Poetry? Yes, Please

I have written lots of poetry in the past – even given a few public readings – but the Muse went off in the huff a year or so ago.

‘Write your short stories then,’ she snapped over her shoulder as she disappeared into the blue remembered hills, ‘but don’t expect me to jump up when you’re in the mood for a poem. I’m off!’

I’ve tried calling to her to no avail. I can only hope she’ll slink back sometime when I’m not looking.

But she can’t stop me reading poems by other people or listening to Poetry Please.

Not highly original choices I know, but my five favourite poems are (probably):

Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas

Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Sea Fever by John Masefield

The Lamplighter by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W. B. Yeats

‘Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs’ is the first line of (possibly) my very favourite poem, Fern Hill, Dylan Thomas’ look at his lost youth. Every one of the subsequent lines is just as rich and gorgeous and unexpected as the first one, check them out here. He was the subject of one of the Edinburgh Book Festival’s reading events this year, chaired by Lilias Fraser from the Scottish Poetry Library. A group of about twenty DT fans, ably guided by Lilias, made very insightful comments which added to my appreciation of Fern Hill and introduced me to three of DT’s other poems. There's a reading of the poem on YouTube by Richard Burton and, perhaps surprisingly, one by Prince Charles.

Another Book Festival event featured Billy Collins, one-time American poet laureate. I saw him at the BF eight years ago and have never forgotten his reading. He has been called ‘the most popular poet in America’, and is famous for his conversational, witty poems. They work well on the page but hearing him read adds another brilliant dimension. Check out his quietly hilarious poem on mother love called The Lanyard on YouTube here. 

I’ve also been reading poems with a different slant on mother love by my American friend Kathy Roberson, who has just published Moments of Departure. To paraphrase from the blurb:

‘Twenty-one years ago, Kathy and her husband, adopted a child with special needs who was, in adoption lingo, “hard to place”. One-year-old Katie came with labels: African American, general development delays, mild cerebral palsy. And thus begins the Robersons’ journey into new territory, both for them as parents and their other two young children as siblings.

    Kathy’s collection of poems relates her family’s challenging adventure, beginning with the day they buckled Katie into her car seat for the first time, moving through the following two decades of bringing her into adulthood. Each poem mines the seemingly little things in life to unearth fundamental truths that will resonate for anyone who has encountered the frustrations and joys of caring for a loved one.’

Kathy is a wonderful poet and her poems can be enjoyed by anyone but if you know of a family who you think would particularly appreciate the book do let them know about it (or buy them a copy – it's available in paperback and on Kindle, on .co.uk and .com). Here's a flavour:

Navy Converse

Even quite young she’d spot

them a mile away, along

long aisles of shoes of all

sizes an styles, men’s, women’s,

teens’ children’s, formal,
casual, blue canvas that were not

the same. She could tell at a glance

as she sped by, crying out

 “NO!” when I tried to suggest

they’d do just fine. ….

Six in August

I read six novels in August and some poetry which I will blog about separately.

The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes. Read on Kindle. Two timelines – one contemporary, the other in World War 2 and Occupied France. In the present day Liv, owner of a painting of a beautiful woman, a gift from her recently late young husband, has to go to court to defend her ownership, as descendants of the artist are claiming it was looted. In the harrowing other timeline, Sophie runs a hotel visited by the occupying Germans. Her beloved husband, artist Edouard, is fighting at the front. The portrait he painted of her hangs in the hotel and is much admired by the German Commandant …

The One Plus One by Jojo Moyes. Read on Kindle. This one is contemporary (I love that all her books are so different) and, oh joy, it’s a road-trip book. Not an American road-trip … but a car journey from the south of England to Aberdeen where single mother Jess’s daughter Tanzie is to take part in a Maths Olympiad, the first prize for which is a desperately needed £5,000. In the car is also Nick, Jess’s troubled teenage stepson, and a very large flatulent dog called Norman. The car is driven by Ed, erstwhile employer of cleaner Jess, who has his own reasons for wanting to leave home for a while. Jojo Moyes is so perceptive about family dynamics and Jess is a wonderful character – I am interested to find out who will play her in the forthcoming film.

Cross Country with Grandma by Karen Testa

Christian Aid Booksale purchase. This is an American road-trip book –I will probably never take one but can live vicariously. The first chapter pulled me in straightaway:  it’s headed Herring Bay, Maryland and begins ‘The envelope I hold in my hand will break my heart.’ Then events take the narrator and her eighty-five-year-old grandmother, feisty Maude, on a literal journey across America and a metaphorical journey into Maude’s past. My copy was signed by the author in 1995 – I wonder how far it travelled before ending up in a second-hand booksale in Edinburgh?. Copies are available on Amazon: 16 used from 0.1p – and one new from £2499.50 ...

A Night on the Orient Express by Veronica Henry

Christian Aid Booksale purchase. A zip-through read about various couples/groups who are travelling on the Orient Express for different reasons. I particularly liked the young couple, who’d never met before but who had ‘won’ each other in a lonely hearts competition, and the step-family on a bonding holiday.

The Long Weekend by Veronica Henry

Christian Aid Booksale purchase. Format as above, this tells the stories of the guests in a beautiful Cornish seaside hotel and one of the co-owners. Secrets, lies and scandals are exposed over one hot weekend. The author is also a script-writer so she handles the various storylines effortlessly.

The Hour Before Dawn by Sara MacDonald

Christian Aid Booksale purchase. Described as ‘A rich, multi-generational saga, set in Singapore and New Zealand. The mysterious disappearance of a young child sets in motion a series of events that will haunt future generations of the family.’ Good plot and some lovely descriptions especially of rural New Zealand.

Serial writer

In 2008, as a member of Edinburgh Writers’ Club, I was entitled to go to the conference of the Scottish Association of Writers’ Conference. One of their competitions that year was to write the first instalment (7000 words) of a serial for The People’s Friend.

At that time, once a month, I met up with four writing friends and we took turns to provide a prompt or an exercise from which we would write for twenty minutes or so and then read our work aloud. One month our hostess, Vicki (now acclaimed novelist Victoria Hendry), handed out some paperbacks of various genres and asked us to select a page at random, look at the first line and use that to start our own piece. I can’t remember the title of my book but it was a horror story; the line I picked out was about a woman driving in the rain. I decided she was travelling up to the very north-west of Scotland and (although I don’t even read horror never mind write it) I vaguely had in mind that she was on her way to some pagan ceremony which would end badly. I called the scribbled piece The Stone Mother without having any idea what that meant.

When I read about The People’s Friend competition I thought of that piece of writing and how I might take it further. My heart had never been in pursuing the pagan ceremony idea and of course The People’s Friend doesn’t do horror … So the woman in the car with her windscreen wipers working overtime became an archaeologist en route to join a Viking dig and I came up with a cast of characters for the community she was going to be living in.

(If anyone wants to take up The Stone Mother and go off to a horrorific pagan ceremony be my guest.)

No one was more surprised than me when I won the competition. I had not thought beyond that first instalment and it was both thrilling and frightening to realise I had a commission to finish the serial. But before it could be taken any further The People’s Friend wanted some changes – some scenes swapped around, there were too many single people, one character was over-the-top … and I had to produce a complete synopsis of the rest (five or six instalments of 5000 words each). I’d had some short stories published before but had never written anything of length so this seemed an impossible task – like going into a dark room full of people I’d never met and being expected to know them. It took me weeks. 

At one point I really thought I couldn’t do it and had to give myself a severe talking to; it would have been so stupid not to grasp the opportunity offered to me. Eventually I produced an A4 page for each of the next six instalments, broken down into five chapters/scenes and once that was all approved I was off – and it was great, rather like joining the dots. I had a blueprint in front of me to follow.

I submitted the second instalment, waiting for their approval/comments before beginning the next one. It was quite a long process but at last The Family at Farrshore was published in The People’s Friend in 2011 and then I sold the large-print library rights to Linford Romance Library (an imprint of Ulverscroft).

Cathryn is delighted to join an archaeological dig at Farrshore, in the Scottish Highlands. Apart from her professional interest, it means she’ll be at a distance from her recently ex-boyfriend, Daniel. Canadian Magnus Macaskill, is in Farrshore for his own reasons, one of which is to trace his ancestry. As they spend the summer lodging with the MacLeod family, Cathryn and Magnus are drawn into the small community and to each other. But how will Cathryn react when Daniel reappears?

 In 2013 The PF’s Fiction Editor Shirley Blair asked me if I had any other ideas for a serial (I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to myself to start another one). I gave her two suggestions and she went for one with a hotel setting. This time she didn’t ask for the full synopsis but she queried the timeline I was proposing so I did do a plan to show her how it would work. It can be tricky – you send off an instalment and in the weeks before you get a reply your head is in another story and then you have to reacquaint yourself with your serial characters – but I did find it easier the second time round. The Ferryboat began last week (23 August 2014), the first of six instalments. 

It’s about an English couple who move up to the west highlands of Scotland (to Lorn, a fictional place but in my head it’s near Oban) after buying a run-down hotel with their daughter and her chef husband. It’s a time of change there because a new bridge is about to replace the age-old ferry service; not everyone likes the changes the new hotel owners make.

I’ve sent another serial idea for Shirley to consider … watch this space.

Seven in July

I read seven books in July, the first five of these on Kindle.

Ready or Not? by Grace Wynne-Jones. Irish writer with a sharp eye on modern relationships, and heroines who are neither chicks nor hens but somewhere in between.

Fashionably Brief. Short stories by The Romaniacs, a group of romance writers. As I am Facebook Friends with some of these lovely ladies I will refrain from picking out my favourite stories. A great collection for less than the price of a cup of tea.

The Golden Hour by William Nicholson. I love William Nicholson’s novels (he also writes children’s novel, plays, and screenplays (eg Shadowlands). This one includes some characters from previous ‘Edenfield’ novels so I enjoyed catching up with them. He’s very good on writing about women … and children ... and men ... even the guinea pigs seemed real.

What the Future Holds by Joan Fleming. This is Scottish writer Joan’s debut novel, set mostly on the Isle of Mull and with a wonderful sense of place. Amy remembers the kiss she and Sandy shared when they were teenagers but now there’s Amy’s partner Matt in the picture …

Tears and Laughter and Happy Ever After. A collection of tales from writers who between them have had hundreds of short stories published in women’s magazines in the UK and around the world.

Murder on a Summer’s Day by Frances Brody. The latest in the Kate Shackleton investigator series, set in the 1920s. This one is about the death in Yorkshire of a visiting Maharajah. A longer and slower read than the previous titles but enjoyable nonetheless.

The House at Sea’s End by Elly Griffiths. Gripping story about a forensic scientist who gets involved when the bodies of four long-dead Germans are discovered on a Norfolk beach and everyone who might have information is being silenced, permanently. Tense and page-turning plotting – although I’m still wondering why ancient Irene was upstairs in the tower in the wee small hours.

Only seven? Must do better next month.

Inspired to write

Class of ’64 is my sixteenth story to be published in The People’s Friend – in this week’s issue (dated 9 August 14).

I think it’s my favourite of all my PF stories as it was inspired by a time, many years ago now, when my mum and a school friend she hadn’t seen for fifty years had a reunion in my house. I brought them tea and cake and left them to it and they picked up exactly where they left off, judging by the gales of girlish giggles coming out of the sitting room. 

I used that reunion as a starting point and invented characters quite unlike my mother and her friend to put into the situation.

My reunited friends are called Marianne and Kitty. I wanted their meeting to be observed through the eyes of a third person so I made up Emily, Marianne’s eighteen-year-old granddaughter, who ends up seeing her grandmother in a different light, as someone who still feels young inside. Then there’s Marianne’s husband (Emily is surprised when she finds out what her Grandpa’s nickname was when he was a lad) and he was inspired by someone I was at school with myself.

Jack London said: ‘You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.’ Well, he was that sort of guy. 

I don’t find the getting inspiration bit difficult, quite the opposite – in fact, inspirations hit me with clubs and shout 'write about me'.

It's what comes next that's tricky. To paraphrase Thomas Edison: ‘Writing a story is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.’ I just wish it was the other way round.

Stranger than fiction

I was recently tagged on Facebook to post a photograph every day for five days so I looked out ones taken when I was in China in 2011. When I came back from my trip I wrote some articles but had no success in having them published (clearly I should stick to fiction). But I will tell you here about the strangest evening I have ever spent because I couldn’t have made it up. 

You will be, my daughter kindly informed me, the oldest westerner to visit Ningxian. 

She went there, to the south-east corner of Gansu Province, China, in August 2010 to teach English for a year and the following April my sister and I found ourselves on a country bus driving through China’s driest province to the dusty little town my daughter called home. She and her fellow gap-year teacher lived on the school campus – the object of much friendly curiosity as the only two westerners most of the town had ever seen.

Now there were two more.

Within minutes of our arriving, pupils jumped up and down to look through the window and some came in to see us close up. Fortunately, no words of ye ancient western wisdom seemed to be required from the oldest one or her sister – all we had to do was pose for what turned out to be the first of (very) many photo sessions.

During the next six days we were privileged to be asked out by generous and genuine people to restaurants, and to private homes, to sample the region’s delicious noodle-based and surprisingly spicy food. 

But one invitation appeared to have its own agenda.

We met our hostess (an English teacher who spoke very little English), and her husband who ‘works for the government’, outside the school gate at 5.30 but it wasn’t until 9 o' clock that we sat down to eat in a hot-pot restaurant, the only kind that stays open that late. (Hot-pot is a kind of individual fondue arrangement where tofu and raw meat and vegetables are dropped to cook in a pot of boiling soup.) For three and half hours we had to sing for our supper.

First of all, we were startled to be ushered into a large, newly built, empty hotel belonging, as it turned out, to friends of our hosts, escorted upstairs to a bedroom and photographed  – perhaps, we later speculated, to appear in promotional material as their international clientele …

We – the party now including the hoteliers – were then driven about ten miles away ‘to see a valley where there are beautiful flowers’. On the way we passed dozens of cave dwellings, some definitely still occupied (I saw a line of washing high on the hillside) but our hostess denied this and was keen to show us ‘the new countryside’ and the houses recently built for the farmers. 

When we stopped to look at the ‘beautiful flowers’ carloads of more of their friends arrived to check out the westerners, add them to their photograph albums, and follow them as they drove on.

Our next stop was a primary school where, at seven o’ clock in a smoky staffroom, teachers were marking homework. 

We were invited to have a look round in the company of one of the teachers, a cigarette tucked behind his ear.  The school was built in the 1950s and not much changed. A board on the wall had Chinese writing with an English (?) translation underneath: 

All the teachers trooped outside to be photographed in the playground with us and our entourage plus three children who had appeared from nowhere. As we departed, waving royally, my sister, a primary-school head in rural Scotland, tried and failed to imagine a similar scene back home.

Finally (in the dark) we had to inspect a poly-tunnel which apparently was very eco-friendly.

 We were conducted around it by a smiley man to whom, like all the other followers we acquired that evening, we were never actually introduced. 

He turned up at the hot-pot restaurant (above, left) and as a finale to the night was revealed to be, not the gardener of the poly-tunnel as we’d vaguely assumed, but ‘he runs TV station’. Another line-up. Another camera. Would we appear on Chinese TV? When I looked in the mirror back in the hotel and saw the havoc wrought by leaning over the steamy, spicy hot-pot I could only hope not.

Six in June

I read six books in June.

Every Contact Leaves a Trace by Elanor Dymott. (Christian Aid Book Sale buy) Alex tries to find out who killed his wife, Rachel, in the grounds of the Oxford College they’d both attended. I liked the complicated structure, very clever. Perhaps less of a whodunit than a whydunnit – the ending was vaguely disappointing. Plus I couldn’t help thinking that even if she hadn’t died the marriage wouldn’t have lasted between solitary, dull dog Alex and beautiful, bratty, manipulative Rachel.

Night Music by Jojo Moyes. (Christian Aid Book Sale buy) An early JM. As usual, great characters and dynamics between them.

A Woman Unknown by Frances Brody. This is in an excellent series about Kate Shackleton, a war widow and amateur sleuth, set in Yorkshire just after the First World War.

The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith. Well, by JK Rowling really. And I thought it was cracking, kept me awake for several nights and the conclusion was very satisfying. Really liked Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin and can’t wait to read the follow-up The Silkworm.


The Other Miss Perkin by Lorna Hill. (Christian Aid Book Sale buy) This is set in the 50s, was first published in the 70s and republished in 2010 and is Lorna Hill’s only adult novel (she’s best known for her children’s books especially her ballet ones). I’m a Lorna Hill fan but I’m afraid I thought this was feeble – a downtrodden spinster (ancient apparently at the age of 44) wins a prize trip to the States and snags a millionaire. Written in a telling not showing way – ‘as we have seen’ etc. There was a really beautiful description though of the Grand Canyon; she is very good on scenery.

Loving Susie by Jenny Harper. First book I read on my newly acquired first Kindle. This is Jenny’s second novel following Face the Wind and Fly. Is the story of Susie Wallace MSP (member of the Scottish Parliament) and the devastating secret she discovers about her own background and the impact it has on herself and her family. Jenny is married to a former MSP so well-placed to set a heroine in this world. The story is told through her eyes and that of her husband and family and plays out Jenny’s tagline – she writes about ‘Strong women under pressure’.

 I am enjoying the Kindle – it is so easy (and usually cheaper) to acquire books in this way, and there are some titles that are only available in e-form. And, yes, it is terrific if you’re on the move. But it is frustrating to know that you can’t pass on a book to friends and family if you think they’ll like it too – you can recommend it of course but there’s no saying they’ll get round to buying it, and not everyone has an e-reader.

I fervently believe that books do ‘furnish a room’. The books on my shelves are part of my life in a way that words on an e-reader, however wonderful, can never be. There’s so much pleasure to be had in looking at other people's bookshelves and in spending time in a good (new or second-hand) bookshop.

And – you know who you are – if you keep nodding off and dropping your Kindle on the floor it is expensive to replace …