The Hodgepodge, a writer’s journal
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Continuum 14
Unfortunately this year I double-booked and we were hosting couchsurfers on the Queen’s birthday weekend when Continuum is always held. I don’t really know how I managed to do that! I did go into the city on both the Sunday and the Monday, regardless and heard a few sessions but it was not the usually ...
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Writer’s Block, Anxiety and Beyond
I was asked by a colleague to write something about writer’s block for our students but I can’t call myself an expert on writer’s block as I can’t remember a time when I’ve actually suffered from it. I suffer from procrastination, an inability to prioritise my writing, and I’ve certainly done my share of staring ...
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Poetry
Before I left Melbourne for a month in Brisbane, I vowed to learn seven poems by heart – this would easy, I thought, because I’d be walking by myself and it would give those walks a focus. What I should have done was to choose the poems and copy them before I left home. Then ...
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Keeping records…
There are a bewildering number of ways of record-keeping these days. I look at Insta every morning to see people’s beautiful hand-made knits and keep up with the sewing world. I check Facebook for events and the doings of my family and friends. There’s email, of course. I keep a journal. My current project demands ...
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Week One – May Gibbs, Creative Time Fellowship
It’s the beginning of the second week of my Creative Time May Gibbs Fellowship in Brisbane and I feel as though I’m living in three time zones – the present, in which I’m a little homesick, my own past and the World War II years, the time in which the book is set. So far ...
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News and a mini-review, Cold Pastoral by Rebecca Dunham.
First, the news – I’m delighted to have been placed fourth in the Kent and Sussex Poetry Society Open Poetry Competition. I picked up the flyer in the library in Glasgow and brought it all the way home, where I stuck it on my blackboard. First competition entered this year and I’m totally chuffed! My ...
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Books read
I thought I’d just better list the books I’ve read this year. It’s a good time to do it because in a week or so I’ll be preparing for a new class, ‘The Curate, the Valet and the Queen Bee’ – on Barbara Pym, P. G. Wodehouse and E. F Benson. So: Philip Pullman, La ...
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Riddle me this…
Recently at a writer’s lunch, someone asked everyone at the table if they felt they were – and I can’t remember the absolutely correct word that was used – but whether or not they felt they were somehow destined to be writers. One of the people present turned to me and said, ‘You told me ...
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Art, Anxiety and a Long Walk – a review of sorts.
this is where they all sing the first daylight whether or not there is anyone listening from, ‘The Laughing Thrush’ – W. S. Merwin, The Shadow of Sirius. For Christmas last year, a colleague gave me a copy of Kyo Maclear’s beautiful collection of – notes? observations? meditations? Birds Art Life Death; A field guide ...
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Discipline
I don’t even like the word. It reminds me of boarding school, or unspeakable things done in grubby rooms, or, alternatively, yogi masters dressed in pristine white seated in uncomfortable positions. It is not appealing. However, the word has been on my mind. Discipline – call it structure or practice, if those words convey a ...