She was out of sight, but he could feel her, as if she were there with him. Countless times they’d watched sunsets together over the years. But now she was gone, too soon, too young.
A young couple walked hand in hand on the dunes, but he had to close his eyes tight shut, and turn his head away … it was too agonising to watch couples so obviously in love. He felt so alone, so painfully alone.
Warm lights emanating from that house … “those folk are so lucky, enjoying their happy evening in” he imagined, whilst he stood there, alone.
“Why did you go?!” His voice bellowed angrily and uncontrollably through gritted teeth, whilst hot tears erupted from his screwed up eyes, tumbled down unshaven cheeks, and soaked his ear lobes with their scalding salinity. A helpless, guttural moan rang out from the depths of his being … And then he just stood silently.
It was then that he felt it, the gentle touch of her finger lightly stroking his hair. It was her, he knew it, he could feel it, and she was signalling she was here, right here, with him.
And something deep inside told him that the sun would set, then rise again … and all would be well.
There is a path: it can be found
A full moon or rising sun will point the way
It is a bridge that stretches across the fishy water
Spanning the distance between earth and sky
Once – love blind – I set my foot upon the way
Trusting another with my heart until
One day from careless hands it slipped
Into the sobbing sea
With each betrayal of naive trust
My heart a little wilder grew
All loving overtures I saw
Were siren voices nothing more
I scoured the deep for shells to hide
and there a mermaid self became
In feral dreams I spent my days
Safe from the lure of love’s bright flame
But time will ebb and time will flow
And something stirs within my soul
I stand again upon the shore
The grey light pearly on the sea
And all is still save the waves that hiss
And wet my feet with a judas kiss
Believe – they whisper
There’s still a chance
That love is more than fine romance
Remember Peter on the water’s face
Running to find love’s sweet embrace
I know not if such things are true
Just this; just this:
There is a path – a hard and rocky road
A full moon or rising sun
will light the way
Why did I have to bl**dy well go and leave the earth.
OK – I got scared, scared of how desperate, broken I felt.
Last thing I remember thinking about myself was: ‘Oh for gods sake ‘Grow Up.”
Some eejit was being way out of order, throwing punches at me, and I got in a rage – I mean the eejit was doing my head in. So, I wasn’t being grown up! Don’t believe I’ve ever grown up.
And now I don’t know where I am, which is ironic, all my life I’ve never known where I am, so what’s my problem here!
Am I dead? Is this hell? This is one weird world.
Wading through stuff – not water – too sticky. It’s purple. Everything is bl**dy purple.
Not that I’ve got anything against purple.
Each to his own!
But hey, I’m a 21st Century 30 year old bloke. Wouldn’t wear it. Wouldn’t do the hair in it! Wouldn’t paint my bench in it.
I’m stuck, up to my armpits in this stinky, purply stuff, and now – the equally stinky purple stones are talking. To ME!
One of these talking stone nut jobs has transmogrified, morphed into a camp, fop type being. It’s covered, head to toe, reptile like, in shiny gaudy scales. Got a kind of human misshapen body, a human-ish head and something resembling a faceted face. Long fingers, fascinatingly like claws, long nails adorned with popinjay colours and bejewelled rings on each finger!
It makes a foppish sweeping movement with its hands and arms and bows to me – I think: eff off you tart.
It’s clicking its gaudy claw fingers, croaking in a wide spread slimy voice: “Good day, dearie, come to find yourself have you!”
Leaving the early morning village up the steep mule track past the ruined castle, the bee-loud carob trees are soon behind us. The limestone is softened with bright asphodels, thyme, and, occasionally, rank dragon arums. Livaniana lies high above and we ascend steadily through this herb-rich, myth-laden landscape.
Livaniana’s age and dilapidation lends some romance, in the soft morning light, to its buildings whose function easily trumps form. The Aradena Gorge zig zags down to Marmara from the snowy Lefka Ori high above. Overnight the summit snows are tinged brown from wind blown Saharan sand but here the air is soft with hints of real warmth to come. The olive trees are thinly scattered and we know on reaching the tiny isolated church that the solitary wild pear tree lies next to the path we need to descend.
Back near Marmara a distant figure leading a sheep and a goat, silhouetted by the sea, comes into view. It’s Theo who owns the Lykkos taverna and the two animals will be for tomorrow’s feast. After a swim into the marble sea caves we head to Lykkos for a breakfast of Theo’s yoghurt and thick Cretan honey.
Our next session on the 26th October 2017 will explore magical realism. So, for homework, write a ‘magic piece,’ the beginning of a story that must involve a magic being and either / or sunrise / sunset. No more than 200 words, poem or prose
Seasons blur into one another
Gone the clear cut lines
Between autumn leaves and snow covered fells
Daffodils and warm scented roses
Nature cast adrift
Pushed by ever changing elements
To an unknown end.
Trees, flowers, grass, crops
In constant hesitation
Gardeners similarly so.
On the 28th September attendees were given a photograph of a sunset and asked to place someone in that setting as the beginning of a story, novel or poem. For those who weren’t there, here’s a sunset photo for you!
We’re looking forward to Autumn Term beginning for Mungrisdale Writers on Thursday 28th September 2017 from 10.30am-1.30pm. Bridge building works may occupy some of the VH Car Park so please arrive early enough to park a little further away than usual.
On 12th October 2017 we will be holding a short AGM at 10.30, followed immediately by our normal session with Angela. The Agenda, Minutes of the AGM 2016 and notice of various proposed small changes to our Constitution may be linked to hereunder (and have been sent by email to all members). We hope you can attend.
Last night in dreams I went again to my old house in Castle Lane
I climbed the stairs up to the top, by the nursery door I came to a stop
I turned the knob and the door opened wide, I looked all around then stepped inside
By the flickering firelight shadows danced upon the walls. They leapt and pranced
Tiny footprints led from the door to the tattered rug that lay on the floor
On the window ledge sat Barnabus Bear sadly looking the worse for wear
He’d been to the opera and I think had just had a little too much to drink
His speech was slurred, his breath was beery and he couldn’t see quite clearly
But he got to his feet and with a gesture grand, bowed and politely shook my hand
A pale moon shone on the window seat where Amelia Jane all prim and neat
Reposed sedately in her outdoor clothes, coat, hat, fur-muff and stocking hose
She smiled and beckoned and I sat down, she said she was going up to town
She’d like to offer me some tea but the car was coming at a quarter to three
She tidied her hair with a tortoiseshell comb and told me to make myself at home
A light shone under the cupboard door, then a rumbling noise made me stir
The door flew open, I fell on my back as the Flying Scotsman flew onto the track
With whistle screaming and puffing steam the headlights casting a ghostly beam
Twice round the track he hurtled full pelt then back through the door, but I still knelt
As memories stirred by the pungent smell of the old transformer I remembered well
A race between trains for a tuppence bet and the Flying Scotsman is racing yet
In yonder corner something moves. I hear the thunder of horses’ hooves
With a flick of his tail and a toss of his mane old Beaucephalis rides again
I jumped on his back and took up the reins, we galloped up mountains and down leafy lanes
With the wind in my hair and my hand on the crop we rode round the world till we rocked to a stop
Just then the tramp of marching feet made my poor heart miss a beat. I turned.
It was just as I thought, a hundred lead soldiers advanced from their fort
The armies lined up, English and French, I watched them do battle and choked on the stench of gun powder, smoke, the wounded and dying, I stood there transfixed and silently crying
The room grows silent. I feast my eyes for one last time ere the fire dies
The memory has faded, the dream it has fled. I wake in the chill morn alone in my bed
mother wolf | catriona messenger | photo at pixabay
With pounding heart I speed,
And with heaving chest, I gasp.
The air wrenched in,
I must endure,
Or my pups, they will not last.
The calf from the herd, we have coerced,
For his mother, his voice is shrill!
A shriek of fear, he bolts chaotic,
We shall break his will.
We move on him, it is not long,
Defeated his courage gives in.
No mother came to rescue him,
He is forsaken, it is our win.
As we bring him down I hear his pain,
His fear consumes my heart.
My pack tear at his flesh and bones,
Broken from his soul, I played my part.
I stand still heaving, for want of air,
And behold this calf’s demise.
The cry’s now silent,
The air is still,
Grey cloud of death across his eyes.
I have to choose my pups or theirs,
My chest aggrieved for his mother’s loss.
I will protect my pups, their life is mine,
I resolve to feed them – at any cost!
Yawn, stretch, a voice calls, ‘fetch.’ No not yet, I tell my pet
I’m warm and cosy in my bed, don’t want to raise my sleepy head
Sniff! Sniff! Something smells good; I’ll get up now it’s time for food
Pitter patter cross the floor, hurry up pet, open the back door
Ah that’s better; give myself a shake, now I’m feeling wide awake
Today is Sunday if I’m not mistaken, that tempting smell is frying bacon
Chairs push back – breakfast’s over, pet’s scraping plates, ‘come on Rover’
What’s this in my spotty dish? Last night’s cold, leftover fish
Sagacious the Snail slithered and smiled his ponderous route down the turret face of the Baptistery of La Sagrada Familía
They’re obsessed with themselves – his feelers reminded him
Humankind thinks itself the centre of the universe and doesn’t allow time for contemplative snail sliding, or the forest from which a Christmas tree was plucked or the apple that will surrender its life and history to the grace of a sparkling cider
Nor do they wonder how far down below them this hardest of all rocks began to form millennia ago before being raised and washed and dressed and hammered and shaped into sky-searching spires in a Temple of Light that gives part-lie to the weakness of my snail-like philosophy
For here in and on this basilica in Catalan sunlight one contemplative member of a sometimes brash homo sapiens has afforded space and glory and its own unique history of species to an oddly permanent Christmas tree, fruits in painted stone and giant snails among other creatures on an unimaginably spiritual journey
Anton Gaudi really gets snails and apples and rocks and trees
Another happy and well-attended gathering on the 8th June welcomed a new member who already proved herself an inspired writer. We were glad to hear from some who were unable to be with us but sent greetings – from as far afield as sunny Spain. And it was great to have Angela safely home from la belle France, and to share in some really quite splendid writing. Nature and animal life loomed large in our session and some moving writing was shared and celebrated. Homework for the next meeting, on Thursday 13 July at 10.30-1.30, arises out of that experience:
Either, develop the piece worked on today, or choose a new bird, animal or fish. Write in first person inhabiting its world and speaking with its voice. Research your choice. Why are you drawn to it. What is your North American totem animal? Research some good nature writing and maybe be willing to share your findings when we meet.
Poetry and theatre writing workshop
Senhouse Roman Museum, Maryport, CA15 6JD
Wednesday 24 May, 1 – 3pm
Simon Quinn of Fired Up Theatre Company will lead the workshop, which is part of a project called COASTOPIA, exploring the experience of living in coastal towns. The workshop will be supported by Dave Cryer, Learning & Participation Manager from Theatre by the Lake and will involve writing poetry and taking it towards performance. The project will include a publication of poems created by the participating groups.
The workshop is free but places are limited and must be prebooked – 01900 816168
Our beloved and inspirational tutor Angela Locke is celebrating a special birthday this month. A choir of 18 Mungrisdale Writers were delighted to sing “Happy Birthday to you” at our meeting on the 11th May (very tunefully, we thought!), and to present Angela with a special birthday cake and a volume of the Collected Poems of May Sarton.
Invocation
Come out of the dark earth
Here where the minerals
Glow in their stone cells
Deeper than seed or birth.
Come under the strong wave
Here where the tug goes
As the tide turns and flow
Below that architrave.
Come into the pure air
Above all heaviness
Of storm and cloud to this
Light-possessed atmosphere.
Come into, out of, under
The earth, the wave, the air.
Love, touch us everywhere
With primeval candor.
Thoughts become words and words become sentences. Sentences become books and books become a library.
In our town it lay quietly behind the post office and slowly became my second home.
Familiarity with its shelves became a Dewey decimalised memory palace of sorts. Later libraries fuelled flames of rich possibility.
Insidiously, perniciously, they are being inexorably, uncaringly closed. The shallow suburban avarice and deadening, uncalloused hands of our politicians knowingly engineer these crimes.
Our men and women of Westminster, epitomising Eliot’s ‘Hollow Men‘, steadily unpick the delicate fragments shored against our culture’s ruin in the name of their bleak austerity.
A gold rimmed invitation asked Mr and Mrs Johnson to visit the Queen on Her Majesty’s Yacht Britannia. Replies to Kuala Lumpur please. It was quite clear my brother and I were not invited.
Mother wore a long dress and white gloves. Father bought a suit and tie.
They left us standing on Kuching’s waterfront, waving our homemade Union Jacks amid a sea of blue uniformed schoolgirls.
But we went for lemonade and ice cream afterwards, with other undesirable missionary children, and agreed, on balance, that we had had the better time of it.
Don’t get me wrong – dry days were fun. We went beach-combing for jerry-cans, glass buoys and cowrie shells. We slashed paths through the woods with scythes.
But wet days were glorious. We holed up in Granny’s onion shed, oblivious to the rain teeming down outside, playing shove-ha’penny with green-stained tuppence bits. We painstakingly decorated empty wooden boxes, her monthly order of Turkish cigarettes from Fortnum and Masons. Tiny brass hinges yawned open and inside the crumpled tissue paper breathed camels and spices, deserts, weathered dark faces and hot dusty leather, and stole you away to another world.
The wealth of nations is such a resonant phrase yet so difficult to define. There is the material wealth which can be defined as assets, incomings and outgoings. More interesting to me is the spiritual and cultural assets of a nation. Some years ago I spent twelve days at Tashi Lhunpo monastery in the Indian state of Karnataka. The Indian Government had given an area of land on which were five Tibetan monasteries and a Tibetan village, all of them refugees from Tibet seeking to preserve their culture. The Tibetan, Ladhaki and Nepalese men and boys in Tashi Lhunpo monastery were the sanest, happiest and most generous community I have ever encountered. Yet materially their wealth was utterly meagre.
Most infants owned a Pea Shooter. I remember calling at the small general store opposite our infant school to purchase a halfpenny worth of grey peas, ammunition required urgently for the first playtime break.
With no paper bags until a later delivery, I was happy to improvise and had the peas wrapped carefully into my clean handkerchief.
Our teacher, having noticed most boys using their coat sleeves on which to wipe their noses, had urged us to always carry a clean hanky and it was on this fateful day he requested we prove we had taken his advice.
In my exuberation, I snatched out my lovely clean hanky, without a thought for my recent purchase, to see dozens of my much needed “grey farters” explore the whole of the classroom floor.
Dave Cryer has recently been appointed Learning and Participation Manager at Theatre by the Lake, Keswick. Great new inititatives are in the pipeline. See the latestinformation flyer here (pdf)
Congratulations to JBB upon publication of her new poem
Status: Food
Food all ordered, we’re at the table, Chance to talk, now that we’re able, Phone in her hand, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Connecting Mum!’ – An argument’s brewing! I’ll join her then, where’s my phone? Chatting with Mum, she’s clearly outgrown! Now I’m on Facebook – what status to post? A picture of ‘good food’, not coffee and toast. Food arrives and it looks so pleasing, Photo opportunity I’m certainly seizing! Wait! The angle, the colour, effects or not? Drinks in the picture? The cocktails we got? Picture taken, I’ll post it now, If I can just remember how. Caption? – I need words too? This is too stressful a thing to do! What’s the time? Do I call it lunch? Or is it too early, is it more ‘brunch’? She’s finished her meal, I feel old! Status is posted – but my food’s gone cold!
I’m writing to you to let you know about Kendal Poetry Festival, which I’m the co-director of, along with Pauline Yarwood.
The festival will be taking place from the 16th-18th June 2017 at Abbot Hall Art Gallery and other venues in the market town of Kendal.
Last year was our first year of running the festival, and it was a complete sell-out, so we’re hoping to replicate this again this year.
We have a really exciting programme of events and poets coming from far and wide. Our Festival Poets this year are Hannah Lowe and William Letford, Inua Ellams and Chrissy Williams, Katrina Naomi and Malika Booker, Kathryn Maris and Tim Liardet and IanDuhig and Linda Gregerson. We’ve got a series of workshops, discussions and open mics as well as readings and the full programme is now up on the website.
It would be lovely to see you in Kendal this year at the festival – there is some great bed and breakfast accommodation available in Kendal that is fairly cheap. The nearest train station is Oxenholme Lake District which is on the mainline and just a five minute taxi ride from the venue.
We believe our festival is unique in the UK in its programming of young poets alongside our invited guest poets. Last year people remarked on our friendly and welcoming atmosphere as well as the quality of the programming – please have a look at our programme, and if you’ve got any questions, you can email me here or at team@kendalpoetryfestival.co.uk
If you’d like to be added to the Kendal Poetry Festival email list, just let me know and I can put you on there.
Finally, any help you can give with spreading the word about the festival would be much appreciated. We don’t have a budget for marketing or even a marketing expert, so we rely on word of mouth to let people know about the festival.
Wednesday 26th April 2017, 6-8pm, Free entry
All Hallows Centre Fletchertown allhallowscentre.org.uk
Join us for a fascinating evening of shared poetry, conversation and insights into the work of sculptor, Rowena Beaty. Rowena will talk about the powerful influence of landscape and stone on her work. The event is kindly sponsored by Solway Arts.
Interested? Contact Susan Allen
enquiries@wordsworth.org.uk or 015394 35544
Something catches my attention, impinges on my consciousness and I stop to gaze. My choice has been to stop and gaze. Gazing is an activity I love. Can the scene I am looking at intently become a resonant photograph or maybe one in a carefully sequenced series of photographs in a book or on the wall? Minor White said ‘Meanings occur in the spaces between the photographs too.’
I choose to set up the camera and the necessary technique is now second nature and it all now comes down to the four most important things in photography which are simply the four edges of the viewfinder. What to leave out and what to include? Choices again. Will the scene work as a colour image or will it be more powerful in black and white? Mental images of the choice between the two form in my mind’s eye.
Huge thanks to committee member Tanya Laing who was this term’s Read and Share facilitator this morning.
Twenty-six sparkling pieces of writing were shared and celebrated. As a relative newcomer to Mungrisdale Writers I am often stunned and deeply moved by the breadth, quality and variety of the works shared.
For those who requested the details – the beautiful piece of music Tanya chose to lead us ‘Into the Mood’ was Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel from the album of the same name, available at Amazon UK here.
Epitaph for a Tree by Argentinian poet Silvina Ocampo is part of a collection, available at Amazon UK here.
Grateful thanks, too, to those who kindly sent apologies and greetings for today. And to the bakers!
Summer Term first meeting on the 11th May. AwayDay on the 25th May. Next Read and Share billed for the 27th July, 10.30-1.30. All 2017 dates here.
Just a reminder in case your diary fell down the back of the sofa… Word Mess open mic night is on NEXT TUESDAY!
Come and hang out in our Mess Hall and listen to some great new writing – or, if you’re in a sharing mood, bring something you’ve written yourself, or a short piece by a favourite writer.
Tuesday 25th April 2017, 7pm, for 7:30 start
Penrith Old Fire Station (between the hospital and ambulance station, so there isn’t far to go if you get overwhelmed by all that wordy goodness).
Two cups of hot water, a dish of lemon slices, a hot chocolate, with cream and marshmallows, and a plate of toast and marmalade arrive at the table. Melissa waves her bony wrist at the boy, gold bangles jangling. Jennifer wiggles her fingers crammed with rings, and scoops up a marshmallow.
A gift of a day, unexpected, found only in the incidental way of a passing remark; a walk through almond terraces and tangled olive groves, down, over warm rocks that smelled of salt and windblown pine and rosemary. We swam and the sun threw dots to dance around us.
We are what we write. No hiding, no escape. Must now shake off my lawyer past. No more “subject to this” and “subject to that.” Stop using three words where one will do. No more hiding. But without that cloak, I am exposed. Like a peeled onion.
Charles Woodhouse
We’re looking forward to our Read & Share on the 20th April from 10.30-1.30. Please bring about 25 copies of your short piece to share (around 100 – 150 words) – especially if you hope to invite critique from the group. Include your name at the top! Critique may then be written on a copy during the session and handed back to you.
Tanya Laing has helpfully provided a brief and helpful note about critiquing …
Do you understand the poem / prose? What is it about?
What are your favourite words / images / phrases. Why?
What ideas would you like to see developed? Imagery / rhyme / scheme / characters
How does the poem / prose make you feel? Emotional response.
Is there anything you didn’t understand or wasn’t clear?
Like all powerful medicine writing has side effects. I started in order to understand, join dots, make sense. Clarity would have sufficed but a different imperative has thrust itself upon me. I am unblinded and yet dumbfounded, rendered silent by an uncompromising beauty. The wordless knowledge of what is real.
Humanity, imagination’s flow, and variety connect members of Mungrisdale Writers. Each of these qualities can be enjoyed in this little miscellany of Trevor Coleman’s recently shared work.
A powerful character
A powerful character can be a modest person who can articulate their feelings and whose very presence brings joy and warmth to others’ lives. To be powerful person you don’t have to be the best at anything, simply a person able to cope with any situation in a way which pleases all.
Strengths and weaknesses in my writing
Where do I fit in as a writer?
I don’t feel I fit in. Having gatecrashed Mungrisdale Writers I now feel very welcome.
My strengths are few, a fertile imagination, an eagerness to put pen to paper, my search for humour.
My weaknesses are many, lack of belief, lack of English in my education, and possibly my search for humour.
Lily
What on earth can I write about “Lily”?
There’s Lily the Pink, the ones who are called Lily-Livered, the name of a flower, and I know it is a girl’s name, but I know not a girl named Lily.
I can I suppose write about an imaginary person named Lily, but I don’t trust my twisted imaginary powers, and my wife may not understand what I was doing in Lily’s bedroom.
I know I was only reading out my homework, but she may not believe me.
Perhaps I’ll write about a Lily Pond and play it safe.
Invisible woman
i) A female executive entered the meeting room to attend the firm’s monthly sales meeting.
She was the only female, no one gifted her a glance as she tried in vain to mingle. After several circuits of the crowded room, she opted for a seat, feeling completely invisible.
The managing director arrived, announced and rewarded the salesperson of the month, before introducing, after only one month’s probation, the new female sales manager.
She was asked to step forward. No longer invisible, she was centre stage, with everyone anxious to make her acquaintance.
ii) Another day at the office. The usual feeling of being completely invisible – despite the feeling of importance her input made. Once again a very sound suggestion, made by her and ignored by male counterparts a few days earlier, was today heralded and acted upon, when put forward by one of the men.
At the end of a long day she made her way home dispirited, feeling completely invisible.
Opening the front door she heard a stampede of small feet, delighted squeals with small arms clamouring for a hug. Not only was she now very visible, but an imaginary spotlight had picked her out.
iii) Working in a male environment had taken its toll; she now felt completely invisible.
By the time of Donald Trump’s election, still not being seen or heard, she decided to join an anti-Trump rally and revolt against the chief female invisibility maker.
Expecting to be one of a few hundred, she was amazed to find millions had joined the march to voice their concern.
The TV coverage next day was staggering. It showed the mass procession so vast its trail could be seen from the moon.
If seen from the moon, she was no longer invisible.
Hans Christian Andersen by Anne Grahame Johnstone – see art.co.uk for info’
At our meeting on the 6th April, tutor Angela Locke invited us to enjoy her copy of this framed painting. The work features Hans Christian Andersen and some of his stories can be identified ‘around the edges.’
Writers were asked to ‘keep in the mind’s eye’ an image from the painting and – there and then – allow a piece of writing to flow from that. Great pieces ensued and were shared aloud around the table.
Homework for presentation on the 11th May involves something similar. Jot down some stories ‘around the edges’ of your young life, and distil one or some of these into 100 words.
click image to enlarge
Mungrisdale Writers 
