Stepping Stones is the title of my new book of poetry which I’m very excited about. I’ve written poetry since I was twelve years old and my school set a competition – which I won! From that moment I had the poetry bug, helped by my English Teacher mentor who advised me, told me to leave anything in her pigeon hole and she’d critique it and sent me difficult structures to try out: sonnets, villanelles and all sorts. It was a wonderful discipline to get involved in, thanks to her kind enthusiasm. That teacher remained friends with me until only six years ago, when she died. Still much missed.
So why did I not put my poems together in a book before? I don’t really know. I have literally files and files of them from childhood onwards, many of them appearing outdated now but also many sounding as fresh as if written yesterday. And I still write them … since compiling this first anthology I’ve written ten more. The title of the book reflects the fact that the poetry in it covers my writing journey from fifteen years up to the present day – the stepping stones of different periods of life and experience
For me writing poetry is visceral and as necessary as breathing. It’s an intensely personal art form, far more than writing a novel which, perhaps because of the many voices of the different characters, always feels at one remove.
As soon as I’d got the poetry book ‘out there’ I wanted to curl up into a little ball. It feels as if I’ve put my naked self on show, utterly terrifying. Then I comforted myself that the book doesn’t only contain poetry. Key to the finished product are the wonderful illustrations provided by a good old friend of mine so, even if people aren’t turned on by poetry, they might enjoy the pictures, both black and white and colour.
The book is only available directly from me at present, though it is placed in local libraries and one or two other places in Cornwall for people to look at.
E-mail me if you’d like a copy: [email protected]
You’ll need to add your name and address of course.
The book costs £6.50. I will give you my bank details if you request a copy and send it by post on receipt of that amount.
As a taster, here is a poem I wrote recently about my hometown, Penryn, one of the oldest towns in Cornwall. By writing it I was elected as the first poet laureate of Penryn. That seems to be a good place to start!
Two Cornish words may need explanation: an ope is an alleyway, an opening. And Polsethow, which is where I lived when I first moved to Cornwall means ‘the place where arrows are lost.’ Penryn had a teaching abbey of monks up till the time of Henry VIII when it was demolished like so many others. All the land stretching up the valley from the abbey was where they hunted and lost their arrows in the boggy ground.
MY HOME TOWN
Penryn, Cornwall
First landing was where the arrow falls:
Polsethow my first harbour.
History pulled me in: monks,
jostled cottages, timeless
opes, lanes inviting
beasts for market,
the wood, then a deer park,
the lowest lake a stew
for carp, eel, pike, rudd;
venerable monks ate well.
An ancient oven hides
next to a garage.
Old and new rub shoulders,
breathe the same air.
There is a whisper in the wood –
The song of holly, oak and
hazels sprung from monks’ plantings –
a sense of peace in the abbey field
where ancient stones
nurture their past in corners
and plug the neighbours’ walls.
Old and new rub shoulders
breathe the same air.
Swans swap between
lake and estuary
twenty-one last Sunday,
spreading sails beside dunlin,
knot, curlew, oyster-catcher
under the omni-present
clamour of the gulls.
This is Penryn; harbour no more
of ships but of folk, old and young,
students, fishermen, shopkeepers
busy hub of flourishing life
wrapped round by ribbons
of the past so that always
old and new rub shoulders
breathe the same air.