Countryman Poet Colin Armstong in Mungrisdale, 6 April 2017
Colin Armstrong is one of Mungrisdale Writers’ best loved poets. Every inch an inspired Cumbrian countryman, lover of nature and expert on Lakeland dialect, Colin’s poems are deeply resonant and evocative. This off the cuff recording was made during a coffee break midway through our meeting earlier today, 6 April 2017.
click to enlarge
Once in each of the year’s three terms Mungrisdale Writers are invited to choose a single, short, favourite piece of writing (ie, not a chapter or two of one’s latest novel!) penned in the last term, for sharing in turn. The second element of these gatherings will involve our getting ‘in the mood’ – perhaps by listening to a beautiful piece of music, or taking a short walk outside, followed by the writing of a new short piece that may or may not be shared. There’ll then be an opportunity to invite feedback from fellow writers that will be offered along the usual broadly agreed lines for critique (see iii above). With plenty of time for coffee, cake and catch up, these sessions will allow opportunities for sharing and celebrating all that we’re learning in the main, tutored, sessions of each term. The forthcoming Read & Share will be from 10.30-1.30 on the 20th April 2017.
i A death in the afternoon
They are lying in the hissing grass on a gauze green day above dappling sun mist. The past behind them like healed grazes on a flawless skin, a picnic together, an unknown future shining.
Winged beast am I in mortal sandwich.
Crunching darkness implodes. Reddish light. I bite.
I am wingless rising up to incredible light.
A faint echo below.
“There was a bloody bee in the lunchbox. I’ve bitten it. It’s bloody well stung me”
Eternity buzzes at me.
Bite versus bite, I am in effortless flight.
A free bee.
ii What to write?
Blue spots. I think they were called full stops once. Lines and squiggles called words. And I – sat here, in a room of friends and strangers, and the not-knowing that comes from that. Yet I am so full of words, overflowing at times, when I get going, so to speak.
I teeter along this line of knowing and not-knowing like the man in the film who walked the high wire between two skyscrapers in New York. Did you see that film? The drop was awesomely unimaginable. More unimaginable than the still point, but he was never still. Like Rilke he was circling and circling. And so I circle. Words that are only ever an approximation at best of anything I really want to say. Yet I am in love with them. Is it possible to love and be light, to land lightly, to balance and rebalance, to find the point of stillness here, now for whatever wants to arise, for the simplicity of that which emerges?
The film finished and he did it. He crossed the gap with all that space beneath his feet; he crossed and the story never ended and he was written about in books and feted and even this film was made about him. Speaking about how we all wobble around the still centre, balance and rebalance, live, settle, love, get over the unimaginable.
So what was I trying to say with these approximations of reality? It was something about the blue spots. I think they call them full stops.
iii Chair
Generations ago, someone sawed the legs in half.
Lower. Easier for breastfeeding the baby they said.
She had bought it a new red cushion. Shiny satin.
Comfier to sit on, they said.
She had polished it, lovingly, using only pure beeswax.
No noxious fumes for the baby they said.
She practised sitting on it, imagining the swollen kicking mass that was her belly as a sweet suckling infant.
Good to get more rest they said.
The baby was born dead. She wept. She felt like her heart had been sawn in half.
The low chair, the nursing chair wept with her, tears trapped in beeswax.
Eileen Palmer
Each of us was handed a calendar page at the writing group meeting the other day. ‘Look at yours for two minutes,’ was the instruction, ‘and then write whatever comes into your head.’
Two Ballet Dancers by Degas
Great art comes in most instances from great toil, even for the innately talented. Degas knew this deep in his mind and eye and fingertips. That bright melding of idea and technique for a finished work both showing and teaching us what was in this refining mind and eye.
Colin Dixon
Each of us was handed a calendar page at the writing group meeting the other day. ‘Look at yours for two minutes,’ was the instruction, ‘and then write whatever comes into your head.’
So I looked – and could see and hear the sights and sounds of sunny Venice – and the writing that flowed is hereunder.
But I was fascinated by the origins of the unsigned work – and that led me, wonder of wonders, to Google’s extraordinary reverse image search which involved a quick iPad snap of the page, uploading that to the site, and hey presto, turns out that this fine work (dated around 1915) is by American artist Arthur Clifton Goodwin, 1864-1929, and is of T wharf in Boston Harbour, not Venice! Art transcends mere geographical boundaries! And yes, there’s another parable in there somewhere. Anyway, here’s what came out of the quick exercise, unedited, penned in about 5 minutes …
Brushmarks for Venezia
The Saturday boy at the
poshest café in Venice
sweeps the autumn leaves
into a corner of St Mark’s Square
Morning mist, now largely
dispersed, still hangs present
enough to filter the spectrum
over the Grand Canal upon which
gondoliers and industrial
boatmen and awestruck
travellers jostle and call
Thea is enthralled and in love –
already writing of romance
beneath the Doge’s Palace in her
heart and head –
‘Io parlo l’italiano molto bene!’
– and Julian aspires to
owning a gondolier’s hat
and marrying Thea at the
earliest opportunity
and returning here in
September and October
for the rest of their days
Simon Marsh
To begin, energy, matter and Time expanded into nothing which did not exist. A uniform universe acquired a history, mutating parameters, a wobble in the maths made gravity greedy for stuff, which coalesced like lumps in custard. Stars, planets, suns, moons. Air, water, earth, oceans and trees, love and me. Born and dying in my time passing, the future already knows my end; my agency is in doubt. I am a completely random, absolutely unique, perfect imperfection. I cried when my mother told me I was a mistake. Now I understand the universal joke I laugh with all my heart.
Julie Carter
First word she’d scratched on slate. Shaping her days and dreams, she loved sound, colour and stone better than her name. ‘Yes love – our Cornish sea be turquoise.’
Daddy held Anna’s hand tightly on clifftop walks. Her enthusiasm made her careless, he said. ‘So does yours,’ she told him, at his funeral, on her fifth birthday. ‘You an’ Sharkey an’ your stupid fishin’ in the turquoise in the storm.’
Years later, Sharkey’s lad proposed. ‘Nah,’ she said. But then she saw his ring.
T-u-r-q-u-o …
Simon Marsh
The dog barked, and tried to nose them off their route.
He forced them down a narrow path. A woman lay unconscious and twisted. The dog ran round her several times. She had a broken leg and was bleeding heavily. Anna dressed her wounds to stem the bleeding. David climbed to get a mobile signal. He returned and they waited.
She stirred and started talking. The dog watched. The team arrived.
‘Brave dog!’
‘What dog?’ she asked.
‘Your dog.’
‘I have no dog.’
They looked. Now they could only see sheep. The dog had gone.
Dorothy Crowther
At £2.50 the red leather gloves were a bargain. Melody tried them on, they were a perfect fit. She left the Charity shop wearing the gloves.
Melody had never owned anything so expensive looking. They gave her confidence, something she had always lacked. Swinging her handbag she took a short cut through the park.
Why did the man approach her? Speak to her, touch her? It was the gloves. Placing her hands around his throat Melody squeezed until his body went limp.
At £2.50 the red leather gloves were a bargain. Margo tried them on, they were a perfect fit.
Mary Younger
They say we’re a lovely family.
It’s dinner time.
As always, Mother shrieks: ‘Go wash those filthy, dirty, disgusting things immediately. How many more times! I will not tolerate dirt. Do you hear me?’
I hated Mother in those agonisingly repeated moments.
How dare she say to my little brother Michael’s hands: ‘dirty, disgusting …’
My heart seared, stabbed by the piercing knife of her viciousness.
Michael, every mealtime, carried to the washroom his fingers. Sweet, vulnerable little creatures, scrunched, quivering, hiding in his palms.
From across the immaculate dinner table I grabbed the knife and plunged it …
Sally Stubbs
He drove slowly, conscious of the dodgy wheel on the livestock trailer, not wanting to give the police an excuse to stop him again.
The holiday traffic was heavy, on the brow of the hill a deer and her fawn were crossing the road.
He heard the impatient anger of a foot on an accelerator behind him – the BMW raced past but did not stop.
He gently cradled the crushed body, its velvet head against his stubbled cheek – the mother turned, hummering. The fawn struggled, helpless to answer her call. He drew the penknife from his pocket. It only took a minute.
Sarah Hampton
Beside Silloth’s thirteenth green, a golfer was ratching for his ball.
If unfound, no score.
Two thousand years ago, then a Fort, a soldier was ratching for rabbits.
If unsuccessful, no supper.
Rabbits were introduced to England by the Romans, golf by the Scots, who put a green on the Fort.
The Romans kept out the Scots but the Scots could not keep out the rabbits.
The ball was in a rabbit hole. Free drop. No penalty. The Scots wrote the rules and won.
No supper for the Romans.
Charles Woodhouse
I saw a man, and so did the other driver, but the court went with the camera footage.
It showed me run the red light, and the other car swerving off the road. No sign of the figure in a fluorescent jacket waving me through them roadworks. Just darkness.
I hear they’ve still not fixed that there tarmac, and a car’s fetched up in the lake. Another lad’s in court, but this time it’s manslaughter. The same insurance company and their same useless dashboard camera, mind. And of course there’s no film of a workman in a fluorescent jacket.
Cathy Johnson
Sitting at the kitchen table to write, a resonant first line just wouldn’t come. Nearby was a vase of red tulips and during yesterday their buds had opened slowly to display brazen stamens. The stems now curved softly to overhang the vase rim in an evolving gestural eloquence of movement. Sidelit by the early morning sun it was as if he were seeing tulips for the very first time. Wondering briefly if this was inscape, epiphany, or simply prevarication he reached for his camera, framed the scene, clicked the shutter and moved toward the darkroom to develop the image.
Colin Dixon
Wow! The pens of eighteen inspired writers all but set fire to their papers in Mungrisdale this morning. Some of their work will be posted here over the next couple of weeks.
A huge welcome for those who have taken the big – and important – step of joining us for the first time. You thought you were looking for something from Mungrisdale Writers. Everyone else gained a huge amount from you! Welcome aboard.
Thanks, as ever, to those who kindly sent apologies. You were missed.
Heartfelt thanks, of course, for the inspirational Angela Locke, whose timely meditations call forth works from us that are nothing short of miracles at times. We’ve had such fun today (who could forget Trevor’s ‘Lily’?) – and been deeply moved, too.
And thanks to our chair Cathy Johnson who set us an interesting piece of homework for presentation at our next meeting on the 23rd March. Cathy proposed
In 100 words write a short scene in which a woman becomes invisible, briefly, for no explained reason … no one can see or hear her … she is not a ghost (prose or poetry)
Well done to the (stupendously splendid) Mungrisdale Writers who have their 100 words flash fiction homework already in the bag in time for tomorrow’s meeting – Thursday 9th March at 10.30am. And commiserations for those who have been trying to coax their 100 words onto paper for the last fortnight, and all to no avail!
Hang in there. Maybe there’s a bit of last minute help to hand. Local artist Ros White met up with our Chair Cathy Johnson this week and hopes to join MW forthwith. Ros can be assured of a warm welcome. In the meantime it struck me that some of Ros’s gorgeous work (click the image above to go to her website) might serve as inspiration for those of us who only ever seem to get down to homework when the clock’s ticking louder than usual …
See you tomorrow! x
MARCH is here already – another turn of the calendar page – and hopefully you’ll have marked up yours with our March meetings – on the 9th and the 23rd. Proposed homework for the 9th is here.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, we’ve been unearthing some of Mungrisdale Writers’ early work – some of which was published in now unavailable MW booklets years ago, and more of which was stored on the floppy disks of the time (1.44mb!).
The aquisition of a new floppy disk reader has enabled retrieval of the archived Voices of the Mountain – in which, among other fine work, the late Vi Taylor’s poem Blencathra was found.
Mungrisdale Writers will celebrate 20 years in 2019 and is still an inspirational bedrock for several original members, as well as a host of newer ones over the years. 7 or 8 new writers have joined the ranks in recent times.
All this is quite an achievement – and one which founder Angela Locke can rightly be proud of. We’ll seek to celebrate all this and more, in all sorts of ways – not least, I expect, in writing!
– M&P
Please click this image for the Bridport Prize newsletter for March 2017
Snow fell like confetti, drifting towards the windscreen where it melted instantly. The surrounding countryside was being transformed from a barren winter landscape into a white wonderland. As light began to fade large flakes fluttered silently in the yellow beam of the head lamps.
The sweep of the wipers had a mesmerising effect and Rhona’s eyelids grew heavy. ‘Damn it, stay awake, you idiot! You’ve come too far to turn back now. You’ve got a long way to go before you can embrace the luxury of sleep.’ The words spoken aloud brought her fully alert. For the time being at least, she would have to keep going.
It was almost dark when a figure slipped out from behind the trees and stood in the middle of the road, arms waving erratically. Heart pounding with fright Rhona braked slowly, anxious not to send the little car into a skid. As she drew to a halt, the figure ran towards the passenger door and pulling it open collapsed onto the seat, bringing with them an arctic blast amidst a flurry of snowflakes. Rhona couldn’t tell if her hitch hiker was male or female, head and features buried amongst a swathe of scarves. It wasn’t until they unwound the scarves that she could discern the face, white and pinched looking up into hers. Rhona was not a religious person but despite this she closed her eyes and began to pray.
‘You didn’t expect to see me again, did you?’ The voice sounded ethereal, floating eerily around the interior of the car. ‘Why were you in such a hurry to leave? Was it me? Something I said? I thought you had more strength of character than you displayed back there, Rhona. Look at me. Tell me you made a mistake and want to make amends. Well, did you, do you?’
When she was able to speak, Rhona’s voice was barely above a whisper. ‘You were dead. You are dead.’
Mary Younger
A camel passes through the eye of a needle
A haystack collapses, scatters on the winds
In Injebreck somebody dies of the truth
And I hear a butterfly flutter its wings
Mary Younger
Blencathra
Beyond my cosy window lies
A monster with enormous grass green thighs
He haunts my dreams
Disturbs my waking eyes
Immense
Lowering
Blotting out my skies
Furrowed, fretted, ridged his wrinkled face
Drops slow tears of frothing lace
He rears his head, a coronet of rocks
Wreathed in sunny veils and envaporous locks
Before man came or time began
God saw his dawn
A million million years ‘fore I was born
The Roman tread here spoke the Celtic fortress rose
My petty four score years he laughs to scorn
He is the torment of my dying time
The last peak I have not strength to climb.
Violet Taylor
Voices of the Mountain
‘the judge (poet Bob Beagrie) was impressed by the scale and quality of the entries … we were very much impressed by all of your submissions …’
Bev Briggs
Creative Producer
Congratulations to our own Ann Miller who was present for the Northern Writes Festival Finale in Stanley Civic Hall on Saturday 18th February when the new Northern Writes Anthology was launched. Ann’s poem The Dark Walk – entered for NW’s most recent poetry competition is included.
Admission Free | Refreshments including Tea, Coffee or Fruit Juice
and home made Scones | Suggested Donation £3.50
The Predator
It was early on Saturday afternoon when a loud banging on the vicarage door disturbed the peaceful household on the Reverend Dictate’s day off. Sacrilege!
‘I hope this is important,’ he chuntered, as he answered the door before the second barrage of banging permanently damaged the hinges. On the doorstep he found the Verger, looking frantic, droplets of sweat on his brow.
‘Oh Vicar, thank goodness you’re in! You really must come over to the church. A terrible situation has developed.’ He spoke rapidly, wiping his brow several times.
‘It’s my day off, Harold. You know that,’ he said firmly. He had promised his wife he would be strict on the only day she got to spend time with him.
‘I know Vicar, but you are the only one who can control these women. I’ve tried to resolve the issue for forty minutes now, and it’s just escalating.’
‘Well, they are dedicated to their flowers. I’ll give them that,’ he thought. ‘I’ll just nip over, and whatever the situation is – colour clash with the flowers, no doubt – it’ll be sorted quickly. Veronica won’t even know I’ve been over’.
‘OK, Harold, they do love their flowers, don’t they?’ he said putting on his shoes.
‘If only it were the flowers, Vicar’, he replied, with a look of despair.
With a sigh, the Vicar accompanied Harold to the church, attempting to keep up with the Verger’s power walk. Upon entering, he was soon surrounded by wailing women, who showed clear signs of relief that he was now among them. The Reverend became quite concerned about the catastrophe about to be unveiled. It clearly wasn’t a ‘flower’ issue.
Beryl, head of the Flower Committee, addressed the Vicar. ‘It’s simply disastrous, Reverend. There’ll be no flowers for Sunday, and the services will have to be cancelled.’
‘Whatever’s happened?’ he replied, becoming concerned as he remembered the Archdeacon’s visit to the Eleven o’clock. Before Beryl could answer, a loud clattering came from the worship area. Burglars? A figure the Vicar recognised was stumbling around in the semi-darkness, and he pulled on the church door to enter. The Verger pulled at his sleeve.
‘It’s locked, Vicar.’
‘I see that Harold, thank you!’
‘Beryl, why is my curate locked in the church?’
Beryl looked sternly at the Vicar.
‘You don’t understand the seriousness of the situation, Reverend. There is a PREDATOR in the church!’
‘And who is the predator – the curate?’ The Vicar looked to the Verger for an explanation.
‘Meredith saw a mouse, Vicar.’ …
Jessie B. Benjamin
Next instalment – Four Men and a Mouse (!)
for MW – during and after corporate meditation
I used to love to walk to school on sunny Spring mornings. The quieter hours still possessed of the mossy, dewy scents of the night – mildest of breezes softly stirring the trees of the park, and dappled light – already suggesting the new dawns that would awaken the synapses of my ever dawdling, day-dreaming brain.
Yes. I have long thought myself familiar with the colours of the spectrum; that I could name them, that I could assign to each a musical note, that I owned favourite orchestral symphonies of light.
But every new day brings surprises – and the sometimes primal response that mists our sight with tears of yearning, or recognition, or unknowing, or delight, or prayer, or a sense of the most exquisite new openness to the charism, the gift of the Universe offering her provision – the ultimate and eternal grace of Love.
And I was surprised indeed by the glory and the colours I encountered in Barcelona’s great Temple of Light. In La Sagrada Família I mistily knew myself a member of the one great and ‘Holy Family’ – the Universe herself. No single one of us ever fully cognisant of the glories of creation’s rainbow – while each of us is graced with ever-changing experience of hues and colours as yet unnamed.
Simon Marsh
Mungrisdale Writers welcomed four new friends this morning so we had a full house – and shared some truly inspired and inspirational writing. After our short meditation session member Charles Woodhouse penned this piece – and it touched a chord with everyone present.
Newcomers
In every game, in every match, cricket or golf, and in every meeting, at my old law firm or now at Mungrisdale Writers, I have often felt I am not good enough.
Like an incomer, off comer or newcomer, I know the feeling of inadequacy.
Am I fit to be in this group, in this firm, in this side or on this tee?
Everyone else is better than me.
I do not want to be found out, exposed and embarrassed.
This is nonsense.
We are all newcomers and always will be.
Nerves, inhibitions and self doubts are normal. Without them, we would be unplayable and intolerable.
The best writing comes from the edge with some tension. The more unsure, the better the focus.
At least I hope that is so and I am not seeking a crutch.
Charles Woodhouse
Our tutor at Mungrisdale Writers is convinced that everyone absolutely loves housework homework and so always very kindly sets us some. (Well, sometimes not so kindly – some of it is really hard).
The latest homework doesn’t seem too bad though – even for serial homework avoiders – because it has a strict limit of 100 words set on it.
Definitely not 101 words, but as a special concession to our having had a fantastic first session of the Spring Term, there’ll be no penalty if you can only pen 99.
Homework for presentation on the 9th March – a flash fiction story with a beginning, middle and an end. No more than 100 words. Ready, steady … just get down to it …
Happy writing!
A much loved Mungrisdale Writer sets forth his feelings
Confessions of a married man
I am a happily married man of many years and wish to confess an incestuous relationship with my new mistress. The affair has been rife for almost a year, my feelings are passionate, I write to her most days even if only in my thoughts.
My yearning for her disrupts my daily routine and affects the very rhythm of my life, but I am not a fool, I realise she cares little for me, she has many admirers both male and female, she is indifferent to whether I please her or not, she cares not for the agony I suffer searching for the perfect word, sentence or phrase just to please her.
We meet now every two weeks on a Thursday morning in a remote village, away from prying eyes other than those of other lovers using the same cover. I always do my best to impress her, but I always encounter others far more capable of holding her attention.
Whether she responds to my affection or spurns my future advances, my love is undying; her tentacles have a relentless grip.
My mistress is “Creative Writing” – our hideaway is Mungrisdale Village Hall.
Trevor Coleman
The Earth of Cumberland Is My Earth
(Winifred Nicholson – 1893-1981)
In the gallery vases spill windflowers, aconites,
cranesbill, lily of the valley. Colours of summer
autumn and fresh snowfall reunite
like old friends.
Dry-stone walls hold back Mallerstang Moors,
a sycamore cools the dip in a bold field as if
it’s the last graze on earth. And I’m breathing fell,
sky, sea, home – all this that lived in her
in her words, …my paint brush always
gives a tremor of pleasure when I let it paint a flower
especially wild Cumbrian flowers.
Winifred knew the rush of light and dark,
heartbeat of blue, Payne’s grey and violet –
violet she carried home from India to Bankshead –
kept it for sunlight to dress distance in mystery
until mountains and the River Eden swept her brush dry.
I think of her pine palette – pigment leaching
like water from flagged floors on the hottest days,
deep limed walls seeping pink,
her love of flowers in bud – promises to come
not yet arrived, altared in windows turning air into perfume
unaware of how years later
it fills this room.
Kerry Darbishire
Please click on the above image for further details
We’ve all been busy since we met for Christmas lunch way back in 2016 history. So here’s a quick reminder of the homework exercises to get stuck into before we meet on the 23rd February. (What do you mean, “I’ve already done mine” ? – you’ll be a prefect next!)
1 – Begin a short story in (close) third person 340 words (1 side of a page)
Paragraph 1 – start by setting the scene with description. It could be somewhere exotic, and the paragraph will include mood setting
Paragraph 2 – someone comes into the scene. Describe this in three or four lines
Paragraph 3 – that person speaks
Paragraph 4 – has the watching character who was waiting for the person to arrive – introduce them to us and have a line of dialogue at the end.
2 – Find a list of collective nouns, and choose one that is fascinating to you and inspires you, or make up your own! A poem or a short piece of prose, no more than three hundred words.
See you on the 23rd. Meanwhile, happy February!
To a Coy Bridegroom
Had we but world enough and time,
This quasi-courtship would be fine,
You’d break my heart with cruel words,
And hang around with other birds.
Nocturnal visits to my flat,
Your sudden loving, would be all that
I’d think about all day at work,
Then you’d turn round and be a berk.
I’d flatter you and praise your looks,
Then spurn you, like they do in books.
And none of this would really matter,
Just a game, the craik, the patter
We’d laugh, we’d cry, we’d fight, get better,
Then send each other “Dear John” letters.
Years would go by, and we’d mature
And trust, as soul mates, love so pure.
But dearest one, we have not time
To pussy foot, to think up rhyme,
The truth, the facts, the real brass tacks
Is that I cannot keep on waiting,
In this eternal grown up dating.
You really should have understood,
Your long foray in singlehood
Was over, finished long ago,
It’s only now I’ve let you know.
The marriage day is all arranged,
And you’ll find nothing’s really changed,
So while you’re tall and young and svelte,
Just do as you’re bloody well telt..
Lorraine Mackay
Ah! The getting down to the task in hand. Which of us is not tripped up at some time or another most days. Great stuff here from Gretchen Rubin! Click on the image above for a good – and inspiring read.
Templar Poetry Live @ Keats House | 2017
Templar Poetry is delighted to present a new series of Poetry Live readings at Keats House in 2017. We begin on Tuesday 31st January with the launch of The Penguin Diaries, a unique collection of sonnets by Chris James.
The Penguin Diaries is a 65-poem sonnet sequence about the British Antarctic Expedition (1910-1913), better known as the Terra Nova Expedition. There is a sonnet for each member of the party, from Captain Robert Falcon Scott and ‘Titus’ Oates, to figures, such as Francis Drake, the secretary and Dennis Lillie, one of the biologists.
The poems serve as elegies, telling the human story of a journey which continues to hold the public imagination, against the haunting backdrop of Antarctica itself.
Tuesday 31st January | ADMISSION FREE | from 7pm
Further info’ on The Penguin Diaries, here
You need some new year writing prompts on a rainy day? Click anywhere on the image above. Reedsy Writing Prompts looks promising!
Go for it! Only 4000 words and open until the 31st January 2017. Click More >> above for the nitty gritty.
Cathy Johnson recommends the Durhamhill courses – 2017 details hereunder
We are running another 3-day residential writing course at Durhamhill in South West Scotland, on 7-9 March 2017, and have few places left (also places left on the 14-16 November course).
I would be very grateful if you would pass on the information to your writing group members.
The tutors are Margaret Elphinstone (margaretelphinstone.co.uk) and Mary Smith (marysmith.co.uk), widely published writers and very experienced and enthusiastic teachers. They both attend for the whole three days and participant numbers are limited to allow plenty of individual attention. The courses are great fun as well as being very informative.
We would be happy to arrange transport to and from Dumfries railway station, and people are welcome to arrive on the evening preceding the course (Monday 6th March or Monday 13th November). We offer discounts for two or more bookings together.
Some testimonials from participants
‘a beautiful location, very welcoming hosts and just the right amount of challenge and reassurance’ Kate M
‘neither intimidating nor too formal, instantly absorbing’ Frances H
‘superb tuition, lovely group with widely divergent experience, beautiful and comfortable surroundings’ Una C
The course fee is £350 (includes food and 4 star accommodation). We offer discounts for multiple bookings and non-participating partners are welcome (coast, hill and woodland walks and plenty golf courses).
Further information is available on durhamhillcourses.co.uk
As light can overcome darkness,
As water can wear away stone,
So love can overcome all things,
Such things have always been known.
God’s love is everlasting,
His patience it seems is extreme,
His Son he sent among us;
Greater love we cannot yet dream.
As days that follow the night,
As weeks turn into years,
So God’s love lasts forever,
Driving away all fears.
As stone is brought low by water,
Its power can generate light,
God’s love can generate power,
His help, his love, his might.
So hope springs eternal,
For faith we always must pray,
For love that lasts forever,
As darkness is followed by day.
When day lasts forever
By that river of life we are told,
Life trees will grow by that water,
Our faith should therefore be bold.
For light will overcome darkness,
As water will wear away stone,
His love will overcome all things,
For us it will always be shown.
Amen
© David Edge Marshall
Happy New Year to everyone! After our fantastic last session before Christmas, and a marvellous Christmas lunch, I am really looking forward to seeing everyone on 23rd February to begin classes at Mungrisdale Village Hall for MWG.
Meanwhile, at Maryport …
In the interim, I am running four weekly classes on a Thursday at Maryport in February and March, linked to the Maryport LitFest, and supported by the Arts Council. I would be delighted if some of our writers would like to join the group – it will help fill the gap in writing classes before we all start again, and the last one is at the beginning of March, which only just overlaps the beginning of our term. The classes will be from 10.30 to 1.30 at the Senhouse Roman Museum in Maryport, and the cost of each class very modest. Tea coffee and biscuits are always provided, and last year it was a really good series of sessions, which we all enjoyed, with some fantastic work. The group sessions begin on 2 February, and carry on every Thursday until 2 March. I hope we may see you there!
Warmest good wishes
Angela
Photo at Pixabay
A very special memory this year was the carol service in the ancient church of St Kentigern in Mungrisdale. I don’t go to church very often, but I have always thought this was a very special place, in this very special village, and sometimes I slip into the tiny church to sit quietly for a while, looking out through the end window at the fells. I will miss it so much when, regretfully, we leave the village in the New Year.
This year, some of the villagers got a choir together and instituted a Carol Service for the first time. I was honoured to be asked to read a poem: Christmas by John Betjeman. I’m not particularly a fan of Betjeman, but this is an evocative poem of a particular time in the twentieth century, which I can almost, though not quite, remember – trams and oil lamps, and girls in slacks like my mother wore at weekends as a kind of rebellion (trousers were forbidden for teachers during the week). I have read poetry in performance, mostly my own, at fairly large gatherings, even on BBC2 in the Review Show. But I was really nervous this time to be reading in front of my neighbours.
Oddly, I felt I was representing Mungrisdale Writers, for all the wonderful writers who have been part of the group for the last eighteen years. Dorothy Chalk, for example, who was such an important part of the community for so many years, who now lives in Caldbeck and can rarely get to classes, the late Jill, Lady Jackson, a dear friend, who with Dorothy helped me start to the group and inspired me as our first chairman (she hated the word chairwoman). Way back then, we discussed how we were going to begin with a journal about writing to be called ‘The Fell and the Star.’ I still like that name. When I think of the hundreds of fantastic poems, prose, and stories that have poured out of the amazing group and given such pleasure and laughter and moved us so much, I felt I was reading the poem for everyone.
I practised it loads over the pre-Christmas period while preventing a very small black Labrador puppy from destroying the house, trying to remember who I had sent Christmas cards to, and generally organising Christmas in my normal chaotic way. There were a few lines in the poem which could be difficult, and I know that those little hiccups in scansion and meaning could be minefields when faced with an audience, liable to trap one into a stumble. Then I had a dream which threw me into a mild panic, that I had forgotten to take the script with me, and had gone to the wrong church. Marooned in the snow, with no transport, it was impossible to get back to the right church on time. Mindful of the portent of dreams, I took one copy in my pocket and one in my handbag, just in case …
We struggled into the church out of a wild storm. What seemed like hundreds of candles flooded the little building with light, right up to the ancient beamed ceiling. The village had really gone to town. Carols in their own way are their own ritual. When we return to ritual, of whatever kind, we are stretching back through Time, on our personal journey … For me, the connections include our youngest daughter Harriet singing the solo in ‘Once in Royal David’s City’, a single voice in the enormity of St Andrews Church in Penrith. I didn’t have a ‘religious’ childhood, and we never went to church as a family, but somehow carols transcended all that, and are part of the rich fabric of our heritage.
In my mind, I always saw them as red and gold, the pages inscribed with ancient writing, like illuminated manuscripts, although one of the most famous, my favourite, ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, was written by the poet Christina Rossetti in the nineteenth century. Learning to play ‘Away in a Manger’ on the piano in my first year of lessons was a fantastic thrill, although no one ever asked me to accompany them! I remember my first teaching job as I dressed the shepherds in tea towels, and draped tinsel round the angels’ heads, and then my first year Infant class singing ‘Away in a Manger’ in that special way only Infants do i.e. mostly forgetting the words.
I have just seen a film of my youngest granddaughter Freya, age 5, at their school carol service this year, holding the Baby Jesus as though her life depended on it, looking terrified. Her new baby brother had been born the week before, and I imagine she related to it deeply and felt her great sense of responsibility. (She actually burst into tears at the end and had to be led off the stage, and I hoped that wouldn’t happen to me!)
With this tiny church lit by candlelight, and crowded with villagers, I was quite nervous. I would have to sit at the end of the pew and wait for my prompt, which was the Second Lesson. Then, glasses on my head, I strode forward and hopefully performed a good rendition of Betjeman’s poem. At the end, dizzy with relief, I turned into the wrong pew, much to the surprise of the man sitting there. Several people came up to me at the end during the sherry and mince pies, to point out that the fan heater was so loud they couldn’t hear what I was saying. I believe the Greeks have a word for it – hubris!
I certainly felt I was representing you all, and your fortnightly journey to this tiny, powerful village of Mungrisdale – a place where, nearby, George Fox preached in the early years of Quakerism, a place which was probably special long before Christianity. I often have the strong feeling that we are only continuing a line of inspiration and creativity which goes back a very long way, protected and encircled by the mountains in this fertile place of flowers and trees and stories …
That is beyond any specific religion, for me. But I was glad to be in that place of candlelight with its own ancient story and traditions. I was glad to be asked.
Angela Locke
Angela Locke writes
A big group of our Mungrisdale Writers had a great Christmas lunch at the Mill Inn at the end of term after a hilarious, if hard-working writing session, which I greatly enjoyed facilitating.
Entitled in part: An Eloquence of Lawyers, A Superfluity of Nuns and The Unkindness of Ravens, although there was only one lawyer present, no nuns or ravens, but a couple of clerics and a few doctors to minister to the flock. The most worrying offering was an Expense of Harlots, though not one present!
So wonderful to see so many of you there, and to remind myself what a very special, empathetic, talented and generous group of people you are! Definitely a Worship of Writers (see collective nouns). I feel so very lucky to be your tutor.
Special thanks must go to Lorraine for organising the lunch, and to Cathy, Simon, Mary, Tanya and Charles for all their support and for being such a wonderful committee.
Happy Christmas to all of you, and Happy Writing in the New Year. Just a reminder that we don’t reconvene until the 23rd February, but feel free to keep in touch. Many thanks for that must go to Simon and the brilliant new website.
Keep the home fires burning, and let everyone know about what we are doing by pointing them to mungrisdalewriters.com. We need to spread the word!
Love and Light
Angela
Among the many joys of being a Mungrisdale Writer, homework ranks high! There’s comfort and satisfaction to be found in curling up in a cosy armchair near the fireside, hot drink to hand, together with inviting notebook and pencil, and dream of the dawning day when we’ll have opportunity to read our works in class. (Well. You get the idea!)
So, here are a couple of exercises to get stuck into before we meet on the 23rd February.
1 – Begin a short story in (close) third person 340 words (1 side of a page)
Paragraph 1 – start by setting the scene with description. It could be somewhere exotic, and the paragraph will include mood setting
Paragraph 2 – someone comes into the scene. Describe this in three or four lines
Paragraph 3 – that person speaks
Paragraph 4 – has the watching character who was waiting for the person to arrive – introduce them to us and have a line of dialogue at the end.
If all that makes you want to give up, the alternative is
2 – Find a list of collective nouns, and choose one that is fascinating to you and inspires you, or make up your own! A poem or a short piece of prose, no more than three hundred words.
Happy writing!
Nativity
I can hear your short, sharp intake of breath.
You wince, step gingerly onto the moss, dark
December green, peeled with care from the graveyard wall.
It must feel cold on your sandaled feet,
wet too, after all the rain these past few months.
You emerged from the cardboard box, shook off
dry, flaky creases of torn tissue, grey
and yellowing now, like ancient skin.
You’ve been hibernating here almost a year,
since I wrapped you up on Twelfth Night.
‘Why must we always stand on this?’ you ask.
‘It’s too green, too soft, too moist.
Where we come from the earth is hard, Hebrew, brown.’
My children agree with you. ‘Mum’, they joke,
‘I think you’ll find there is no moss in the Holy Land.’
I can’t help it. My mother did it like this,
hers too. And you, travelling time,
a century steeped in Celtic climes,
handled by dozens of cold little hands,
you should be used to our northern ways by now.
I make you comfy; fresh straw from a neighbours’ farm,
robust bark walls. Even a fire, tiny twigs and logs,
‘real’ smoke, from the teased, stretched wool of a sheep,
to warm your hands, talk in old familiar
Aramaic tongues, when we are all asleep.
The children spray-painted a willow star gold
to match your caskets and turbans and robes.
And the dear old camels, their necks taped up
in three places, must surely prefer
moss to rock, on chipped, arthritic knees.
You should recognise the water colour
on the wall behind; hung specially for you;
the Via Dolorosa, in the Old Quarter of Jerusalem,
painted by my great grandfather
as his wife haggled for you.
Don’t get too misty-eyed.
I just wanted the honey-coloured stone
and the hot blue sky
to warm you.
To make you feel at home
Kirsty Hollings
Merry Christmas and all good wishes for 2017
To everyone at Mungrisdale Writers, may you all have a wonderful time over the festivities. I’m looking forward very much to catching up with you again come February.
Happy writing till then! Much love, Kit xxx
What is a ‘like’ really?
Behind the lies, the ‘oh so nearly’,
Why does she always lie?
Being herself no one sees eye to eye,
Why does she make the bad seem good?
For ‘likes’ of course, I knew she would.
Why so many ‘likes’ on her pic?
Boobs and bum out, makes me sick!
What is the perfect picture profile?
A selfie taken, pout, don’t smile!
Don’t show my stomach or my thighs
I need them to believe my lies,
Is perfect being attractive to men?
Full make-up and ‘Photoshop’ it then,
Why confidence in this fantasy living?
Be careful or you’ll end up believing.
Jessie B Benjamin
for The Great British Write Off – The Power of the Pen
Many thanks to Yve, David and their fabulous team for friendly hospitality and a fantastic Christmas Lunch at the Mill Inn, Mungrisdale today. Glowing house, warm hosts, great cuisine, and a worship of writers – collective noun 🙂 – make the recipe for afternoon-nap inducing satisfaction of the best kind. Huge thanks also to Lorraine – our lunch-organising angel x
The initial lines in italics are from A Fortunate Man by John Berger
The doctor listened once more to her chest. She lay back exhausted. “I am sorry”, she said, not as though it were an apology but simply a fact. He took her temperature and blood pressure. “I know”, he said, “but you’ll sleep soon and feel rested”.
Then they were both quiet. The gulf maintained by spoken language cannot be bridged without silence. The communication of this sort of knowing is beyond the definitions confined in words.
For the doctor to be the reassuring presence is also a gift because, for a few moments, he finds himself reassured too. All the ifs, buts and worrying unknowns of his own life need to stop at times like this.
Solid, quiet moments in which what is real is truly respected. The reality of the frail and frightened old woman, whose bed is a sea of clutter in a musty, uncomforting flat. The doctor knows that she cannot find peace but is undeterred in his effort to bring some. Until all practicalities attended to, he gently takes his hand from hers and takes in a breath for himself.
Afterward sitting in the car, typing in injection batch numbers to the notes, he glances up. Now himself needing a glimmer of hope. A hope that he had helped. Another glance at the laptop, two more visits and surgery starts at 3 o’clock. Best be off.
Julie Carter
Absolutely super last day of term at Mungrisdale Writers today. Christmas Lunch after the session. Huge thanks to Angela Locke and the behind the scenes team who generously facilitate the community of writers we love so well. Fond farewells were expressed until we gather again on the 23rd February, together with hopes for keeping in touch between now and then.
i) keep an eye on mungrisdalewriters.com – noting next term’s dates, 23 February, 9 March, 23 March, and 6 April 2017 at 10.30-1.30pm
ii) drop a note to mwgpublicity@gmail.com – even if you just want a natter
iii) write daily about anything and everything (in the journal you’re going to buy yourself tomorrow – if you haven’t already done so)
iv) buy and enjoy Angela’s recommendation The Unkindness of Ravens – a book of collective nouns
v) talk to anyone and everyone about mungrisdale writers in the coming weeks and drop Simon a note at mwgpublicity@gmail.com if you’d like some more bookmarks to share hither and thither
vi) enjoy the ‘homework’ pieces that will be published here in the coming days
vii) send any finished works you’d like to be considered for publication on this members’ blog to mwgpublicity@gmail.com
Keep in touch!
Angela Locke points writers to this article in Kosmos Journal, commenting that it says something about why our stories matter.
– M&P
Mungrisdale Writers 