Jane's Writing Shed.

During the last couple of days I've bought several secondhand poetry books from a Christian Aid Book Sale and an Oxfam bookshop in Edinburgh. I do read poetry on line and I purchase new poetry collections in book form and online but I get just as excited about reading new poems by finding familiar and unfamiliar authors in unexpected places. One of my new/old books is Ten Women Poets of Greece' edited by Dino Siotis with an introduction by Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, published by Wire Press, San Francisco 1982. Anghelaki-Rooke says in her introduction,' In Greece the traces of the relationship between survival and poetry are still somehow fresh and recognisable.This is especially true of Greek women poets. There is a well known paradox in poetry: the poem is both the instrument and the end result of self-knowledge. Without having plunged into yourself you cannot come up with a poem....The Greek woman poet has always desperately tried to combine her creativity with the idea...

A poem praising all the seedlings, fruit bushes and trees growing on my allotment especially the Crab Apple tree. And all the lovely invertebrates too especially the ladybirds. Malus Golden Hornet On the way to the allotment fallen white blossom fills the pavement cracks. Down on the plot ladybirds have emerged and are exploring the dark soil and damp grass. Next to the blackberry and currants the newly planted crab-apple has new leaves and buds of pink blossom tight as popcorn. As I cut off the tie and remove the stake I'm thinking it's up to you now tree, don't be waspish, wow us with flowers, sting us with your sassy fruit and grow like a rocket.

We dropped into a bric-a-brac event in East Lothian and I found a copy of The Music of What Happens Poems from the Listener 1965 - 1980. Edited by Derwent May, published by the BBC 1981 and priced at fifty pence. What a bargain as there are poems by many famous dead poets such as Auden, Betjamin, Hughes, Smith, Murdoch, McCaig and Graves as well as some young pretenders, Motion, Muldoon and Szirtes. I've been following and supporting the campaign by BirdLife Malta, Chris Packham and other naturalists who are opposing the illegal hunting of many migrating bird species on Malta. In recognition of all their efforts here's Ted Hughes wonderful poem Swifts. Swifts. Fifteenth of May, Cherry blossom. The swifts Materialise at the top of a long scream Of needle - 'Look! They're back! Look!' And they're gone On a steep Controlled scream of a skid Round the house-end and away under the cherries.Gone. Suddenly flickering in sky summit, three of four together, ...

Hey! Yesterday I was delighted to hear from the the Inaugural Manchester Writing for Children Prize 2014 that my portfolio of poems has been Highly Commended and that some of them will be published in the forthcoming anthology Let in the Stars. The anthology will be available at the Manchester Children's Book Festival in June and from the website www.mcbf.org.uk/books

I've written before about my love of Elizabeth Bishop's poetry and who better to mark springtime. Here's an excerpt from Cold Spring from her eponymous collection 1955. Cold Spring. Now, in the evening, a new moon comes. The hills grow softer. Tufts of long grass show where each cow-flop lies. The bull-frogs are sounding, slack strings plucked by heavy thumbs. Beneath the light, against your white front door, the smallest moths, like Chinese fans, flatten themselves, silver and silver-gilt over pale yellow, orange, or gray. Now, from the thick grass, the fireflies begin to rise: up, then down, then up again: lit on the ascending flight, drifting simultaneously to the same height, --exactly like the bubbles in champagne. --Later on they rise much higher. And your shadowy pastures will be able to offer these particular glowing tributes every evening throughout the summer. 

I was reading Michael O'Siadhail's Poems 1975-1995,   particularly the selected sonnets from Fragile City and trying to listen to R4's production of Dante's Divine Comedy ( not a good idea to try to do both at the same time). Coincidentally   O'Siadhail's poem Beyond goes, It was years later I thought of Dante's Beatrice, And how once you'd chided me for making fun Of an old man....... You'd seen transparence in a stranger's infinite Gaze. I moved in your light to see the light. His sonnets are full of the qualities of light, poignancy and the subtle meanings deduced from gesture and are very highly recommended. Transit is based in an airport where the poet is, Gazing at all the meetings and farewells among the crowds he notices a couple saying goodbye and the woman, dissolves in crowds. An aura of her leaving glance Travels through the yearning air. Tell me we live For those faces wiped into the folds of our being. Read the...