As you can see my blog has had a make-over!
It now looks very exciting now and is ready for me to update with my news. My re-brand was done by Cara Bendon Brand Consultancy www.carabendon.com.and I'm delighted with the result
Friday 14 November 2014
The Wish Dog
Last week I was involved with a book launch for The Wish Dog ,a book of ghost stories recently published by Honno,in which I have a story . I also read from The Moth Box.
Friday 4 July 2014
Dylan 100
The Dylan exhibition at the NLW is interesting, but so many recordings going at once means nothing is heard! (In the PeterBlake/Dylan in Cardiff they had headphones). Also, the poetry pub seems to demean the quality of literature, but I suppose it's a fun way to hear poetry, that is if you can hear it over the other recordings.
Getting there is difficult as there are about 6 sets of traffic lights on the Aberystwyth road-cars go through at 6 at a time, and there are long , long tailbacks. Still the roses outside are wonderful, and you can see the notebooks (on loan from University of Buffalo). Why didn't a Welsh University buy his notebooks when he was an aspiring poet and struggling financially? It seems we still only honour dead poets who can't defend the legacy we give them.
Getting there is difficult as there are about 6 sets of traffic lights on the Aberystwyth road-cars go through at 6 at a time, and there are long , long tailbacks. Still the roses outside are wonderful, and you can see the notebooks (on loan from University of Buffalo). Why didn't a Welsh University buy his notebooks when he was an aspiring poet and struggling financially? It seems we still only honour dead poets who can't defend the legacy we give them.
Friday 20 June 2014
MY FIRST WEEK AS A WRITER
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Now my day job has ended I have become a full time writer, and am busy promoting my book in bookshops with the offer of a reading or signing. I've contacted my publisher about an e-book, but they haven't made e-books of poetry - yet.
My book is also available on Amazon. Please leave a review when you've read it.
Friday 25 April 2014
A Busy Week
It has been a busy week : a Red Heron meeting to plan our Summer tour of events.
Red Heron, redheronlampeter.weebly.com/ is a poetry performance group I'm part of,
which was founded two years' ago to promote our poetry. We have read at
The Carmarthen Old Town Festival,The Kings Fest,Strata Florida and the Lampeter
Food Festival, and are available for bookings.
See our website for details: redheronlampeter.weebly.com/.
A friend's book launch in Cardigan,and a chance to see the new Parthian Books catalogue,
where The Moth Box has its own publicity page .
Tuesday 15 April 2014
Author's Notes
The Moth Box started as two collections. One was a series of poems about having lived in Wales all my adult life .The other was a collection of nature poems inspired by a course where I first encountered a moth box.
A moth box is a light box to attract moths, so that the species can be counted and identified .
It is filled with torn up egg boxes and twigs so the moths settle and sleep when the light is turned off .
In the morning the box is opened and the insects can be examined under a hand lens , identified, and then released by putting onto branches where they blend into the trees. It was exciting. I had never held a moth on my hand before.I could see the scales of pattern on its wings.
I grow Evening Primrose as it attracts insects, but the moths had just been shapes attracted to the scent of the flowers.Now, I discovered the wonderful names of moths: Scorched Wing, Tussock, White Ermine, Marbled Coronet, Phoenix. It was poetry.Both moths and butterflies belong to the insect species Lepidoptera.There are more moths than butterflies, yet we are more aware of the latter.
There are at least 160,000 species of moth.Being night time creatures they are more elusive and drab.
I tend to think of poets as the moths of the literary scene.
People can usually name a novelist, but have to struggle to think of a poem or a poet. I hope that will change this year with the celebration of the centenary of Dylan Thomas’ birth, Dylan100.
I have always written poetry.Maybe this is because poems are small on the page. However, my favourite poem as a child was the long poem Hiawatha .I didn’t encounter précis, the art of reducing a long piece of writing to a concise distillation of meaning, until I was 13.At first I preferred comprehension, but then developed a love of précis, taking words out of a piece to make it more succinct.This is a skill a poet needs, and working with an editor helps this process to take the poems from the rough diamond to the polished gem.
I was fortunate to have the poet Alan Kellermann as my editor; he shuffled the two small collections together.He also sourced the amazing cover photo of a Polyphemus moth.
The collection I sent to him had a different title. I had once called one of the collections The Moth Box and other poems . Seredipidity. I didn’t know then that mine was the first book he’d edited, and he says that makes it special.For me it’s special as it’s my first book with Parthian.
A moth box is a light box to attract moths, so that the species can be counted and identified .
It is filled with torn up egg boxes and twigs so the moths settle and sleep when the light is turned off .
In the morning the box is opened and the insects can be examined under a hand lens , identified, and then released by putting onto branches where they blend into the trees. It was exciting. I had never held a moth on my hand before.I could see the scales of pattern on its wings.
I grow Evening Primrose as it attracts insects, but the moths had just been shapes attracted to the scent of the flowers.Now, I discovered the wonderful names of moths: Scorched Wing, Tussock, White Ermine, Marbled Coronet, Phoenix. It was poetry.Both moths and butterflies belong to the insect species Lepidoptera.There are more moths than butterflies, yet we are more aware of the latter.
There are at least 160,000 species of moth.Being night time creatures they are more elusive and drab.
I tend to think of poets as the moths of the literary scene.
People can usually name a novelist, but have to struggle to think of a poem or a poet. I hope that will change this year with the celebration of the centenary of Dylan Thomas’ birth, Dylan100.
I have always written poetry.Maybe this is because poems are small on the page. However, my favourite poem as a child was the long poem Hiawatha .I didn’t encounter précis, the art of reducing a long piece of writing to a concise distillation of meaning, until I was 13.At first I preferred comprehension, but then developed a love of précis, taking words out of a piece to make it more succinct.This is a skill a poet needs, and working with an editor helps this process to take the poems from the rough diamond to the polished gem.
I was fortunate to have the poet Alan Kellermann as my editor; he shuffled the two small collections together.He also sourced the amazing cover photo of a Polyphemus moth.
The collection I sent to him had a different title. I had once called one of the collections The Moth Box and other poems . Seredipidity. I didn’t know then that mine was the first book he’d edited, and he says that makes it special.For me it’s special as it’s my first book with Parthian.
Thursday 20 March 2014
THE BLOG TOUR
What am I am working on?
At the moment I’m working on promoting my book The Moth Box which was published last October. Although it is available from Amazon and from the Parthian website I’m trying to get it put in local bookshops and art galleries . I’m having some success and it was in the window at Bookworm and is stocked in the Aberystwyth Arts Centre bookshop and in Leafed Through in Cardigan. Poetry books don’t sell in large numbers and so I’m doing signings and readings to help promote it while waiting for my reviews, which again will bring attention to the book.
How does my work differ from others in the genre?
Poetry is a vast genre . I write mainly in free verse. I do occasionally write in form: couplets, sonnets, villanelle and haiku are my favourite. I’ve written sestina and mirror poems too. I like to think my poetry has its own distinctive voice, but as long as I’ve achieved the best words in the best order I’m satisfied
Why do I write?
I write because I’m obsessed with letters and words, and moving them about the page in order to say something original, or something I think is original. It is a need inside me to make patterns out of letters.
How does my writing process work?
Sometimes it is inspiration or a visual image. This morning it was the magpies again . I look out on them from the office window. I store the image until I have time to note it down. Often my inspiration comes from the natural world: the turn of the seasons, the colour of the sky in the morning. sometimes these images go no further, but sometimes they lift off the ground like the magpies into a verse .
Next week The Blog Tour takes us to poets Martin Locock-http://martinlocock.blogspot.com/ and
Jackie Biggs-http://jackie-news.blogspot
At the moment I’m working on promoting my book The Moth Box which was published last October. Although it is available from Amazon and from the Parthian website I’m trying to get it put in local bookshops and art galleries . I’m having some success and it was in the window at Bookworm and is stocked in the Aberystwyth Arts Centre bookshop and in Leafed Through in Cardigan. Poetry books don’t sell in large numbers and so I’m doing signings and readings to help promote it while waiting for my reviews, which again will bring attention to the book.
How does my work differ from others in the genre?
Poetry is a vast genre . I write mainly in free verse. I do occasionally write in form: couplets, sonnets, villanelle and haiku are my favourite. I’ve written sestina and mirror poems too. I like to think my poetry has its own distinctive voice, but as long as I’ve achieved the best words in the best order I’m satisfied
Why do I write?
I write because I’m obsessed with letters and words, and moving them about the page in order to say something original, or something I think is original. It is a need inside me to make patterns out of letters.
How does my writing process work?
Sometimes it is inspiration or a visual image. This morning it was the magpies again . I look out on them from the office window. I store the image until I have time to note it down. Often my inspiration comes from the natural world: the turn of the seasons, the colour of the sky in the morning. sometimes these images go no further, but sometimes they lift off the ground like the magpies into a verse .
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