Yesterday & Today: 10th March

After the relative cut-and-thrust of Wednesday, yesterday was pretty much back to normal: chunks of effort of various sizes on Tilt, "C", poetry, retreat preparation, and some residual Ripon Writers' Group stuff in the wake of our poetry exercise... I understand that poetry isn't to everyone's taste - but neither is prose for others. So … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 10th March

The Cottage Hospital

The poem below is the response to a recent writing group challenge, 'write one poem to the tune of another'. My source was John Betjeman's "The Cottage Hospital"; my response a kind of WK Auden / Dylan Thomas mash-up. Far from perfect, but here it is... The Cottage Hospital Beyond municipal green, a maudlin wall … Continue reading The Cottage Hospital

Yesterday & Today: 9th March

Hold the front page! You could have knocked me down with a feather when, at around 13:45 yesterday, I had a call from Radio York wanting to interview me live on air in the evening. They wanted to talk about me, my podcast, and then play a little from one of the stories on it. … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 9th March

Yesterday & Today: 8th March

Really full-on yesterday with my library residence, 'Write-on Ripon', and the Derby Stanza Group. In amongst all of that I managed to do a little work on the draft of "C", and get some prep work done for the retreat starting Saturday. For the latter I'm taking a slightly different approach to the workshops I … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 8th March

The Schooner

The Schooner when through the fog the spectral ship appeared silent before us on the running tide torn sails spoke of the stormy seas she’d steered on deck those ghostly pallid faces peered as we fell mesmerised and open-eyed when through the fog the spectral ship appeared legend said this old schooner should be feared … Continue reading The Schooner

Yesterday & Today: 7th March

Something of a varied day yesterday, the highlight probably being the evening's North Yorkshire Stanza meeting which to my mind was one of our best for a while, with a collection of stand-out poems. My Villanelle, "The Schooner", went down particularly well - mainly because they're so hard to write! I think you get kudos … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 7th March

Yesterday & Today: 6th March

The opening section of my new fiction project "C" introduces the four main characters, but the next chapter to be written introduces the final two. Perhaps that is why, when I started to tackle the latter yesterday, it proved harder going that I might have imagined. It was almost as if I was beginning another … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 6th March

Yesterday & Today: 5th March

Another surprising one yesterday when again the two key things I ended up doing simply weren't on my radar at the beginning of the day. The first of these was the completion of a draft of "B" - which is the follow-on to Crash and, if things go as I expect them to, will be … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 5th March

“Close Range: Wyoming Stories”

Having read The Shipping News I was keen to try something else by Annie Proulx. Close Range: Wyoming Stories is a completely different kettle of fish. I was immediately struck by how hard, brutal, and coarse the stories are. Whilst this is undoubtedly a reflection of the subject matter, it would have been easy for … Continue reading “Close Range: Wyoming Stories”

Yesterday & Today: 4th March

It's odd how some days end up with a work-profile you simply hadn't foreseen. Yesterday was one such day where two of the three things on which I spent my time weren't really on my radar at all - and those that were, didn't happen. An hour's solo rehearsing of Crash trying to consolidate what … Continue reading Yesterday & Today: 4th March