Tuesday Poem: Halloween with Emily Dickinson

It's Halloween in Italy - a Festa they celebrate well, since it coincides with All Souls Day, when everyone visits the family graves and places flowers on them and remembers the dead.  In South America tomorrow is called the Day of the Dead.

Looking around for a suitable poem, I thought of Emily Dickinson's 'One Need not be a Chamber to be Haunted' and then found this strange video of the poem.  Emily Dickinson's portrait has been animated so that it seems as if the poet herself is reading the words.




I love the poem because it works on so many levels - not least because it talks about the 'haunting'  of the creative imagination. We all function on 2 levels - the conscious and the unconscious.  The unconscious is the basement - we take the lift down, it’s a bit dark and murky - most definitely haunted -  and most people don’t want to linger there for long, but if you want to create - that’s where you have to be.  Margaret Atwood in her essays about writing 'Negotiating with the Dead', says that the act of writing is the business of going down into the underworld and making ‘something or someone’ that is dead alive again. 






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Italy's Storm of the Century

Just back to Italy, arriving at midnight to discover that the storm that wiped out one village in the Cinque Terre and buried another, had removed the pathway to our house and deposited it somewhere in the olive grove. We are left with a rutted river bed strewn with rubble. The storm had also tripped our electricity so that the fridge and freezer were full of rotten food - not a good surprise when you open the front door!

But it could have been worse - we can see the Cinque Terre from our terrace and it’s only a few kilometres as the crow flies. Apparently the rain was biblical, making it impossible to drive or walk anywhere for a few hours. 20 inches of rain fell in that time.   Roads turned into rivers and the water brought down rocks, trees, rubble and mud. There are mini landslides all the way up to our village, but nothing major. Different in the Cinque Terre - which is a World Heritage site. The pictures are horrific. In Vernazza rubble and mud have been deposited up to first floor level - filling houses and shops and railway tunnels. In Monterosso, parts of the town were washed completely away.

Rescuing people from 1st floor windows.

This used to be a shop.

Our road and the contents of the freezer fade into insignificance when you look at these pics.  And it's such a delight to be back in Italy - the sun shining, still with some warmth. Our landlords are beginning to pick the olives, though this year apparently they’re small and dry and hardly worth the effort. Too little rain during the summer months. The storm we’ve just had has also stripped the trees of many of the olives that were there. Not much left for oil.  Don't try being a global warming sceptic in the bars round here!!

Filming Rossetti

Just off to London to make a short film for the BBC on Christina Rossetti.  They want to feature her Christmas carol 'In the bleak midwinter' and the film will go out just before Christmas as part of the magazine programme 'The One Show'.  Apparently I'm to wander around the streets of London (and the Tate Gallery) discussing Christina with a celebrity!  I'm sure it will be great fun, but very nervous at the moment.  Being camera shy I don't feel comfortable in front of a TV camera.

The really nice thing is that the phone call about the programme came just as we were re-formatting my Rossetti biography  'Learning Not to be First', for Kindle - hopefully it will give it some publicity - a brilliant piece of luck!

Christina was one of the most fascinating people at the centre of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and her poetry knocked spots off the poetry of her brother Dante Gabriel.  Apparently she was very good at art too, but girls didn't get any training in those days.  It makes you very glad to be a woman born in the 20th century.

Tuesday Poem: Autumn Haiku

One of Tomas Transtromer's last poetry collections, published in 2004,  is called 'The Great Enigma'.  The largest part of the collection is a long series of haiku.  This is one of them;

The darkening leaves
in autumn are as precious
as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And I liked this one - though it's rather sombre.

Death stoops over me.
I'm a problem in chess.  He
has the solution.

At the moment I'm enjoying his 'New Collected Poems' published by Bloodaxe and translated by Robin Fulton.

For more Tuesday poems, please visit the hub at www.tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com

One Writer's Week

The reality of a working, free-lance writer’s life is not the peaceful existence a lot of people fantasise about.  Virginia Woolf famously wrote all morning (after ordering meals from the cook), read and wrote her journal after lunch and took a little walk before dinner.  For most writers it's very different.  There's the business end of writing (it is like running a business these days) and then there's the actual writing.  There are usually half a dozen projects swilling around in your head at any one time and the pace is killing.  This week has been particularly brutal.  It started in Italy.

Monday - up at dawn, drive to airport, early Ryan Air flight from Pisa to London.  3 trains in vile weather, eventually make it back to the Mill around 9pm clutching a pint of milk grabbed from a station shop.

Tuesday - up at dawn, open a month’s mail, sort whatever possible, dash out to bank, pay bills, go to dentist, hairdresser, get flu-jab, buy shopping.  Pack suitcase and write talk for Manchester LitFest and print out directions for Library I’m also going to do research in.  Fall into bed with 2 alarms set.

Wednesday - up at dawn, bus, 2 trains, arrive Manchester.  Dash into Library Archive to arrange reader pass and check they received the manuscript order I emailed yesterday.  12 pm Drink coffee in the street on the way to the LitFest to arrange IT for power point and meet the organisers of the event.  Give talk, meet audience and chat, answer questions, sign books, drink bottle of water (no time for lunch). 2.30pm Dash into archive to make a start on the ordered boxes.    3.20 Meet my new poetry editor in a café - latte and about an hours’ chat about book launches etc.  4.45pm sit outside station and eat yogurt and pot of fruit bought earlier for lunch!  5.00pm, train to Daughter no 1's house where I arrive just before 7 in time for supper.  Do email and fall into bed.

Thursday - awake at 5.30am - do email - check library catalogue, catch train to Manchester - all day in archive until 7pm.  Back by train to Daughter no1 about 8.30.  Picnic supper on train.

Friday - ditto.

The problem is that you’re usually working on 3 books at once - arranging publicity for the one that’s in the publishing pipe-line, finishing another and working on ideas for the next.  At the moment I’m publicising the Katherine Mansfield, arranging publicity and readings for the poetry collection Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21 (would anyone like a review copy?), and doing edits for the paper-back of Katherine Mansfield - due out in about six weeks.  Then there’s the permissions for illustrations etc that I have to re-do for the Japanese edition of Katherine Mansfield, due out in 2013.

I’m also working on the Kindle edition of my Christina Rossetti biography - just finished proof reading and sorting out rights and permissions.  By a huge stroke of luck the BBC have decided to do a small Christmas film about Christina, which I’m filming in London next week - so that’s all running around in my mind too.

Then there’s the research I've been doing in Manchester to put together a proposal for a new biography I’ve been asked to look at.  Another publisher has also asked me to prepare a proposal for a non-fiction book that seems an attractive idea.   Two things on the boil.

Then there’s the creative work in progress - almost finished a novel, which I am deeply into at the moment and trying to get time to scribble bits on trains and planes and every single spare moment I get - not easy.  Desperate to finish it.  Fed up with characters running amok in my brain.  But paid work has to come first.

Then there’s the blogs - 2 of my own, (they help me keep sane rather like an online shrink!) I also contribute to 2 others regularly, and I’ve just been asked to be a guest blogger on two other blogs - already said Yes.  Am I mad?  Oh, and I tweet.

And yes, I do have a personal life - a partner and four long-suffering children and I try to see as much of them all as possible, but this week I’ve been too tired to have an intelligent conversation with anyone.  One of my daughters, who is older and more sensible than I am, tells me that I MUST STOP RACKETING AROUND LIKE THIS.   She’s right, of course, but can’t see any chance of it happening soon.  Working for yourself is either all cream-and-custard or it's prison fare.  You have to lap up the cream when you can!

Not Saying Goodbye - First Glimpse

Just had the advance copy of the new poetry collection Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21 put into my hands yesterday by Alex McMillen, the editor of Templar Poetry in the coffee shop at Manchester Art Gallery.  There's no feeling like seeing your book in print for the first time - however many you've published.  Smiled all the way back on the train! 

Templar Poetry are known for their unusual covers, so I was really interested to see what they'd do with the title and for a few moments couldn't work the image out, but then realised - Suitcase!

It's not out officially until the first week in November - launched at the Derwent Poetry Festival, Matlock Bath, Derbyshire, 11th, 12th, 13th November. 

Lovely event at Manchester Literature Festival, good audience and very well organised event  - introduced by a very enthusiastic librarian - Libby.  It gives you hope when you find someone who really, really,  loves books.  Interested to discover that the libraries in Manchester operate an E-book lending system.  

I'm now in the archives at the John Rylands Library investigating a New Project!  Very exciting.  

Tuesday Poem - There's Nothing Like the Sun: Edward Thomas

There's Nothing Like the Sun

There's nothing like the sun as the year dies,
Kind as it can be, this world being made so,
To stones and men and beasts and birds and flies,
To all things that it touches except snow,
Whether on mountain side or street of town.
The south wall warms me: November has begun,
Yet never shone the sun as fair as now
While the sweet last-left damsons from the bough
With spangles of the morning's storm drop down
Because the starling shakes it, whistling what
Once swallows sang. But I have not forgot
That there is nothing, too, like March's sun,
Like April's, or July's, or June's, or May's,
Or January's, or February's, great days:
And August, September, October, and December
Have equal days, all different from November.
No day of any month but I have said -
Or, if I could live long enough, should say -
"There's nothing like the sun that shines today"
There's nothing like the sun till we are dead.


I've just been reading the new biography of Edward Thomas by Matthew Hollis, so I thought a less well-known poem by Thomas might be appropriate, particularly on a wild, wet autumnal day in England when the sun is in very short supply.  But my late, last damsons are still clinging to the branches of the tree.

Edward Thomas wrote this poem when he was in training to go to France, convinced that he would be killed there, but nevertheless, resolved to go.

I've reviewed the biography on my book blog - it comes well-recommended.

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