Jane's Writing Shed.

DUSK: Solstice Shorts 2017 Originating in Greenwich, on the Prime Meridian, and now in its 4th year, Solstice Shorts is  going  nationwide. The theme this year is Dusk, that time between day and night when everything changes. On  21st December Dusk  starts in the UK in the  far  NE (Shetland) at  16:53  and finishes in the far SW (Cornwall) at  18:21 , taking between 40 and 50 minutes depending where you are. We have  twelve sites across the UK  all reading/singing  different  material (chosen by us, read by actors/ sung by musicians) starting In  Ellon, Aberdeenshire  and ending In  Redruth, Cornwall , taking in key spots in between. All events BSL Interpreted Tickets : Generally by donation, suggested £3, but there are exceptions where this is part of a bigger event. The performances will match the timing of (Astronomical) Dusk exactly, with a  live stream  on Facebook....

I was delighted to be one of the writers invited to read at the launch of ' New Writing Scotland' 35 , She Said He Said I Said held at Blackwell's Bookshop in Edinburgh last night. Unfortunately Viccy Adams wasn't able to attend but it was great to meet Bryan Johnstone, Rose McDonagh, Heather Parry and Harry Smart as well as one of the editors Susie Maguire and Duncan Jones from the Association of Scottish Literary Studies. I read my poem Washerwomen on Calton Hill inspired by Thomas Begbie's wonderful photograph taken in 1887. The poem is written from the perspective of one of the washerwomen and how her feelings about the photographer might have been changed by one or two imagined incidents. Washerwomen on Calton Hill Scunnered. Such a good day for drying clothes up on the hill, away from all the smoky lums and up he comes, wants us to pose on the slopes. The cheek of him, we were all in position, standing, kneeling and his box on legs all set up, when ...

Listen to Washerwomen On Calton Hill by Echoes of the City #np on #SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/user-969716163/washer-women-on-calton-hill The Echoes of the City project have just launched the project and here's the podcast I mentioned in my last post. It's always fascinating when another person reads one of my poems. Another voice can really change how the poem sounds and feels. I'm really delighted with how the reader of my poem, Natalie, seems to bring the words to life and takes me back to the original inspiration for the poem. I took the title of my poem from the Calotype taken by Thomas Begbie in 1887. The image can be viewed on the Capital Collections website https://capitalcollections.org.uk and search under 'Washerwomen on Calton Hill'.

I haven't written my blog for a while but have continued to write poems and last year I also signed up to an Open University Degree in English Literature and Creative Writing. I've almost completed the second year of a six year course, studied part time and funded by the Scottish Government. I will be 70 by the time I complete the course but who cares, it will feel like a real achievement and well worth waiting and working for! I'm also waiting to hear the outcome of my submission of 30 poems to a poetry publisher. I know that I'm on a short list for publication of a poetry pamphlet with this publisher, which feels exciting but though I'm a pretty patient person, waiting for a decision feels excruciating. However sometimes it pays to keep waiting. A poem that I wrote last summer has been accepted as a podcast for the Echoes of the City project in Edinburgh and for the forthcoming anthology of New Writing Scotland. Writing poetry feels like a positive activity...

The medium is the message – the power of public poetry http://gu.com/p/4hk3t?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

This poem was written in response to a recent item on the BBC news website which described the death of a young dolphin in the USA as people flocked to take selfies with the poor creature... Taken It began as a dare, a stunt, a young dolphin trapped in a cowboy's net, its slipperiness handed round a harbour-side throng, its face pressed into theirs, to cries of go on, take one, but no-one in the instagram crowd noticed those dead prisoner's eyes or thought this is wrong and as its fight for life grew less and less each click a frame of death by the time the last person was offered a lifeless form they wondered what had happened and what they'd lost. Jane Aldous 2016

Jackie Kay announced as new Scots Makar - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-35810962

Pretty, yet poisonous, favourite of poets http://gu.com/p/4h7tv?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

Library displays rare Robert Burns Ae Fond Kiss letter - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-35373097

Rachel McCarthy: the climate change scientist and poet unlocking elemental forces http://gu.com/p/4fjdt?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

Liz Lochhead to receive Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-35153588

Winter Solstice At the dog-end of the year, as darkness seeps into the day, and we are short-changed on light, a robin sings out the night. Jane Aldous

Michael Donaghy  Collected Poems. Published by Picador 2015. Paperback. I read and re-read this complete collection of Michael Donaghy's poems throughout the summer, outside on the garden bench on warm days, at the kitchen table on cooler days. Even when we had visitors to stay I escaped now and again to read some of my favorites. Donaghy's poems first captivated me when I bought a second hand copy of 'Conjure' published in 2000 so when I read a review of the recently published collection, I went straight out to buy a copy. With an excellent introduction by Sean O'Brien, the three previously published collections, 'Shibboleth', 'Errata' and 'Conjure' are joined by 'Safest' which would have been his newest collection plus a bonus of some uncollected poems. I find his poetry sometimes hard edged, sometimes yearning, often filmic, darkly humorous, political, prosaic, enigmatic. And it is this last quality that takes me back and bac...

Now in its tenth year, Northwords Now is still going strong (I hope)! and amazingly is still free. It's such a great read. I like the format and there are always plenty of poems, short stories and book reviews to satisfy prose and poetry lovers. Hope it remains in the Scottish literary scene for many decades to come. This poem is published in the current issue and was written earlier this year during a holiday to one of our favourite places in the North West Highlands. A Dead Lamb in Polbain How long the lamb had lived, how long its fleece sodden by the rain, lent covering for its body lying by the wall, while other sheep and lambs ranged over the steep hillside, opposite Tanera Mor, only its mother knew. And as she moved away to feed, the farmer in his camouflage boiler suit, stepped over the low stone wall and kneeling beside the lamb, tied its back legs together with twine. As the lifeless animal was pulled gently over stones, grass and reeds, its mother f...

Written in support of all the refugees travelling to Europe who are desperately seeking new lives. Somewhere, not here If we were birds we’d heed no borders, if I, if we, if war, if poverty, if trafficked, war weary people, if corpses locked in lorries, washed up on indifferent tides, if death is better than torture, barrel bombs, leaving everything better than staying, walking with hundreds and hundreds for hundreds of miles, but we are humans, who all came from, came from, came from, all refugees from somewhere, not here, every single one.

Very sad news this week that Tessa Ransford has died. She was the founder of the Scottish Poetry Library and other significant initiatives to enable poetry to flourish in Scotland including Scottish Pamphlet Poetry and the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award. I only met Tessa once very briefly but I'm aware that so much of her life was devoted to developing resources for poets and poetry in her adopted country. Demonstrably she was a dynamic, creative person and a force for good who will be greatly missed. The first poem in her collection 'When it Works it feels like play' 1998 is 'The Shepherd of Remedello'. Thank you Tessa Ransford for everything you did for poetry in Scotland. The Shepherd of Remedello (The prehistoric man found at Hauslabjoch the Otztal Alps on 19 September 1991) He went to sleep for five thousand years not expecting a resurrection high on the ridge where he tended flocks with grass-woven cloak and birch tinderbox copper axe and flintst...

Inspired by film maker Alistair Cook @AlistairCook #filmpoem who makes wonderful filmpoems with The Poetry Society and other collaborators, I've made a couple of short filmpoems just to experiment with this medium. Do check out Alistair's website to view some fantastic examples of his craft at filmpoem.com

I love the thought that even in the worst of circumstances, nature both wild and human, will find a way to survive. Vira in Wormwood* Beyond the reach of those she loved, instead of the adventure she hoped would keep her entertained growing sunflowers and pumpkins in poisoned plots or fishing in running pools, one summer long, Vira began to worry about the swallows nesting in crevices in the reactor’s tomb; flowers and berries forcing themselves through abandoned parking lots; wild horses chased by poachers; wolves roaming the untamed woods, even lizards scurrying from her feet. Charmed by Chernobyl, she stayed, had few visitors, never went home. *Some translate the Russian word Chernobyl to Wormwood which is mentioned in Revelation 8, leading to the belief that the Chernobyl disaster fulfilled the sounding of the third trumpet in Revelations.

'Where you start from' by Lindy Barbour. Published by Mariscat Press 2015. £6.00. The title of Lindy Barbour's first poetry pamphlet reveals the author's skill in finding just the right word or phrase and thereby implying layers of meaning in her poems. 'Where you start from' not 'I', not 'we' but 'you' which could be addressed to her brothers, to whom the collection is dedicated, her parents, her readers and/or herself. These poems exquisitely chart her early years growing up in North East Fife. The pamphlet opens with the first poem, 'First, the Garden, November 1956', 'We opened the back gate in the high wall and, entering from William Street, found you waiting,' This poem is a tender evocation of a memory of her childhood garden and as with other poems in the pamphlet, it sharply highlights the differences between adult concerns, 'That's not laurel, it's a camellia' and those of a child, ...

I wrote this poem last year after a delightful Suffolk holiday. Imagine watching a green woodpecker stabbing the grass in the graveyard of a medieval church....... Thinking of stardust by Crowfield Church That call, that shock of feathers, of moss and blood, behind a half-timbered church. A green woodpecker with a snake-like tongue, raked out invertebrates between the gravestones, then flew up, a mocking cry in its wake. The sound caught. What if, I thought, when a bird dies the carcass is carried off by a fox or a stoat, then partly eaten, partly left, rots and desiccates. And on a night when the atmosphere thins and the wind catches the drying skin of dead things, all those atoms are gathered up into shining skeins, particulates of wing and gristle, shifting in the solar winds? That would make dust somehow immortal.