tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78664143139325180132024-03-05T04:33:44.778-08:00The Literary LoperSarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.comBlogger259125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-78848807112777644222019-05-19T09:31:00.001-07:002019-05-19T09:31:08.732-07:00Nightingales and other songs<br />
It's been six months or so since I became a freelance poet/writer/tutor and while I am financially poorer I feel much happier and more autonomous, as if I am on the path I was meant to be. It occurs to me that part of growing older is understanding/knowing your self and who you are. Simple perhaps but a difficult awareness to achieve when you have not lived with yourself for very long. We are all of course multiple.. Anyhow, I thought I'd share a few self-promotional posts -<br />
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I was happy to be commissioned by the think tank Nesta to write a poem about the future of the internet. It was a topic I had to come to from many different angles until I could make something I was happy with in an artistic sense. While at points it felt quite difficult as this is not necessarily the area I normally write about, it was good for me to push myself and the exercise actually resulted in two poems - a prose piece I have yet to send anywhere and this published one -<br />
<a href="https://findingctrl.nesta.org.uk/text/first-lines/" target="_blank">https://findingctrl.nesta.org.uk/text/first-lines/</a><br />
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It was a timely commission for me and at points I couldn't quite believe I was being paid to stare into space/ write poems as this was something I had dreamed about.<br />
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May I suggest you look through Nesta's book about the future of the internet, and not just the poem. It is fascinating and beautifully produced. I recommend starting with the funny timeline.<br />
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I had a wonderful open-ended commission from the University of Liverpool to write a poem about a nightingale. This was a joy and I actually heard and saw some singing in the North Kent marshes on a 'field trip'. The poems were turned into beautiful postcards and are all interesting interpretations of our relationship with this most heavily freighted of poetic symbols. Beautiful bird; I keep daydreaming of its song. I have a six minute recording of the nightingale I heard but not sure how to put it on this blog. .You can listen to a wonderful recording here - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK2_bcQcoD4" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK2_bcQcoD4</a><br />
I've also written a short essay/piece on nightingales which I will share soon when it is published..<br />
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Finally, here is a poem I wrote about a filthy little stream... <a href="https://wordsforthewild.co.uk/?p=5585" target="_blank">https://wordsforthewild.co.uk/?p=5585</a><br />
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Thank you for reading :-)<br />
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<br />Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-24642161709444255042019-02-14T09:41:00.001-08:002019-02-14T09:41:33.443-08:00HelloHI there! With the advent of spring, well the beginning of it, this blog peeps up from the earth like a yellow crocus to make its presence known..<br />
It has been busy. I left my staff job as a journalist last Autumn and am now working as a freelance writer and poetry tutor. I have begun teaching poetry at City Lit and am excited to start this course in two weeks -<br />
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<a href="https://www.citylit.ac.uk/courses/ways-into-poetry-an-introduction/hw349-1819" target="_blank">https://www.citylit.ac.uk/courses/ways-into-poetry-an-introduction/hw349-1819</a><br />
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I also have this reading coming up in Waterstones, Tottenham Court Road<br />
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<a href="https://www.waterstones.com/events/lodestone-poets-4/london-tottenham-court-road" target="_blank">https://www.waterstones.com/events/lodestone-poets-4/london-tottenham-court-road</a><br />
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I've also got a couple of poem commissions underway - one to write about the future of the internet and another about the nightingale. I have applied for lots of things and received plenty of rejections but just enough work to make this new life as a freelancer viable..<br />
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It is such a relief to not dread going to work any more and to feel more in control of how I spend my days and earn my living. All a work in progress, and sometimes a little scary, but an exciting life for me. Thanks for reading :-)Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-47573346443216887492018-10-01T14:50:00.000-07:002018-10-01T14:50:43.596-07:00'Flow' Looking forward to reading at this event on Wednesday - though I haven't sorted my 'set' yet. There will also be visual images and music as well as poetry - and you get a free pamphlet to take away. Come along if you are in central London.<br />
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I'm also looking forward to reading at the launch of Magma 72 the climate change issue in November and Neetha Kunaratnam's launch in the poetry cafe on December 1st. I'm also running a poetry workshop for Second Light in November. Most personally, I am trying to write new poems. I tried and failed to write about the beluga whale in Gravesend which ended up in a messy splurge - the poem not the animal. I hope the poor creature is able to swim back to safer waters. I seem to be swinging between writing a spiky found poem in the voice of Emma Thomson and a gentle version of John Clare's beautiful poem Meet me in the green glen. Feeling slightly startled by the wide swing between and what it means.<br />
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I found out Pavilion are printing a new run of Slant Light so that is good..I got nowhere in the Ginkgo Prize and now I am thinking of sending the poems elsewhere. I have just started Vahni Capildeo's Venus As A Bear and am savouring each poem. That is all in this rather ego-centric post! over and out as we head into true Autumn..Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-63184494344536481532018-08-07T15:15:00.001-07:002018-08-07T15:26:49.661-07:00ReviewsHello there<br />
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This year, to my pleasure, I've been commissioned to write reviews of poetry collections for Artemis Poetry and The Poetry School. Books reviewed include Hyem by Robyn Bolam, Mama Amazonica by Pascale Petit and Bondo by Menna Elfyn.<br />
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I also reviewed The Emma Press Anthology of the Sea for the Poetry School and Emerald by Ruth Padel - which was published earlier this month.<br />
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You can read it here - <a href="https://poetryschool.com/reviews/review-emerald-by-ruth-padel/" target="_blank">https://poetryschool.com/reviews/review-emerald-by-ruth-padel/</a><br />
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I've just finished Joy by Sasha Dugdale which was, aptly, a joy to read and am moving on to Imtiaz Dharker's Luck is the Hook.<br />
I don't know if my reviewing method is a bit old-school (it involves pencil scribbles and folded down page corners) but I seem to take ages over them, partly because, as a fellow writer, I know how important a thoughtful review is.<br />
There is a responsibility to do the poems, and therefore the poet, justice.<br />
I think the best book reviews leave you with the feeling that you have learned something, or something disparate has been fitted together, that you may never have come to yourself. This is a lofty aim for my own 'practice' but worth bearing in mind, I think. It's also useful to look at how other writers structure their books, their use of theme and form and even how their poems appear as a whole, all of which feed into a rich mix for my own poems to grow from.<br />
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In the spirit of the first point above, I also try to take time to write Amazon reviews for books I feel should be enjoyed widely. An attentive review can make a writer's' day, or week. It is in this vein that I was inspired to write a brief review of Michael Loveday's unusual new book, Three Men on the Edge, which is an exciting hybrid of poetry and flash-fiction, published by the impressive V Press.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "amazon ember" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">"Three Men on the Edge is an agile and brave book - it blends the finest points of poetry - nuance, the unsaid, and the metaphorical with the sharpest image-making and narrative of very short fiction. The result is a tender yet never sentimental hybrid of a form that I found exciting, compelling and very readable. It is a cliche but I was sorry not to read more. There is something very fresh about Loveday's book and it deserves to reach a wide audience."</span><br />
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You can see details of the book here - it's highly readable, humane but also possesses moments of capacious beauty and despair in the same way a poem can open itself and its reader out of the every-<br />
day.<br />
<a href="http://vpresspoetry.blogspot.com/p/three-men-on-edge.html" target="_blank">http://vpresspoetry.blogspot.com/p/three-men-on-edge.html</a>Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-77038055112280556492018-05-16T04:00:00.000-07:002018-05-16T04:02:22.907-07:00Poets & Players This is a fairly unexpurgated and long trumpet-blowing post but if you can't blow your own horn on your blog then where can you, eh?!<br />
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I was pleased to win the Poets & Players poetry competition this year and travelled to Manchester last weekend for the prize-giving and reading at the Whitworth Art Gallery. The sun was shining and I was met my friends which all made for a very pleasant time but I thought, objectively, it was a fantastic city - cosmopolitan, radical but also very distinctively itself without pretension - yes I saw a man walking a ferret but I also saw a lot more visible political awareness than perhaps in London - far fewer tourists and encountered a lot of friendly people and interesting architecture that reflected its history without sweetening it or somehow commodifying itself. I felt very southern in my voice and bearing, too. But I digress..<br />
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The judge for this competition was the marvellous Pascale Petit, who has just become the first poet to win the RSL Ondaatje prize for her latest collection Mama Amazonica. It's an astonishing book rooted in the rainforest and the psychiatric ward and transforms the flora and fauna of the Amazonian rain forest to articulate something of her mother's suffering, and ideas of freedom and power. I don't know why but I had a gut feeling one night to send this poem off to the comp - I only entered one poem - and I am happy it has found an audience. Anyway, it was wonderful to meet her and talk with her and you can read the poems here.<br />
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<a href="https://poetsandplayers.co/2018/05/13/the-winners-of-the-2018-poets-players-competition/" target="_blank">https://poetsandplayers.co/2018/05/13/the-winners-of-the-2018-poets-players-competition/</a><br />
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I should say a bit about my poem, Familiars. It is almost prose but I tried to keep it lyrical too and it very much needs its stanzas to hold itself as a structure. It began with me imagining how I would reach certain loved ones through the veil of death, by turning myself into creatures such as an owl, a jackdaw and a hare. It is also quite a witchy poem in that it is interested in thought or intent becoming reality - in the same way a spell might work - and uses a line from a woman accused of witchcraft back in the 1660s -<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I sall go until a hare / Wi sorrow and sick mickle care </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I sall goe in the devil's name / An while I come home again. </span><br />
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This sentiment is also echoed in this powerful song by Maddy Prior which blends almost mythical lyrics with some eighties synth action for a beguiling mix (imho).<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFWzPiGHd_Y">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFWzPiGHd_Y</a><br />
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here are some pics of the event and Pascale's comments - thank you for reading - I hope you enjoyed the trumpet solo ;-)<br />
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<br />Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-73316309047500614402018-05-09T07:43:00.000-07:002018-05-09T07:43:31.685-07:00Black Swallows (swift, dialect)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Somewhere up here are three or so newly-arrived swifts, tilting and banking as they feed in the sun. They are lost in this image but I know they are there. <div>
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I first heard them yesterday - and then saw them later that day. They were calling, their wheeling cries singing of their presence. </div>
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Every year I feel gratitude and protectiveness when they return, and I am startled. I am glad for them that it is warm and dry. All this is me projecting my concerns onto them, of course. They are hardy, fearsome things and thrive in the Scottish Borders where it is far colder and wetter (and midgier). But there is something about these black swallows that epitomises nature at its frailest and most beautiful. Perhaps because they travel so far (in our terms) to be here. And the way they return at the same time (our time, not theirs). What is it that impels them to fly thousands of miles to breed here? We cannot know. It almost feels like something is given to us when we see them.</div>
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Some people find swifts combative and compare them to fighter jets. For me, it is different. they are poised and air-strung and serene. And always hungry. </div>
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Forgive me for the self-regard - <span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Lora, serif;">I wrote this blog entry four years ago, on May 9th. Perhaps my joy at their presence is also part of me returning each May too. Likewise, when they leave in August there is a sense of loss. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px;">The swifts are back in Bexley, like summer's conscience.</span></div>
<br style="font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px;">I hear the streamers of their sound over roofs and roads, before I see their shapes.</span><br style="font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px;" /><br style="font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px;">The sound is familiar and strange, it lifts something in me that is old and joyful,</span><br style="font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px;">laid down when I was a child.</span><br style="font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px;" /><br style="font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px;">But I worry for them, these 'frail, travelling coincidences' as Larkin said once, about something else.</span><br style="font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px;" /><br style="font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: Lora, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">*</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Lora, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Around the time I took this picture, someone I knew died. (This transpired later). I know now that the arrival of the swifts will always make me think of her, air-born.</span></span></div>
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Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-33648277767779964052018-03-20T07:35:00.000-07:002018-03-20T07:43:27.944-07:00Spring is almost hereAnd change is in the air, on a personal level too. I am keenly anticipating both and hope to write more about this very soon.<br />
In the meantime, the air is finally, slowly warming up and the blackbirds are fossicking. I hope the solitary bees I saw last week made it through the cold snap, and the small charm of goldfinches. I hope the tiny clouds of insects are more hardy than their appearance may suggest so they can nourish the birds. I feel that nature is more resilient than we might understand.<br />
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Anyway, I was delighted to be a guest poet in Ash this month - the Oxford University Poetry Society's magazine. there are some wonderful poems in there and I love the way it has been bound and folded on creamy paper. It was pleasing to share a couple of new poems - Mind and Ash.<br />
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It was also good to hear that the poet Josephine Corcoran had taken my poem 'Fair Maids of February' into the school in Bath where she works as a writer-in-residence and the students had responded to it by feeling they, too, could stop and stare at living things.<br />
Josephine also brought in the anthology Weeds and Wildflowers by poet Alice Oswald including one about snowdrops in which she compares them to girls. I am glad I didn't know Oswald's poem as I think it would have stymied my own snowdrop girls had I known she had already captured them so beautiful in that way. As it is, I think there is room for as many variants of snowdrops biologically as poetically<br />
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You can read Josephine's blog post here - and I recommend the rest of her blog too for a very honest, open-hearted and encouraging view of the world.<br />
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<a href="https://josephinecorcoran.org/2018/02/11/writing-poems-about-flowers-writerinschool/" target="_blank">https://josephinecorcoran.org/2018/02/11/writing-poems-about-flowers-writerinschool/</a><br />
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It has all been reasonably quiet on the poetry front. I had a rejection from Magma - the film issue - they said I was on the long-list of 200 out of over 4,000 poems. Actually I am glad they rejected my poem as I don't think it was ready and have since revised it - this is a foible of mine to send things off before they are quite ready. Or 'cooked' as Andrew Motion used to say (a phrase I never fully liked, not sure why). I have sent a couple of things out here and there but I think my focus now is on creating new work - although time and head-space have been somewhat occupied.<br />
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I finished Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor last month. It is exquisite. Also enjoying the work of Selima Hill for her wild, reeling image and the verse-novel "One' by Sarah Crossnan which is extremely emotive and beautifully constructed.<br />
Until next time. Thanks for reading.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The view from the top of our house, mid-March</td></tr>
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Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-20454858549227612612018-01-31T06:57:00.004-08:002018-01-31T06:57:50.747-08:00Snowdrops I was pleased the wonderful poet Liz Berry picked out a poem I wrote for the Cafe Writers' Prize - a competition with almost 2000 entries.<br />
I send out poems out to competitions here and there - if they are ready and the competition or judge draws me for some reason.<br />
I also enter because they provide a much-needed financial boost to the coffers of poetry organisations, many of which are run on a shoestring and by love. It seems a nice way to keep the energy flowing.<br />
I also enter because I need to earn a few £s to pay for a new laptop. But it is also personal because I am ambitious about my writing and I want to take more risks in form and content. I want to reach further into that raw place where poems can come from. Competitions are a way of trying out poems without too much 'risk' I think - and the outlay is only small as I usually just send one poem.<br />
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Anyway my poem is about Snowdrops and called Fair Maids of February - that is one of many folk names for this beautiful early flower, along with Milk Flower. The botanical name for Snowdrops also references milk - Galanthus.<br />
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There is a brave quality about snowdrops - the first 'spring' flowers of the new year. They also appear delicate but have a sort of defiant, waxen character so I imagined them as girls in white headscarves.<br />
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Liz said she "l<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arvo;">oved this wild, delicate little poem about snowdrops from first glance" which was "at once beautiful and troubling ... mixing the vulnerability of the small flower with the vulnerability of young women. The final stanza just floored me."</span><br />
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Here is a link to my poem and the others Liz picked out. I love the winning poem! Thanks for reading and happy February -<br />
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<a href="http://cafewriters.co.uk/home/poetry-competition/2017-winners/" target="_blank">http://cafewriters.co.uk/home/poetry-competition/2017-winners/</a><br />
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Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-69065138110584966462017-12-10T10:05:00.001-08:002017-12-10T10:07:02.554-08:00Season's greetings<div>
The bleak mid-winter is here and perhaps many of us are feeling the early darkness and noticing the bare trees. </div>
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We adjust our lives to suit the hours of daylight. I spend more time inside with my little boy, playing puzzles and holding him close. The clarity of daylight and openings of blue sky are heightened in their brevity and beauty. I love seeing the trees' whole shape, their crowns.<br />
I like this time when everything appears to sleep. It is necessary and restful. </div>
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This beautiful little pamphlet makes an interesting and thoughtful alternative to a classic Christmas card. Twelve poems each worth your time and contemplation (one of them written by me).<br />
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<a href="https://www.serenbooks.com/productdisplay/twelve-poems-christmas" target="_blank">https://www.serenbooks.com/productdisplay/twelve-poems-christmas</a></div>
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If you join the Seren book club it is only £4. Why not support a vital press and send it to someone you love?</div>
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On another note, I enjoyed this interview with Jorie Graham in the Guardian. </div>
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She talks about how reading poetry is different from reading fiction - and this I think is key to reading poetry. To put down your analytical hammer and chisel, and let it work (sing?) through you. </div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif;"> “Eliot is an example of someone who says, in </span><a class="u-underline" data-link-name="in body link" href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2014/apr/17/ts-eliot-waste-land-radical-text-wounded-culture" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; font-family: "Guardian Text Egyptian Web", Georgia, serif; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;" title=""><em>The Waste Land</em></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif;">, ‘suspend the desires of the conceptual intellect – the desire to know who’s speaking, where you are, what they’re about – and read with your ear, read with your body’. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif;">"If you’re not reading with the part that’s asking for a confession, but with your ability to associate, your intuition, your sense that this moves by analogy to that – you’re familiar with surrealism, symbolism, modernism, you understand that, as in film, things can be adjacent and the adjacency creates a glow of meaning – then you have no problem, because you’re not asking a poem to be a single individual narrative telling you about a life."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "guardian text egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/01/jorie-graham-interview-fast-poetry" target="_blank">https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/01/jorie-graham-interview-fast-poetry</a></span></div>
Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-55782373998718306072017-11-12T12:07:00.001-08:002017-11-12T12:07:08.504-08:00Poetry Cafe reading Looking forward to reading at this event with these two wonderful women!<br />
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<span id="goog_1863923278"></span><span id="goog_1863923279"></span>Also here is a link to the London Magazine competition via the Poetry Society<br />
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<a href="http://poetrysociety.org.uk/news/sarah-westcott-wins-the-london-magazine-poetry-prize/" target="_blank">http://poetrysociety.org.uk/news/sarah-westcott-wins-the-london-magazine-poetry-prize/</a>Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-40700129351298746212017-10-27T07:18:00.000-07:002017-10-27T07:18:33.627-07:00Mary Evans readingWe had a fun reading the other week in the beautiful West Greenwich Library celebrating poems inspired by pictures at the Mary Evans Picture Library.<br />
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Here is a link to the evening and here is a pic of me with Mick Delap and Robin Houghton.<br />
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<a href="http://www.maryevans.com/poetryevent.php" target="_blank">http://www.maryevans.com/poetryevent.php</a><br />
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<span style="background-color: #efefef;">And poets - if anyone reading this would like to </span><span style="background-color: #efefef; color: #5d5d5d; font-family: verdana;">send a poem inspired by one of the thousands of pictures, please contact Gill by email at </span><a a="" class="leavealone" href="mailto:gill.stoker@maryevans.com" style="color: #7e032b; cursor: pointer; font-family: verdana; text-decoration: none;">gill.stoker@maryevans.com</a><br />
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You don't have to write a poem on demand; you may already have one that fits an image. Take a look!<br />
<br />Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-23082362450813074272017-09-29T09:10:00.002-07:002017-09-29T09:10:43.603-07:00success and a pixie cutKeeping (or should I say tending) the 'creative' flame is difficult sometimes - with work, family and the general business of keeping a toddler and two other children alive. (caveat - first world problem)<br />
Mostly, I work on general poetry stuff late at night, when everyone is asleep, and that is quite a magical, still time for me to focus on the words and thoughts and myself.<br />
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Ive had quite a few rejections recently, though, and a lot of 'near misses' in terms of first collection shortlists which are both encouraging and faintly galling. So near and so far ... etc.<br />
I tend to feel that the business of writing and creating provides enough fulfilment in itself and sometimes I have to remind myself of this when it seems like the world is full of more interesting or 'better' poets. The 'achievement' is in the doing, not the result, and I truly find that the place of quiet creation is where I find the deepest self fulfilment.<br />
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However, I need some outside affirmation to feel, in a sense, that I am not working into a void. I love it when someone contacts me out of the blue to say they like a poem. It is such a generosity. These little resonances are as important as large recognitions.<br />
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Saying all that, I was delighted to find out I've won first prize in the London Magazine poetry competition with a poem about a moor. Yes it is brilliant to have an objective 'success' but what I am most pleased about is that my poem reached across and made itself real to someone else. It has a beating pulse, and a life of its own.<br />
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A voice told me to enter that poem into that competition, one of those voices that comes into your mind when you are walking to the swings. So I listened to it, and I did.<br />
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I think of the creative part of me as a little blue flame, like you used to get in those heavy old gas heaters that could be wheeled about. Affirmations like these make that blue flame burn a little fiercer, and brighter.<br />
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And now, on a completely different note, is an article I wrote about getting a pixie cut.<br />
And I am kind of proud of this too, though in a completely different way.<br />
Thanks for reading<br />
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<a href="http://www.goodhousekeeping.co.uk/fashion-beauty/hair-advice/long-hair-to-pixie-cut-forties" target="_blank">http://www.goodhousekeeping.co.uk/fashion-beauty/hair-advice/long-hair-to-pixie-cut-forties</a>Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-42344296347963496592017-08-04T07:53:00.001-07:002017-08-04T07:53:18.106-07:00some linksI have a poem on this unique blog -<br />
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The Mary Evans picture library has more than half a million images online and poets have been responding to some of the images. A lot are historical records, others are more abstract. You can spend hours in there lost in the images.<br />
Anyway here's the poem -<br />
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<a href="http://www.maryevans.com/poetryblog.php?post_id=6972">http://www.maryevans.com/poetryblog.php?post_id=6972</a><br />
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We will be doing a reading in October celebrating the poems and pictures in Greenwich.<br />
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There is also a new, small interview with me here on the Liverpool University Press blog.<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/goog_1240326373"><br /></a>
<a href="https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/blogs/poetry/the-science-nature-and-creativity-of-slant-light-in-conversation-with-sarah-westcott">https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/blogs/poetry/the-science-nature-and-creativity-of-slant-light-in-conversation-with-sarah-westcott</a><br />
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I have been doing as much reading as I can squeeze in what with work and children. I seem to reading quite a lot of nature-writing and non-fiction. Who knows what is feeding in.. all I do know is that is important for me to read my way in and out of where I might be whether that is on the train or in the suburbs.<br />
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I'm enjoying Nan Shepherd at the moment and also a Pelican book about social class which is crisply written.<br />
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I hope there is a bit of summer left. It feels like most of the plants and trees have peaked but are holding out too, in a state of gentle decline. I think we might have a golden, settled September.<br />
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Happy summers, all<br />
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x<br />
<br />Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-30519763771963796962017-07-12T08:16:00.000-07:002017-07-12T08:19:22.846-07:00Where I live<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">Summer is rolling on, into high summer and towards her corollary and I am already nostalgic for mid-summer when this was yet to be.</span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">We live on the edges of outer, outer-London and are not blessed with spectacular forms of nature. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">There are no great wildwoods, nor torrents, or indeed mega-fauna. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">My daily paths are parallel to one of the oldest Roman roads - the A2 which is busy with traffic heading into London and out towards Kent and the ring of the M25. The traffic builds and falls as the day goes on, peaking at 5pm when it is full of lorries and white vans and estate cars, moving and then stopping. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">Along the A2 then, and never far from its constant hum, the under-song of this place where the streets run into fields and they run into housing estates and into fields again. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">There are a lot of horses here. And cars. Roads and roads of cars.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">Quite often I find myself craving elsewhere, somewhere less built by humans, and less motorised. I imagine a beach in north Devon and looking into the horizon until the Atlantic and the sky become indivisible. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">And yet there are small pleasures in the local and in the repetition of the same walk </span>through<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> distinct seasons and the succession of life and death. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">Below are patches of soft-estate that in high summer are filled with meadow flowers (they have now been mown down by the council). There is a small river, the Shuttle, which flows into the Cray, and along the banks of the Shuttle are well-trodden baths that follow its course.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica";"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I have come to know this humble, scratchy place quite well by walking and looking, with a buggy and a dog, and it is hard not to feel that the place accommodates us now as we walk through it. And the other regulars too. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">The first major flowering is the cow parsley, growing almost unstoppably through late April and into May where it fills the path with hanging heads of creamy froth. Slowly the last buds open and the umbels begin to shed their petals, leaving green seed heads then only their frame before the stems wither and make way for an army of tall nettles, their serrated leaves rich with chlorophyll. Through June, they grow weedy and sparse and fail, making way for the loops of curly convolvulus which twine and roil, their flowers emitting a thin, sweet scent of themselves at dusk. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">Here the bats zigger, and the insects rise in a thin curtain over the water, dancing into their dying night. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">There are a lot of swifts here, locally, over a particular street (nesting sites, perhaps?) and I cherish them. </span></div>
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<br />Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-6602493201246392682017-05-28T10:47:00.000-07:002017-05-28T10:47:21.106-07:00Clouds, mayflies and BrexitJust sharing a bit of good poetry news.<br />
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The rather fantastic Candlestick Press and the Cloud Appreciation Society ran a competition recently on the theme of clouds and I was really happy to discover my poem came second place.<br />
I actually wrote this poem 'to order' as it were for the competition - and I knew I wanted to move away from descriptions of clouds into something more oblique and hopefully interesting.<br />
I find writing to a theme a very good way of making myself write something new with a deadline in place.<br />
You can read my poem below. It's a love poem, really, in loose sonnet form, and for me verges on the sentimental but hopefully with the language used treads on the right side of the soppy line. I'm pleased its going to be in one of their pamphlets which are beautifully edited and produced. They make good presents for non-poetry readers because the poems are presented in a very non-intimidating manner on lovely thick paper with quality artwork.<br />
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<a href="http://www.candlestickpress.co.uk/competitions/" target="_blank">http://www.candlestickpress.co.uk/competitions/</a><br />
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Im also really happy to have a poem, Mayfly Rising, in Nature & Sentience, part of the Contemporary Poetry Series by Corbel Stone Press. <br />
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I also have a poem about a salmon forthcoming in the next in the series Nature & Death.<br />
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<a href="http://www.corbelstonepress.com/cp-nature-sentience.htm" target="_blank">http://www.corbelstonepress.com/cp-nature-sentience.htm</a><br />
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Finally to continue the trumpet blowing I have a couple of poems in POEM magazine: Women on Brexit.<br />
Very much looking forward to reading a diverse range of approaches to this enormous and profound topic.<br />
Thanks for reading and listening to the trumpet..<br />
SarahSarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-37139078741837546152017-05-17T04:29:00.000-07:002017-06-12T14:00:47.870-07:00Henderson Island<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Henderson Island, an uninhabited coral atoll in the eastern South Pacific has the highest density of anthropogenic detritus recorded anywhere in the world and almost all of it is plastic.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Two thirds of this waste is not visible with </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">4,500 items per square metre buried to a depth of 10cm in the sand, according to new research. About 13,000 new items are washing up daily. Even if we stopped using so much plastic now, I imagine it will continue to wash onto these shores for thousands of years.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">More details here - <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/15/38-million-pieces-of-plastic-waste-found-on-uninhabited-south-pacific-island" style="background-color: white;">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/15/38-million-pieces-of-plastic-waste-found-on-uninhabited-south-pacific-island</a></span></div>
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I did have a poem here but have taken it down as I'd like to get it published somewhere..apols!</div>
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Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-74871821879858900792017-05-09T14:21:00.000-07:002017-05-09T14:21:16.781-07:00VoicesThe 'Voiced' installation at Bethnal Green Nature Reserve opened last Saturday and it was a pleasure to sit in a glade and hear my poems hanging in the air. They were actually better than I remembered and had a completeness of their own.<br />
I had my little boy with me - I was heavily pregnant with him when I wrote these poems two years ago - and as he stamped about in the undergrowth, narrowly avoiding stinging nettles, he looked up and recognised my voice - never mind the words - and that was a sort of magic communication. As if all our voices could issue from leaves, from thin air.<br />
It made me think of this quote from The Tempest<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">“Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices ... "</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Here are some pics - come and visit - it's a magical place. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-36519085968301233052017-03-22T03:10:00.000-07:002017-03-22T03:10:38.331-07:00WorkshopsI enjoyed running some poetry workshops on World Book Day at Townley Grammar School in Kent earlier this month. To be truthful, I was a bit anxious about them going well - a room of 30 year seven students is a somewhat daunting prospect and it has been a long time since I did any teaching. I tackled it by worrying then preparing for what seemed like quite a long time and possibly over-planning but in the event it went well and by the second workshop I started to relax and enjoy myself! I'm sure if I did more I would become more confident and less attached to my planning.<br />
I think the students came to hear me as a poet and person and although I did read some poems, I got them to do quite a bit of writing and sharing of their work. I guess that's a balance to be worked out. Also their 50 minute lessons fly by..<br />
It's all useful experience for the next workshop I am running in May with adult poets, on the theme of The Other Side.<br />
Anyway here are some quotes from the students and a picture of the lunchtime session in which I met and chatted to students in smaller group. This was the part I enjoyed best.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">"When Sarah began to read some of her poems, I was able to discover new writing techniques for when it comes to writing my own poems." Year 9 student.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">Freya, year 9, also felt it was well planned, was "interesting, showing me an insight into poetry and a poet's mind". </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">Year 7 students -</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">"The workshop was fun and useful" </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;"> "The workshop was informative </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">and entertaining"</span><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;" /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">"The workshop boosted our literacy skills in poetry and it taught us</span><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;" /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">to be creative." Phenicia</span><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;" /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">"Sarah Westcott did a great workshop, she made us feel welcome and</span><br style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;" /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">very supportive of our ideas" Velvet, Millie and Holly</span>Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-53282432863702445122017-03-01T05:55:00.003-08:002017-03-01T05:56:07.847-08:00New WebsiteI have a new website - please check it out here -<br />
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<a href="https://www.sarahwestcott.co.uk/">https://www.sarahwestcott.co.uk</a><br />
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It will be linked up to this blog which will continue in its own personal rambling way!<br />
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Thanks for visiting :-)Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-42634781832236073072017-01-08T06:43:00.000-08:002017-12-31T08:55:08.410-08:00Reading ListOne of the positives in going back to work is time to read on the train - relative bliss. Though I find it difficult to read standing up - a sign of middle age?<br />
This year, I thought I'd keep a list or tally of the books I have enjoyed - both poetry and fiction. I will give each book no more than a two-line, honest review.<br />
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This list is for my own interest, really. Reading is one of the essential delights of my life. I remember the Roger the Red hat books with their boring, repetitive prose and funny old Edwardian buses with sticking-out bonnets. There was a hill involved and someone with a yellow hat and they never did very much. Later, sitting under the stairs, knowing I was too young to understand 1984 and terrified at Winston's humanity as a gin-soaked tear trickled down his cheek. Knowing I was Winston and so was every other human. A book called Playing Beattie Bow terrified me to my bones. I used to spin around in the bath and imagine opening my eyes into a life of Victorian servitude. Paul Gallico's The Snow Goose is still one of my favourite shorter novels. I spent time at university reading books that were not on my reading list and i am glad for that. I am sorry for all the books I shall never read because life is not long enough and living has to be done.<br />
There is so much extraordinary work in the world, and more being produced every year. I am guilty of not reading beyond Britain, or America. I can only read in one language. The slightest of books can contain multitudes of truths and views.<br />
Here's my list anyway of books read so far in 2017 and I shall add to it as the months come and go.<br />
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<b>Grief is the thing with feathers</b> by Max Porter.<br />
Feasts on entrails of loss (and love) playing with Hughes' archetypal crow. Mischievous hybrid mash-up pushes at edges and under things. deserves all the hype and award-chatter.<br />
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<b>Jackself</b> by Jacob Polley (poetry)<br />
Mire and dark mirth and mud and something of PJ Harvey's blood ploughed into the English soil. Deep and rich and (un)even. Visceral and chewy, language sticking on the teeth like flesh. Ribald and odd.<br />
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<b>Sea Journal</b> by Lisa Woollett<br />
Raids the myth/folklore kitty with justification - less mermaids and more grit thankfully. Tempered with biological realism and sumptuous photographs - author scavenges the coastline for stories, species. Part travelogue, part diary part natural history notebook.<br />
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<b>Flight Behaviour</b> by Barbara Kingsolver<br />
Blowsy and exquisite - more than an "issue' novel (climate change) - she writes with acuity and subtlety of marriage and class. Genuinely sad to finish it<br />
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<b>Let Them Eat Chaos</b> by Kate Tempest (poetry)- I just found this a bit sixth-fomery and un-nuanced. Probably incredibly powerful off the page, being spoken. Book is not the best format for this work. Admire the boldness and conviction. The characters' back stories were a bit two dimensional.<br />
<br />
February<br />
<br />
<b>Cove</b> by Cynan Jones. Admirably/bravely taut, lyrical. I was captivated but left faintly disappointed with the 'ending' - I think this says more about me than the book. At times sublime.<br />
<br />
<b>Void Studies</b> by Rachel Boast (poetry)<br />
Maddeningly elusive, ethereal and profound. Best poems for me are anchored with some quiddity (at risk of sounding pretentious). Not sure any have *stayed* with me but I think when I read again the book will offer up new notes and states. The poems are washes of colour or tone.<br />
<br />
<b>Salar the Salmon </b>by Henry Williamson<br />
Utterly beautiful, clean, ecstatic descriptions of fish life. For me the master of anthropomorphism - he Transcends its limits so we inhabit the salmon mind and the river in new dimensions of understanding. In parts shamanic! Moving and profound.<br />
<br />
March<br />
<br />
<b>Solar Bones</b> by Mick McCormack<br />
<br />
Written ostensibly in one sentence which means it travels down a single thread of thought to often profound finality - if a thought can ever end itself - innovative, poetic, utterly-in-the-human, a clever book of fractals and scale, gridded and layered from the neuronal to the world's pulsing grids of infrastructure. An heir to Beckett etc but I dont have enough knowledge to draw comparisons. Plenty of devices used to make the one sentence thing extraneous. These could become tics like..<br />
so..<br />
mother of Jesus<br />
but this book is too special and reflexive to its own meanderings. it stands alone in its aims and if, sometimes, overlong, is a fine use of time. I want more!<br />
<br />
<b>Field Work </b>by Seamus Heaney<br />
Rooted, tender, questioning, some of the most profound poetry about long marriage I have read.<br />
<br />
<b>Dear Boy </b>by Emily Berry.<br />
I came to this late - it was published four years ago - and now realise in hindsight Berry has spawned imitators in style and tone and content. I really enjoyed this collection - it has a deceptively 'affectless' almost flat tone that means emotion is magnified and vivid. Also packed with almost-non-sequiturs that provide humour, sometimes kitsch; fresh and provocative philosphical inquiry. And it doesnt take itself too seriously or wear its intellect at all. It has all the confidence and none that is 21st century rich humanity.<br />
<br />
April<br />
<br />
<b>Movern Callar</b> by Alan Warner<br />
Enraptured with itself and its language - like the narrator - Movern, 21, who burns like a cold, brilliant star. only downside was slightly annoying plot implausibility but can be fairly easily put aside. Didnt like the end but it didnt tarnish the book for me.<br />
Warner writes with grace and wit; the prose is limber and alive - sometimes so good it almost hurts. I dont know which Alan Warner book to read next. I wish I had read this when it was published in the 1990s and I was 21. I think I would have fallen in love with it in a different way. Perhaps reading it now with the distance of experience gives it a deeper, grainier beauty.<br />
As a Scottish first novel, using some dialect and sited in the rave culture, it is easy to draw comparisons with Irvine Welsh, in terms of the culture it came from, but I found it far wilder and fresher. Not many books successfully inhabit the mind of a young woman. This book gives no answers and is all the stronger for it. <br />
<br />
<b>The Practice of the Wild</b> by Gary Snyder<br />
<br />
Draws on Snyder's experiences with Buddhism and native American peoples and has a kind of big-heartedness and slight out-of-date feeling (27 years old). "If we are here for any good purpose at all ... I suspect it is to entertain the rest of nature. A gang of sexy primate clowns."<br />
This book did slightly change the way I think about nature and all that is laid on for us. Trees, for example, these self-fertilising super-structures that burn and float, and can be carved and carried. How could we possibly invent a more useful working raw material to live with? I also found myself paying more attention to what I eat and giving a quiet thank you to the little side of silvery mackerel before I ate it. Slightly changed my footprint in the world.<br />
<br />
May<br />
<br />
<b>Every Single Minute </b> by Hugo Hamilton<br />
<br />
At its best there is a limpid beauty to the prose and observations. Occasionally convinced of its own importance. An homage to a famous Irish writer - works without knowledge of her but I am sure it is enhanced if the reader brings this extra cultural dimension to it (which I did not.) the best chapters read like self-contained stories. Sometimes overly concerned with the profound-in-the-quotidian which made me want to break the sentences and dialogue open to let some actual light and weather inside.<br />
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<br />
<b>And She Was</b> by Sarah Corbett<br />
<br />
This is sold as a 'verse-novel' and there is a reason this genre is not a best-seller - perhaps exemplified in this slim yet intense book which is sometimes mystifying, often compelling and always beautifully written (apart from the first poem which didn't do much for me). The reader has to work hard (ish) but i like that. There is a skeleton of a plot that perhaps should be seen as a framing device for some assured, powerful poetry, particularly about fucking. I enjoyed digressions into the nature of memory within the constraints of linear time. I loved its reach and ambition and its fearlessness. I will definitely savour it again, more slowly.<br />
<br />
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<b>My Dark Horses</b> by Jodie Hollander<br />
<br />
Wry, tender poems with a simplicity in their language and tone that belies the depth of their feeling. Hollander communicates the complicated flux between mother and child - often with great sadness. There is much to admire in here, not least the sense of renewal.<br />
<br />
June<br />
<br />
<b>Woman and Nature </b>by Susan Griffin<br />
<br />
A slightly bonkers, intense heartfelt feminist manifesto which gathers quotes from deep thinkers and also mashes up the biblical register with 1970s american feminism - exciting and powerful and to be read in small doses. Empowering.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>100 Prized Poems: 25 years of the Forward Prize</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
The Editor of this book William Sieghart says in the foreword: "It is commonplace to speak of anthologies as bunches of flowers: this one is a bag of seeds." Quite so. There were discoveries of some wonderful poems in here and only a couple which I found to be duds. My favourites included John Burnside's History, Anne Carson's God's Justice, Thom Gunn's Lament and Derek Mahon's exquisite Death in Bangor. I felt that the poems were chosen not by the calibre of their author but by quality - the mark of a good anthology. Plus I loved reading poems from the 1990s that were written before I was reading and writing myself. There was something heartening about the fact they were already out there, waiting to be read, if that makes sense.<br />
<br />
July<br />
<br />
<b>Landmarks </b>by Robert Macfarlane<br />
<br />
Rich, generous company about imperilled words (thought) and landscape and how if one loses one, the other is threatened or invisible. ie. the delicate connections between place and words. As much beauty in the words themselves as their precise, rooted descriptions, and what it means to lose them. Deeply humane. A lovely guide to the books that have shaped the author, and the act of writing, and curating.<br />
<br />
<b>Pearl - </b>translation by Simon Armitage.<br />
<br />
A hearty yet delicate re-working of the exquisite Middle English poem. I like the way he is not beholden to rhyme but maintains the distinctive 12x12 structure of the original and its oral tradition. Love the mash-up of Christianity and Middle English, the comprehensibility of grief for a daughter tangible. Respek to the Armitage<br />
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<b>Translating Mountains </b>by Yvonne Reddick<br />
These are powerful poems drawing on the Scottish mountains in particular, with a strong sense of place and self and a wiry emotional pull.<br />
<br />
<b>Brood </b>by Rhian Edwards<br />
Honest, sparky - playful and bold. I think I expected more originality.<br />
<br />
<b>Fourth Person Singular </b> by Nuar Alsadir<br />
This is extraordinary - I wanted to read it all over again as soon as I had finished. Draws on tracts of psychoanalytical theory, philosophy and other poets' attempts to understand our working minds; riffs on and incorporates their ideas to produce startling, original questions. Less poetry, more 'thought', cerebral yet also operating within the poetic mind, and the deeper responses. One of those books that is wonderful company because despite all that it doesn't take itself seriously or weigh itself down with pomposity . Love the illustrations and redactions. Also incredibly readable. Is it poetry? who cares..<br />
<br />
August/September<br />
<br />
<b>Dart</b> by Alice Oswald<br />
<br />
Probably the third time I have read this and not the last: an often exquisite merging of thought, feeling and language - in that sense emotive, observational and real -<br />
for example, eels "strong as a bike chain" or "bright whips of flow/like stopper waves the river curve slides through"<br />
or "tiny spasms of time cross-fixed into water"<br />
<br />
<b>Bird Sisters </b>by Julia Webb<br />
<br />
Again there is something real and genuine in this book but it is less about the agility of language and more about the sense of lived integrity and feeling. A book that works around families and sisters. The strongest poems for me were the sequence of prose poems, written in a faux naif child voice that is convincing and often tender and most refreshingly, funny. Often prose poems become too prosy but these vignettes are pure poetry - knowing and condensed.<br />
<br />
<b>Autumn </b>by Ali Smith<br />
<br />
This was a quick, delightful, spry read. It had the sense, in part, of being thrown together and landing in a sort of eccentric, jumbled heap of sense but is no less the worse for that - free of pretension but wears its erudition and sensitivity lightly.. <br />
"I imagine that whatever it is I've forgotten is folded close to me, like a sleeping bird".<br />
I love its hidden subtlety which streaks through it but never weighs the pace down. It might have benefitted from fermenting a bit longer, I wonder. I loved its company though and witty readability. <br />
<br />
<br />
<b>The Living Mountain </b>By Nan Shepherd<br />
<br />
The blurb describes this special book as nature writing, but it is so much more than that - a meditative form of attention in which "there is seen to be a near and a far" - Shepherd focuses on the particular - saxifrage, the sensation of walking on dried mud - but also on the whole and the self within it and the multiplicity of seeing - that our way of seeing is just one relational part of the world. <br />
"Nothing has reference to me, the looker. This is how the earth must see itself."<br />
This all sounds a bit Zen-like and I am writing a very clumpy review - there is a strong sense of earned experience - she has spent decades going not just up but <i>into</i> the Cairngorm mountains - swimming in the lochs, poking a finger into snow, and this sense of lived-ness is passed through to the reader. I also liked the occasional school-marmish quality of address: "I do not like glamourie ... so let us have done with spells" and blazes of sensuality: "I ... walk through long heather to feel its wetness on my naked legs."<br />
There is nothing blowsy or overblown in her prose but it has all the concentration and power of the strongest poetry.<br />
<br />
October<br />
<br />
<b>Social Class in the 21st Century</b> by Mike Savage<br />
<br />
Crisp, sociological, overly reliant on the Great British class survey which took place in 2011 and also pre-Brexit therefore somewhat out of date BUT fascinating dissection of class in terms of social, economic and cultural capital, location, and reflexivity of the educated. Irony is that the readership of this book could be cleanly dissected using this book's methodology.<br />
<br />
<b>Night Sky with Exit Wounds </b>by Ocean Vuong<br />
Admirable and breath-taking in parts, occasionally overblown - but so laden with talent - the word and image spill, the soaring lines<br />
<br />
<b>The Remedies </b>by Katherine Towers<br />
Delicate and exquisite. A certain knowing restraint. Conceit is worn lightly but truly in the titular sequence.<br />
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<b>Angel Hill </b>by Michael Longley<br />
What did I love most about this discovery? The brevity, the knowing when to stop, the poise and plangent language which made me think of soft water, the lack of swagger, the sensuous place names. No shouting. No irony or tricks. Look forward to reading more of his work<br />
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November<br />
<br />
<b>Inside the Wave </b>by Helen Dunmore<br />
<br />
Some very plangent and tender poems about being on the edge of living and dying. I loved her collection Glad of these Times about a decade ago when I first started getting into reading poetry. I think there is something still very accessible and delicate about her poetry. I only know her children's novels. I do feel like poetry isn't the form she slips into as easily as prose. There is something about her capped-up lines perhaps that suggests she is shifting into poetry. Not a criticism, just a note from a reader.<br />
<br />
<b>Lavondyss </b>by Robert Holdstock<br />
<br />
Didn't get on with this at all - couldn't get drawn into the fantasy world<br />
<br />
<b>Bluets </b>by Maggie Nelson<br />
What makes this so compelling is she presents an interesting enough thought and then turns it again to another angle or question or even turns the premise inside out and back to front. and this is repeated hundreds of times. So it makes slow, even painstaking, but rewarding reading. Im not sure a lot stayed with me but I loved the crisply curious and wry tone and the worked-over quality. Most of the paragraphs-aphorisms -poems - call them what you will - are polished and glint and can hurt with their many angled-perception. Definitely one to read again and again.<br />
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December<br />
<br />
<b>Stranger, Baby </b>by Emily Berry<br />
<br />
Tonal consistency and imaginative liberty with precision of thought and texture. Exciting<br />
<br />
<b>The Essex Serpent </b>by Sarah Perry<br />
<br />
A great big generous hug of a book. I found the Gothic element the least convincing, the characters rich and warmly observed. Really lovely book to spend time with.<br />
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<b>The Immigration Handbook </b>by Caroline Smith<br />
<br />
The most moving of these poems are the ones that use their form to highlight the sense of being an 'alien' in a bureaucratic system - either as prose poems or 'found' work. Interesting and illuminating way of trying to understand the 'third space' - that public/private area where individuals are at the mercy of the wider system. A chastening book that broadens the outlook and encourages empathy. Some of the poems read like chopped up prose but the most successful lifted into their own unique register.<br />
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<br />Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-77922112394693449232016-12-26T07:57:00.005-08:002016-12-26T07:57:46.346-08:00New yearMay 2017 herald new buds, deep waters and wide skies<br />
I really hope to update this blog more over the coming months<br />
But for now, like midwinter, it will sleep for a few weeks<br />
See you when the snowdrops push up, white and strong<br />
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<br />Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-10897659797273966542016-11-17T07:00:00.000-08:002016-11-17T13:13:59.398-08:00Readings and ReviewsHello!<br />
I'm looking forward to reading tomorrow at The Second Light Autumn Festival : The Song of the Earth.<br />
I'll be reading for about 30 minutes with poets Caroline Carver and Cora Greenhill, before we open it up to readers from the floor. The event is held at The Art Worker's Guild, 6 Queen Square, WC1..<br />
It will be preceded by two days of readings and workshops, all with the theme of the natural world.<br />
Second Light is a brilliant poetry organisation run by the indomitable Dilys Wood. More details here -<br />
<a href="http://www.secondlightlive.co.uk/news.shtml">http://www.secondlightlive.co.uk/news.shtml</a><br />
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Another nice bit of news is a good review of Slant Light in the latest issue of magma poetry.<br />
The reviewer says the book "generates a sense of reflection and solemn joy" and describes it as a "beautifully constructed meditation on man's objectification of nature.<br />
"The poems are full of clear, sometimes startling imagery and presented using a number of experimental forms."<br />
<br />
Read the full review here in magma 66 and some cracking poems on the theme of comedy !<br />
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<a href="http://magmapoetry.com/">http://magmapoetry.com</a><br />
Bye for now and see you when the trees are bare and the leaves are blazing at our feet..<br />
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<br />Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-67991142899001876462016-10-24T13:16:00.000-07:002016-10-24T13:16:07.098-07:00Haiku competitionDoes anyone write haiku?<br />
I promised I'd share details of this competition on my blog so here they are -<br />
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<a href="http://design.printexpress.co.uk/the-print-express-haiku-competition/">http://design.printexpress.co.uk/the-print-express-haiku-competition/</a><br />
<br />
You only have until the end of this week to enter - and it's free so what's to lose! good luck.Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-64627250115209683122016-10-20T05:17:00.002-07:002016-10-20T05:17:21.036-07:00News Hi there<br />
A few snippets of poetry stuff to share - as much for my records really as anyone else..<br />
<br />
I was properly happy to win the Manchester Cathedral Poetry Competition, judged by Jo Bell, and announced earlier this month on National Poetry Day, which makes me Manchester Cathedral Poet of the Year 2016.<br />
Unfortunately I was unable to get to the reading and prize giving and have never been to Manchester, but this is something I will rectify!<br />
The poem that won is called Breast. I will post it up here soon. The competition invited poems with a loose spiritual theme and this is something I am noticing I write about (and think about) a lot..<br />
I have only written two poems since our baby was born a year ago so it is gratifying to get some external recognition for something directly inspired by looking after him. In this case breastfeeding in the small dark hours while rain rattles down on the roof and the house snores.<br />
<br />
It is one of those rare poems (in terms of ones I have written) that I look at, and think 'yes'. I like it, I don't fully understand it, it excites me, I feel the music when I read it, and it goes to surprising places in the mind (well, of this reader anyway and hopefully others.)<br />
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Here is an interview I did with Dr Sam Solnick for the Literature and Science Hub at the University of Liverpool. It was interesting to engage with his questions.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/literature-and-science/blog/poetryscience/westcott/">https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/literature-and-science/blog/poetryscience/westcott/</a><br />
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I'm looking forward to reading this Saturday from Slant Light as a guest reader at the long-running Poetry at Palmers Green series in north London. Fellow readers include Katherine Gallagher and Kevin Crossley-Holland.<br />
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<a href="http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/events/readings/index.cfm?id=12455">http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/events/readings/index.cfm?id=12455</a><br />
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Finally, I had a poem on a Poetry Tree for National Poetry Day at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History - thanks to poet-in-residence Kelley Swain for spreading the theme of messages in such a fun way<br />
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<br />Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866414313932518013.post-55169432716307949552016-09-12T12:56:00.001-07:002016-09-14T04:56:04.655-07:00Some reviewshi, just a quick one. I thought I'd post a couple of reviews of Slant Light. It's really heartening and interesting in a slightly voyeuristic way to hear what readers think of it.<br />
This short write-up is from the Poetry Book Society Bulletin - sorry about the tiny text!<br />
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And I was delighted to hear the thoughts of writer and Costa Poetry Prize judge Jen Campbell on her Youtube channel.<br />
Among her comments were: "I was really impressed with this collection .. it's beautiful. This is one I'd push into the hands of a lot of people and I don't think you have to be very familiar with poetry to enjoy it either."<br />
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You can listen to Jen and her thoughts on other books here -<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB6kOm1lAzY">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB6kOm1lAzY</a><br />
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<br />Sarah Westcotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10195657065089395206noreply@blogger.com0