January 2010

Dear Readers

 I took home my 70 copies of `Aviatrix` on October 23rd 2009, and everything changed.  Instead of being a quiet writer with an unseen readership on the web, I moved into the limelight and prepared to face the public.  The launch took place on December 4th in my home town of Lewes, East Sussex, at the Needlemakers Café, an attractive  place carved out of the brick-floored centre of the  old Needlemakers Factory which was saved from demolition  and is now a warren of small-scale shops, including Skylark, the only independent bookshop left in our town.

 The evening went well. Over 40 people came, I enjoyed reading – 12 poems in all, with 2 chosen and read by my publisher, Alwyn Marriage - and the reception was so warm and friendly that I remember seeing only intent or smiling faces.

 Publication has brought many positive changes.  I have a sleek little book to offer, I have learned how important it is to attend to every detail of book production, and my confidence has grown. I am writing more, and look forward to doing further readings, the next being on March 18th at the Needlemakers Café again, but this time as part of the Lewes Needlewriters' quarterly programme – a group which brings local writers of both prose and poetry to a wider audience.

 The Lady-Errant website contains around a third of the poems now available in book form from Overstepsbooks.com.  I will add only new work now – apart from a poem I wrote as a student of English and Philosophy at Nottingham University in the sixties, which is printed below.   

Ivinghoe Beacon      

 

We scrambled, panting, to the top, trip-

ped over the chalk ridge, giddy,

      fall-willing with half ourselves.

Then grabbed hands and raced in a new

      last lung-burst of breath

over the cropped mane of springy sheep grass,

the pale, wind-drenched hare-bells singing

      In our ears, translucent, high-toned

with a wind whistle.

Then flung, on warm, thyme-scented hill top

our panting, supine bodies like rabbits

      In the dry hutch-heat

snail spiralled, shell-curled as babies

      In the womb.

Till springing from elemental animal rest,

we saw, far below,

the land of the half living.

A tractor, like a brown beetle, crawled

Insect-like, purposefully, over a dead field

barren and insipid after the sapping harvest,

turns up

thick clods of earth, brown as a robin`s back,

warm, pulsating yeoman soil,

like the deep, urgent ripples of a living thing

      in stagnant water.

 

First published in ‘Solar’ Vol 1 No 1 Nottingham University Literary Society  May 1962

October 2010

The highlight of my summer was reading at Dartington`s ‘Ways with Words’ Festival in July.  I read with several other Oversteps poets, including the founder of the publishing house, Anne Born, and her successor, Alwyn Marriage. Dartington is a wonderful place to be during the Festival, and It was a great opportunity for me to meet other poets, and to read to a live audience. I read 6 poems from ‘Aviatrix’ and one more recent one. ‘Her Plait’, which together with  other recent work, is now on my website.

An interesting possibility of reading again in Lewes is being discussed – more on that later!