Last night the moon was full and it was Hunter’s Moon. This morning the air feels cold and fresh. It brings the essence of marzipan.
Alt text says this week’s photo is a person holding yarn, and when I change it to square it becomes a person with blue hair and glasses. It is both of these, and it is Kath with two different shades of green wool. The photo was taken to help Kath decide which of these shades she would prefer to knit a new cardigan in. I love colour, but I am not the most reliable in knowing which shade is best for such things so with the help of this photo Kath was able to make her purchase with confidence.
I haven’t been skipping much this week (just the once… across from the trolley bay to the car at Aldi), but my heart has been made happy by other things. On Thursday I practised my map reading skills to travel to Manchester for a poetry evening with ‘Carol Ann Duffy and Friends’. For this event her friend was Liz Lochhead, and her guests were E Walker and Tom Branfoot. This gave us a lovely evening of words including some new poems from our host. If you live close enough to Manchester then I would highly recommend popping along to one of these events at The Poetry Library. Tickets are free and you get a good hour of good poetry.
The journey was in fact quite simple in that it was: drive to Asda, turn right and then follow the purple signs. I like that kind of journey because it remains as an ‘Oh I can find this again’ in my brain. One thing I didn’t do before setting off was check the opening time of The Poetry Library… we got there at 16:32 which was two minutes after it had shut. Luckily there was plenty of time to browse the Jean Sprackland exhibition when we returned for the evening reading event.
I do have a sat nav and I do use it, but I also like to know in my own head where I am going when I am travelling to the outskirts of a city so I like my simplified version of the instructions and the fact that I have added this to my list of places Sue can find!
I was quite happy to just let the sat nav guide me along wiggly roads in North Wales this week to find Ffarm Hall so that Kath and I could enjoy a meal out in celebration of her birthday. Some of the journey saw us following a road that looked like a river on the map which was a definite contrast to motorway journeys. The sky was dark and the stars were silver when we arrived which made it extra magical. We had a lovely time feasting, and we revelled in the fact that because the whole menu was plant-based we could select anything at all. That’s a super feeling and we indulged in three courses. We also plan to return so that we can sample more dishes!
The Bloodaxe Books Launch Reading with Jane Clarke, Carolyn Forché and Chase Twichell gave me another lovely reason to lose myself in poetry this week. I am so glad it was available online because I couldn’t make any of the recent Carolyn Forché tour dates. There was a moment in the conversation after the reading, where the poets were talking about a poem being a moment in time. I found myself talking about this with someone during the week too, and the fact that sometimes a poem only exists because of a moment in time. We reflected on the fact that sometimes when you look back on a poem you notice how much things have changed or that you wouldn’t express it like that now. And isn’t that one of the joys of a poem? To be a perfect place to set things down from a moment in time
This poem, which was published by ‘Ink, Sweat and Tears’ shortly after it was written in 2021, is a definite setting down of a moment in time, and without that time it would not exist…
THIS WAS ONCE A GOOD POEM
but it has eaten cheese and pickle rolls for a week now
and it can’t work out why the vitamins aren’t working.
It rocks in the chair until its eyes are too tired to see
and has scared itself with thoughts of Autumn spiders
under glasses in the hallway.
It is wondering if it is true that conkers in corners
keep arachnids at bay
and is now standing in the dark
sniffing last year’s horse chestnuts
desperate to find their scent.
