In Person
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Just had a very pleasureable afternoon with Neil Astley from Bloodaxe Books and the poet Cynthia Fuller,reading poems. There are so many brilliant poets out there. This afternoon we were looking at Selima Hill, Sarah Wardle, Leanne O Sullivan, Jane Kenyon, U A Fanthorpe, Kerry Hardie. Most people haven't heard of most poets, but there is such alot to be found in contemporary poetry !
Anyway, I wanted to tell readers of this website about Penny Taylor, who I go to for various pamperings...facials, having my toenails painted, neck rubs, feet rubs, eyebrow tinting...everything really....Penny has just moved her practise to The Holiday Inn in Newcastle...she's really reasonable, and she's looking for new clients...I recommend her. Her mobile no is 0793 131 4255 email penny@pennytaylorescape.com
Posted by julia @ 04:53 PM GMT
Just come back from ward 36 where I had my monthly drip of pamidromate, which is a very benign drug. They checked my blood and it's rather low again, so I am having another blood transfusion tomorrow. Can't wait! Now I know how vampires feel. I really want some more energy. I have been invited to speak at a writer's conference in Mauritius, with the poet Sean O Brien. We are both able to take our partners, and in the second week of the visit we can just be on holiday. I've been to Mauritius before and it's very idyllic, but much more than a tourist resort. It's a very passionate, political place. I am so pleased to be able to return. Before then I am spending a week in AJP Taylor's old Mill in the Isle of Wight, lying on the squashy sofa by the window watching children crabbing in the River Yar. It's always the same in the IOW. That's why I like going there. I can see my father who lives there, and we both celebrate our birthdays in August. There are many parties, carnivals and late night sing songs. A lot of pasta gets consumed.
I knew my blood was thinning. I felt as if I hardly had the energy to unscrew the lid off a marmalade pot. I got rather grumpy too. I kept on having odd dreams....I dreamt I was taking a GCSE in IDEALISM but that I hadn't done any work. I also keep on having wierd waking dreams, when I wake up and find oddly shaped animals on my bed, but then I realise I am dreaming.
I am just about to have a meeting about an anthology of poems to use in a health setting that we are going to publish with Bloodaxe. We've chosen lots of good ones, but if anyone reading this wants to send me any others please do.
Will write more of this later.Posted by julia @ 01:00 PM GMT
Monday, July 19, 2004
I am in a cottage again, about to start on the novel. It's a brilliant sunny day, and outside there are bright, overgrown flowers everywhere and loud birds. It's lovely to be away. On the way here I stopped and bought punnets of raspberries, and lovely creamy cheese and juices, and bread and butter. Yum yum.
I have been feeling a bit energy-less lately, as if all my vital juices are draining away. It's rather like a battery slowly running down, and everything must be done slowly. At home the DIY continues, and I keep getting stuck in the house waiting for workmen. I long for the rooms to be settled, and for things to stop moving around.
On Sunday I went to Durham sculpture day in a lovely green park with a lake. I lay on the grass listening to a brass band playing. It was delightful, and I suddenly understood why people love brass bands. There were lines of elderly people listening in deck chairs, gently tapping their feet. Apart from this outing, I have mainly been at home, eating ice cream and watching videos, so I am really longing to do some work. If I don't write for longer than about three days I start to feel really odd. It's a basic need, like eating.
My eldest daughter has moved into a flat. She's made it really nice, and she seems very grown up. My other daughter is on holiday in Rhodes. My children are disappearing! It's a funny time; a time of re-positioning or something. I am surprised how much I am affected by the girls leaving home...even though they are around alot too...it is the end of an era, and a time of considering the harvest of ones first forty something years. There is also a sense of looking around and seeing the world again....thinking things like, I could live in a shack on a beach, or I could be someone else now. Parenting is a wierd thing, it passes in a WHOOSH and you can't believe that your children are grown up. I wonder what we should be doing at this time...maybe going off and sitting in a cave, or doing a pilgrimage. Anyway, wish me luck in my reclusive cottage.....Posted by julia @ 12:01 PM GMT
Monday, July 12, 2004
You come back from running Arvon Writer's Courses in a very odd state. I spent yesterday on the sofa watching meaningless tv. The courses are so intense and absorbing, and you get very involved in the participants. Amanda Dalton and I had a lovely group, who were mainly new to writing. They really worked hard and blossomed. We ran workshops in the mornings and then they had to get on with writing in the afternoons. We also had a guest reader, the novelist Leslay Glaister, who was wonderful, and a surprise celebrity guest, Jackie Kay, who popped in to run a workshop. I only left the house once! Lumb Bank is a wonderful old house..the gardens look out over a great valley, and it's a very epic place. I have been there many times over the last twenty years, and I love working there as you can be as odd as you like and no one tells you off! I wonder what all our students are doing now, and if they are ok?
So now I am home in the wet Summer, and I have written a list of things I am trying to finish on the blackboard in my room...EEEEK. It's very quiet in the English School, with no students, and rooms being refurbished. It's kind of nice. I have just bought cream cakes from Marksies to have for our tea. When will it stop raining?
Posted by julia @ 04:22 PM GMT
Monday, July 5, 2004
I am about to go and teach an Arvon Course. These courses are run in isolated and beautiful places, in this case spooky Heptonstall in Yorkshire. Sixteen students spend five days with two writers, eating round a long wooden table (plenty of garlic bread, cream and salad dressing) and discussing writing around log fires, or doing workshops, or walking up the valley, talking. I'm running a course with the poet and playwright Amanada Dalton, who is a lovely warm person, so I am really looking forward to it. Lesley Glaister is our guest, and she'll be reading one night. Funny to think of sixteen nervous people packing their bags, about to embark on a week of strangeness. This course is called 'Starting To Write' so we won't have lots of novels to read, just very nervous people! I feel very at home at Arvon. There are plenty of sofas, and you can open the fridge and eat what you like. I hope it doesn't rain all the time though. I am sick of this sluggy month. Everything smells damp.
It didn't rain in Edinburgh at Jackie Kay's bust unveiling. It was gloriously sunny as a group of family, friends and business men and women watched Jackie reading an explosively lovely poem, with such aplomb that the bust unveiled itself prematurely in a snatch of wind. It was a great project...they've done twelve bronze heads of Scottish writers, lining a lovely lake just outside Edinburgh. In the same business park there are poetry bus shelters ! Afterwards we stayed at a posh hotel and floated about in a rooftop spa. It rained then, but it didn't matter, as the water was warm, and the icy rain felt nice on one's face.
I am feeling ok, longing for a good writing stretch, although running Arvon's makes you feel like writing so I don't begrudge it. I want to get on with the novel and the manifesto. I have been enjoying making the BBC film. Last week we filmed me and a stone cutter, Peter, looking at headstones in Old Jesmond Graveyard, talking about lettering and who memorials were for. It's an interesting process, this film. I also like doing the video diary, which is by my bed. I tend to do it in the mornings, so all my hair is sticking up. I found myself talking about those cancer adverts on the tv when they say "I've got the all clear!" and how irritating that is for me and several other million people who know that the 'all clear' is out of the question. Can't they come out of the consultation room and say 'It's SHRUNK A BIT!"
Otherwise, been watching musicals to get inspired for the manifesto...Guys and Dolls yesterday. Now I must finish my packing.
Posted by julia @ 11:11 AM GMT
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