Last night’s event celebrating Gill Stoker’s Poems and Pictures blog was an extraordinary, beautiful mix of words and images that reached all over the world. Very many thanks to everyone who came, to Alison and Marc of Arts Destination South Molton for their flawless organisation and to Gill herself for her magnificent blog on the website of the Mary Evans Picture Library, a Tardis of all kinds of pictures in Blackheath, south east London.

The idea for the blog came from Gill and Greenwich’s Nevada Street Poets, with the first entry on National Poetry Day, October 2015. The blog has 130 contributors so far, some of us appearing several times.

Today’s online events swap the pleasure of chatting in person with allowing many more of us to get together no matter where we are, and over 90 of us honoured Gill and the library last night. People came not only from the UK and Ireland but from France, chilly Spain, Italy, Belgium, Canada, the USA and the Caucasus.

The poetry was enormously varied, from barometers to crossing the Styx, and came from Jill Sharp, Jane Clarke, Rebecca Gethin, Rosie Jackson, Janet Sutherland, Martyn Crucefix, Alison Hill, Richard Westcott and his daughter Sarah Westcott, Robin Houghton, Vivien and John Freeman, Derek Sellen and Chris Hardy. What a fabulous list – if you scroll through the blog’s left-side list, you’ll enjoy their words. My contribution – Oyster 17s – came from the north coast of Kent in England and sunnier, healthier times. It celebrates Whitstable’s tradition of seafood, whether it’s getting together with friends in restaurants or having platefuls of fresh oysters with wine on the beach while we watch the sun sink into a golden sea. Those days will come again.

Welcome to 2021! How do we lighten this chilly, bleak time of year? Well, this Monday between 6 and 7.30pm the Mary Evans Picture Library’s Poetry and Pictures blog is having a showcase. Gill Stoker set up and curates this beautiful blog, an ideal spot for anyone with a taste for the timeless combination of poetry and images, sometimes in quirky combinations. Gill has given space to several of my poems and I’m honoured to be one of the poets invited to read on Monday.

Arts Destination South Molton in Devon will be our hosts; more details are here and on their Facebook event page. The pandemic being what it is, you can join us wherever you are – please come, it’s free To get the zoom link, just email Alison admin@artsdestination.co.uk

What am I going to read? This might give you a clue … See you there!

The company I am keeping in this tweet! Billy Mills runs hardPressed poetry with Catherine Walsh and his reviews on his Elliptical Movements website are highly thought of and sensitively written. I am deeply honoured that he has chosen my Lapwing pamphlet Six-Count Jive.

Billy’s review is here. If you would like to read Six-Count Jive, you can buy from Lapwing Publications direct here. Or you could have an author copy signed by me, using Paypal here. Please let me know if you would like me to sign in favour of a name, I’m happy to do it.

The subject matter of Six-Count Jive is slow recovery from PTSD after years of abuse but it has a happy ending and many people have told me, usually in a quiet aside, that they have found comfort in it and keep it close. One recently asked for a second copy as she had worn her first one out.

I wish you all a peaceful break, and health and strength for you and yours now and in the future. Writing has been a great solace to me throughout this awful year and I wish you joy and success in yours.

I’ve just updated my Books page about anthologies that have come my way this year. First was the invitation by Ruth Carr and Natasha Cuddington to join them in HER OTHER LANGUAGE Northern Irish Women Writers Address Domestic Violence and Abuse (Arlen House, 2020) It’s an honour to be part of this excellent project.

Our first CHURCHILL WRITERS’ ANTHOLOGY was published early this year too, thanks to the diligence and efficiency of Gervase Vernon. Gervase is a prolific writer and one of the group’s earliest members. It’s a marvellous read, full of variety, and I’m deeply proud, as well as fond, of all the writers.

Last year I posted on the Places of Poetry website set up and run by Andrew McRae and Paul Farley and am thrilled to have my Carnlough Bay selected for the Northern Irish section of their anthology, PLACES OF POETRY (Oneworld, 2020).

These three sit proudly beside two Live Canon anthologies from 2016 and 2018 that contain my work: LIVE CANON More New Poems for Christmas and LIVE CANON 154 PROJECT: 154 poems by 154 contemporary poets in response to Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets.

In this tragic year, our creativity has not always been easy but I hope you and yours stay well and that next year brings safety, togetherness and all the writing flow you could wish for.

Still buzzing about selection of my poem Carnlough Bay for the Northern Irish section of the Places of Poetry anthology being launched on 1 October. It’s wonderful news that the UK Poetry Society‘s online launch on 1 October 2020 is FREE and you are very welcome to join us using this link here.

To celebrate the anthology’s launch, the project is also going to reopen the marvellous website map between 1 and 11 October so you will have extra time to add your favourite poems of place in the UK. They are hoping to gather another 2,500 poems to lift the total to 10,000 – so don’t hold back. There’ll be more about this on social media soon.

Congratulations to the Places of Poetry team on the project being shortlisted for ‘Research Project of the Year: Humanities and Social Sciences‘ at the THE Awards. You can see more about the award and shortlist here. Here’s wishing them all the very best!

One of the United Kingdom’s most beautiful poetic projects recently has been the Places of Poetry map, set up by Paul Farley and Andrew McRae. Last year we were invited to pin poems about any place to the relevant spot on the map, rather like Orlando in As You Like It pinning his love poems to trees. As the site said, Places of Poetry is open to all readers and writers. It aims to use creative writing to prompt reflection on national and cultural identities in England and Wales, celebrating the diversity, heritage and personalities of place. The site is closed now but the project has announced publication of a Places of Poetry anthology soon.

I am thrilled that my poem Carnlough Bay is selected for the Northern Ireland section of the anthology – here it is on the Words for the Wild website. I spent most of last weekend, with force 5 gales and rain beating down outside here in Kent, remembering the beauties of the gusty, damp coast of Northern Ireland where I grew up. Beloved places do glow in our blood and aspects of that gorgeous place are with me all the time: long breakers riding to the shore, the way the wind can haul you right over a cliff edge, seagulls who know that while we think we own the world, the land, air and oceans are always theirs. So, while the north winds battered at my windows, I recorded a wee video of Carnlough Bay. All the anthology poems will have videos to circulate in place of a launch.

It’s going to be a wonderful book – I can’t wait to read it. And I hope you enjoy our videos when they are released. Portstewart Strand in Northern Ireland where I grew up. Beautiful, whatever the weather. 

One of the silver linings of these grim times is that we can attend events all over the world without being there. Glasgow University’s conference (planned for last April) on public health and private illness – details here – has been revived online and I’m delighted to invite you to join us tomorrow from 7pm at an evening of creative reading.

I’ll be reading from Six-Count Jive (Lapwing Publications, Belfast, April 2019) and will be with:
Georgi Gill
Colette Coen
Sam Rose
Mara Dougall
Moira Dancer
Sara Louise Wheeler
Judy Crow
Caitlin Stobie
Gillian Shirreffs
MT Taylor
Jane Hartshorn and
Laura Donald

It’s going to be an amazing night. Please register here to get the Zoom details. See you there!

Many congratulations to Nathan Bryon and Dapo Adeola on their marvellous book, Look up!. If you’re wondering how to sell your book, if you’re on the right track, have a look at how Bryon sat in book shops and had a good look at what was selling for what age group, then let that guide his writing. You’ll find more about that approach in a post of mine here. Happy researching and good luck!