seriously, and wanting to know where to go with their work.

Annette Logan: your poems

First of all I would like to say that it was a real privilege to read your poems, and that I was very moved by many of them.

You choose themes that we can all identify with, and you deal with them with real honesty, and lots of feeling. I can especially identify with the poems about children and parents, and love.

You are a very good writer with a terrific grasp of language and a real way with rhyme; this is something that not many folk can manage without sounding like greetings cards, but you do.

I was interested to see the order you have put your poems in, and the care you took to display them. You have obviously thought about the effect on your readers, and the impact you wish to have. You are thinking like a professional writer. Well done.

I also see that there aren’t any recent poems in this collection. I’m hoping that this is because you haven’t got round to tidying them up, or the final edit. You must keep writing.

Tips for the future:

Keep writing.

Watch out for publishing opportunities. There are a selection of magazines which offer advice and info. about writing. I’ve included one for you to look at in case you haven’t seen it before.

Read other poets. Buy yourself a couple of anthologies. See what other poets do, and how they do it.

Check out to see if there are any writing courses you can go on or writing groups you can join. Libraries are good sources of information here.

Keep writing. So important I said it twice.

Honesty can enhance your writing

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2008-06-17T21:45:23+01:00

I was due to run a morning’s workshop at Airedale High School, Castleford, last week [delightful and fabulous kids by the way] and the teacher organising the session, Lorna Hutchison, emailed me to say that one of the school office staff, Susan [ a keen writer who was going to take part in the workshop] had come across a big feature on me in Writing Magazine.

This was a surprise; I had heard that I was going to be mentioned in the monthly periodical, but thought it might be a few sentences about my website and podcast. I popped into Leeds to look at a copy, intending just to glance at it perhaps, get a free ego-boost, and ended up buying four copies.

The writer Crysse Morrison, a friend, had based her article, in July’s issue of the magazine, on how honesty can enhance your writing . And she quoted from my story Exile, which appeared in Four Fathers, [published by Route], a few years back. In this collection of stories, four male writers write about their own fathers, and come to some conclusions about what can sometimes be a difficult relationship.

Crysse describes how I tackle the challenges of writing about my father, when she writes,

"From eighteen years of bruising encounters, just two are enough to show an essential truth about his childhood experience of fathering: the effect of violence and army life, and the underlying care so rarely expressed".

As a writing assignment, Exile was one of the most difficult I have ever undertaken; confronting some painful truths and memories about my younger self, made me squirm when I wrote about them. I literally relived some of those experiences as I typed them up on the screen. It wasn’t exactly writing for therapy, which can in itself be a positive and respectable outcome of writing, but writing to understand or make sense of the past.

It was so satisfying to have this struggle for honesty recognised in the article by Crysse Morrison [part of the generosity of spirit and fellow feeling that infuses most writers I know]. It was also good to have her praise for the quality of my writing, in the following,

"every word in this story is placed with deliberation, and every line crafted and pared to the bone’"

And why did I buy four copies of the magazine? Well some to show friends, and one, at least, in some subconscious part of me, to show my Dad, even though he has been dead for over twenty years.

It was after all Fathers’ Day on Sunday.

www.writingmagazine.co.uk
www.route-online.com
www.cryssemorrison.co.uk

Melvyn Bragg meets the lovely Sarah Waters

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2008-06-08T21:13:03+01:00

I had the absolute pleasure of interviewing Sarah Waters for my podcast last year. Tonight you can see her being interviewed tonight by Melvyn Bragg on the South Bank Show. It's on at 10:45 on IVT1 but if you miss it you can always listen to the podcast again.

How I keep myself motivated

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2008-05-30T18:16:33+01:00

I often get asked how I keep myself motivated as a writer, and I have to say that the small and friendly writing group I belong to is one of the main factors which keeps me writing. Producing work to be read by the group, and then having honest and critical feedback can transform your writing. Seeing how others tackle their work (often in a variety of genres), and observing what works for them, can also be enormously helpful.

I think all writers could benefit from this kind of peer appraisal (sorry about this slip into management speak), so if you have writing friends or there is a good class or group working in a library or community centre near you, join it and see what happens to you as a writer. At one stroke you will have pulled yourself out of the isolation lots of writers experience, and found a way to get feedback, pre agent and publisher stages.

I have just thinking been about the NAWG Festival of Writing in September. I’m running some workshops there this year, amongst many others, and I think that taking advantage of booster workshops or total immersion in activities like the NAWG weekend, or Arvon courses is another way that writers can get motivated. Have a go and try for yourself.

A voyage of discovery

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2008-05-27T21:52:11+01:00

I find myself, as usual, thinking about other people’s lives, what they might hold, and what they might have experienced. What started as a few thoughts on a recent holiday on the Greek island of Paxos, is becoming something more. It’s becoming a story.

I always write quite short, short stories. And they often seem to have an intensity based on brief meetings, sudden encounters, or realisations that take place over minutes or hours. I suppose as a poet I think in a kind of mental shorthand.

So what is happening in this tale? A woman is running away, and finds herself in the hotel bedroom she stayed in ten years before. In that intervening ten years much has happened. She has had a child. She is pregnant with another. And something has occurred in her recent past to make her want to cut loose and flee her life. The journey and the hotel room are made up of journeys and hotel rooms I have known. The woman I have not met; she is totally imaginary but she has grown and become real in the two or three days I have been writing about her.

She is waiting to be rescued, and i don’t know as yet if that will happen. Such is the oddness of creating a person, a place, and an experience. Sometimes as a writer I go on a voyage of discovery with my characters , not quite knowing where we will end up.

Tripping the imagination

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2008-03-12T12:41:06+00:00

For two afternoons last week I ran writing workshops in the picture gallery at Temple Newsam House. It felt such a privilege to be working there among the family portraits with views overlooking the magnificent park. Temple Newsam was given to Leeds City Council in 1922 by the family who had owned it for centuries. And Leeds have been terrific guardians of a most beautiful great house in a wonderful setting. The school group on Thursday and the adult group on Sunday produced imaginative and high quality writing, inspired by our surroundings. It makes me realise that moving out of our usual grooves can trip our imagination in new and exciting ways. I can't wait to go back and run more workshops there!!

Going public

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2008-01-24T10:24:04+00:00

Christmas and New Year seem to have taken a great chunk out of my life, so it feels rather odd to wishing you all a belated Happy New Year.

2008 starts with several public performances and workshops in February and March. (Details under forthcoming events.)

There are two performances in Leeds on 6th February and 16th March, with one in Sheffield on the 12th February, and I’m running a day long workshop on writing short-fiction at the Small Press Writers' Day, Huddersfield Town Hall, Saturday 8th March from 10.30am-4.30pm.

Getting out and sharing your work is essential if you are a poet. It’s a way of checking it out on your reader, communicating with them directly, and when you no longer are paralysed with nerves, watching the effect of your words on others. As someone who spends hours looking at a computer screen, going public can be a very heady experience indeed. If you are Yorkshire-based, come along and join me on one of the above dates; I will be the large bald poet, pacing up and down, and an interesting pale-green colour from nerves and excitement.

Going Back

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2007-12-13T10:14:33+00:00

They say you should never go back. They also say you can never be too rich, or too thin. And, something else they say, is that you should never explain, and never apologise.

Well, whoever they are, they are quite wrong about the first, and therefore probably wrong about all the other things ‘they’ say. Because yesterday evening I went back. I went back to a place where I used to work six or seven years ago in Kirklees in West Yorkshire.

I was in Meltham where I had set up a reading group in the library in about 1999; it had started off as a small and vital bunch of people who met regularly to discuss books and reading, and, in the intervening time, has expanded and grown into a large and thriving group. And sitting around the table, in the town hall, were many familiar faces from my work in Kirklees, not just in Meltham. Organised by Reading Development Officer Sarah Jackson, I had been asked to read from my poetry and my prose.

The time flew by, and just as when you haven’t seen old friends for a time, you adjust to any changes in them (which in this group were imperceptible) I had a feeling that my audience had adjusted to any changes in me, and were listening to me as a writer and poet, rather than that bloke who got them to talk about the books they were reading.

It was great fun. We chatted a lot, caught up where we had left off, drank copious amounts of tea, ate mince pies, and had a fabulous time.

And I sold loads of books.

Branch-Lines: Edward Thomas and Contemporary Poetry

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2007-11-22T18:21:26+00:00

Fifty or so contemporary poets share both their thoughts about Edward Thomas, and their poetry, in this new anthology from Enitharmon Press. That Edward Thomas, who was killed in the Great War, influences modern poets so much should be no surprise to anyone who has read his work.

When I held my copy of the book yesterday, for the first time, I couldn’t believe it. It was so beautifully produced, with enormous attention given to design and appearance. Then I had waited nearly two years for it to appear [perfectly normal, not a complaint], since I was invited to submit two poems. And I turned the pages slowly, savouring the alphabetical company I was in. Surely they must know I’m an interloper here, somewhere after Seamus Heaney and Andre Motion, and somewhere before Owen Sheers and Ann Stevenson?
I was on a bus. Who could I show it to?

I looked at the woman on my right, sniffling with a cold, or the girl behind me playing music on her mobile, with supreme disregard for anyone about her. I carefully folded Branch-Lines away, back in its packaging, and into my bag. And all day I felt it glow like a heat source amongst my diary, woolly hat and pens...

Not scared at all... Moral Panic at The New Beehive, Bradford

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2007-11-20T23:18:43+00:00

On Saturday I broke a vow I made about ten years ago not to appear with rock-bands and jugglers; when I made my vow I had just performed my poetry at an open air venue with two thousand very pissed rock fans in the audience; the sound system was seriously crap, and I was still a bit of a new boy in the performance world. It was scary.

To be sure there were no jugglers on Saturday’s bill, just me and two other poets (Oliver Mantell and Robin Vaughan Williams), and some pretty cool bands, amongst them The Chartists and Slumhunnies It all took place at The New Beehive in Bradford, had the fabulous moniker of Moral Panic, ran from 3pm on Saturday afternoon to 1am on Sunday morning. I was on at about 6pm and, do you know, it worked. An appreciative music audience turned out be an appreciative poetry audience and Olly, Robin and I had a very warm reception. I wasn’t scared, not scared at all….

So if there are any big bands out there looking for support next time you play Wembley, I’m your man.

My milkman hears me on the radio

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2007-10-30T16:57:52+00:00

I appeared on a Radio Leeds programme last Wednesday evening. Hosted by the bubbly and charming Shourjo Sarkar, it was a programme of music and conversation. The other guest was Sue Bellamy, a very funny woman from Halifax, who has a lingerie shop in Brighouse called Brief Encounter. Between records Shourjo encouraged us to tell amusing stories about ourselves, and our lives, as well as to talk about things that were important to us. Sue was an old hand, having been on the programme before, and was never anything other than relaxed throughout the two hours we were chatting.

I had my mobile on silent, and received a few texts from friends. Apparently they found out stuff about me they didn’t know; that I’d been a prison minister for ten years and that I had once been a naked Mr. January in a charity calendar. There was also an opportunity for me to talk about my website and podcast. My milkman heard me on the radio; when it came to paying my bill last week, I could see him looking at me with new eyes. I ‘m not sure whether I had gone up or down in his estimation.

Ilkley Literature Festival Review

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2007-10-18T15:53:46+01:00

I ‘did’ fifteen events in almost as many days at Ilkley Literature Festival this year. They ranged from chairing an ‘in conversation with’ the mischievous and beguiling Fay Weldon whose stylish satire The Spa Decameron had me chuckling for several days. Poet and children’s writer Kevin Crossley-Hollland kept his young audience enthralled as he talked about his latest book Gatty’s Tale, and nature writer Richard Mabey enthused about the secret lives of beech trees to a packed audience.

Oddly the only event that made me nervous was with Libby Purves; not because she was scary, quite the reverse. She was absolutely lovely with a fund of interesting and funny anecdotes. I think it was because I found myself interviewing The Interviewer whose voice had been part of my life for so many years on Radio 4.

Iain Banks, Blake Morrison, Adam Thorpe and John Julius Norwich were all fascinating , as were Virginia Nicholson and Rupert Christiansen, and rarely have I heard an audience laugh quite so much as when I chaired Dom Joly and John O’Farrell.

But two of my favourite events were my conversation with Sue Townsend whose funniness and political engagement and passion were a beacon of inspiration, and then the dramatic magic created by actor Joe Williams and his trio of young players in their re-creation of the world and writings of eighteenth century freed slave and abolitionist Olaudah Equinao. Pure sorcery.

Peter James: crime novelist and all-round good guy

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2007-10-17T15:05:10+01:00

I’m going to write about my Ilkley Literature Festival experiences at more length later in the week, but I need to say something about Peter James the crime novelist, with whom I did an event last Tuesday, and whom I interviewed for the second show of the James Nash Podcast earlier today. We hit it off immediately at Ilkley (I had interviewed him for Northern Exposure on the telephone a month or so ago) and started chatting in the dressing room with the ease of old friends. The event itself was a lovely, friendly hour of the best conversation, with Peter talking about how he had come up with his detective, Roy Grace, and why writing in the crime genre gave him so much pleasure. In the podcast interview Peter James is as charming and insightful as he was before an audience. Check out the podcast on Thursday 18th October, to see what I mean.

Creative Kids

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2007-10-17T15:04:09+01:00

I spent the afternoon at the University of Leeds working with nine Year 10 pupils, and one sixth-former, all from Temple Moor High School. I’m involved with a number of schools, and English PGCE students, as Writer in Residence for the Faculty of Education, where I act as mentor to both pupils and teaching students throughout the year. This was the first writing workshop.

The young people produced knock-out poetry of high quality; they were shy to start off with (who wouldn’t be, with a large, bald man asking them to play slightly eccentric word games) but they gained confidence quickly, and suddenly it all took off and everyone produced something of which they were proud, and which also surprised them.

The teaching staff also had a go, writing alongside the young people making it a very special workshop, full of fun and creativity.

Peter Robinson - Crime Writer

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2007-10-05T08:43:27+01:00

Sometimes you meet favourite writers and they disappoint; their real personalities don’t match up to the charm and intelligence of their writing. This has not been my experience in the last week.

Last Thursday I introduced the crime writer Peter Robinson to a packed audience at Leeds City Art Gallery, sparkling in its new incarnation, with freshly hung pictures and the Tiled Hall completely resplendent. Peter Robinson, though now living in Canada, was born and brought up in Leeds before going to the university to study English. He was utterly charming, talking fascinatingly about his Inspector Banks books, and the settings in North Yorkshire and Leeds, before reading the chilling opening to his latest novel Friend of the Devil, and taking questions from the floor.

More later about Fay Weldon, Kevin Crossly-Holland, Richard Mabey and John Julius Norwich

Opportunities for young writers

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2007-09-26T18:02:03+01:00

I was recently interviewed by Wes Brown, editor of Cadaverine Magazine, a website for young writers.

As Wes says, ‘The Cadaverine is designed for young adults - people aged between 16 and 25. We want to attract students, casual readers and those who enjoy reading but might not have had access to contemporary literature. It’s also for young writers of this age group so they have a forum to showcase their unique and often overlooked talents.’

Check out their great website (and an interview with me).

Endlessly creative

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2007-09-26T17:59:15+01:00

I spent the day in Hipperholme Grammar School, a small but perfectly formed school, just outside Brighouse in West Yorkshire, working with Year 8 in the morning, and Year 7 in the afternoon. The young people I worked with were charming, engaged and endlessly creative.

Life in the old dog

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2007-09-24T14:16:09+01:00

Some poetic forms seem to be the gold-standard by which others are judged. The sonnet is one of them. A bit of a ‘free verse bloke’ by nature, I make occasional forays into the world of rhyme and metre almost as if to prove that I can ‘do’ rhyming and metrical poetry (see 'Ask Me What I Remember' in Coma Songs). I’m delighted when I read these poems out in performance and it seems that I have used rhyme and metre subtly enough for my audience not to have noticed it consciously, but to have experienced, perhaps, a heightened sense of the poem’s cohesion. But I had always imagined that the sonnet form was slightly beyond my reach; perhaps I was a bit too coarse-grained to write a convincing one.

National Poetry Day

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2007-09-20T12:57:46+01:00

I’m really looking forward to National Poetry Day on October 4th. I’m usually to be found working in libraries and schools, running workshops and performing, to celebrate the day. Every year the day has a different theme; this year it’s ‘dreams’, and I’ll be working in two Rotherham libraries, running a writing workshop in Rotherham Central Library in the afternoon, and performing as part of an open-mic session in the early evening at Wath Library.

Check out the details on my forthcoming events page and, if you are local, do come along. It should be fun.

My 'new life' as a writer

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2007-09-19T14:53:47+01:00

Sometimes I’m stunned by what I still consider to be my 'new life' as a writer. What started ten years ago, with a chance meeting with one of my sister’s friends, award winning playwright and poet Char March, has resulted in my present busy career as a free-lance writer.

Barnsley building site

james@jamesnash.co.uk — 2007-09-19T14:52:37+01:00

One Thursday morning in June, I found myself on a building site in the middle of Barnsley in the pouring rain. It was the beginning of work on a public art commission with designer Dave Appleyard. Our task was to take two formidably ugly electricity sub stations on the Mandela Gardens site, and change them into something of which the local community will be proud, bearing in mind that this is a very public space in the heart of the town The site visit, in monsoon conditions, was made more comic by me having to wear size 9 protective boots on my size 11 feet. I tottered around like a little old Chinese lady with bound feet.

We visited two local primary schools over the following weeks to develop ideas for the designs, and also get words from the young people themselves, which would cover the final structures. The children from Pipers Grove and Doncaster Road Primary Schools really came up trumps with some fabulous designs and evocative words, full of pride in their home town, describing why Barnsley is such a special place. The final poem The Ballad of Barnsley was constructed by me in the last week or so, using the pupils’ words as building blocks. I’ll keep you posted as to when the structures are in place, and let you share the poem when it finally goes public, over the next months.

James Nash Blog

A camouflage for bones..

A poem finds its illustration

Life is sweet...

'Some Things Matter: 63 sonnets' Launch

Wakefield Lit Fest: writer in residence

A Mixed Bunch

Our hearts beat as one...

Poetry, performance and other pleasure

To Ullswater with year 10 students

Interview with poet Jo Brandon...

Scarborough Literature Picture Parade

Adventures in Creative Writing

Scarborough Literature Festival 2012

I'm gonna live forever

Glorious interview with poet Pippa Little

It feels like spring...

The Long Weekend -Scarborough 2012

Writing for all in Headingley

Ilkley LitFest

To Kindle or not to Kindle

The bendy blog

Crime Scene Saturday

Shared Dreams

Valentine’s Day

silver birch for Valentine’s Day

My fave 100 books

Books from Childhood

Books from and about Adolescence

Books I read before I went to university

Books I read after meeting my great friend Patricia Pitman in 1969

Books from my English degree

Writer’s Retreats in November

Life After Life After Death by Felix Hodcroft

The Ted Hughes Festival

More thoughts on the potential closure of libraries…

Minotaur – how a poem becomes a poem

minotaur

A writing holiday in Wales, and new friends

Thanks for your feedback

Holocaust Memorial Day 27th January 2010

Three Sonnets for Calderdale National Holocaust Day 2010

Foot-prints

Foot-prints

Reminder of a happy experience

New poetry competition from inspirational charity Village-to-Village.

Where I write

Poetry Competition

LeedsLieder+; speed dating and classical song

Inspiration and going with it

My name is Bob, apparently

Examination nerves

Rock music and bird-watching.

Writing sonnets on a 30 inch screen

Sowerby Bridge and Copley Valley

Sonnet for Valentine’s Day

WTBT

Young writers show what they’re made of

Autumn / Winter poem

Editing and redrafting – the essence of good writing

Petals – first draft

petals

English teachers of the future

Writing down your memories…

Some thoughts on literary prizes

This 2008 Man Booker Prize shortlist.

Three ideas to improve your writing

Transforming your performance

The Poetry Gym

Headspace

Out of the blue

Waking Early -Post Performance Stress Syndrome

Advice for new writers

Honesty can enhance your writing

Melvyn Bragg meets the lovely Sarah Waters

How I keep myself motivated

A voyage of discovery

Tripping the imagination

Going public

Going Back

Waking Early -
Post Performance Stress Syndrome