Readings, like buses

I’ve been so invisible as a poet recently that I was wondering about changing my site name to ‘former poet and cat’, but there are suddenly three readings in the offing – or at least, two definite ones, and another hovering uncertainly like the announcement of a bus on an overhead electronic display,

The first of the definites is on Sunday 4 October, 6-8pm at Art & Talking on Middle Row in Chipping Norton, when I’ll be reading alongside George Roberts. That same weekend, I’ll be having a pop-up jewellery sale, also at Art & Talking, open from 2-8pm on Saturday 3 October and 2-6pm on the Sunday (though if anyone wants to interrupt the 6-8pm reading to buy a necklace, I’m sure that would be fine too, especially if it’s me you choose to interrupt). It’s the first time I’ve combined jewellery and poetry since 2016 – which means it’s also the first time I’ve been able to advertise them together by artfully draping a silver necklace over the cover of Little Silver.

The second definite reading is on the evening of 5 November, at the Holywell Music Room in Oxford, where I’ll be reading alongside David Constantine, Hilary Davies, and Grevel Lindop. All are very welcome to either or both … and also to the uncertainly hovering event, assuming it happens. If so, it will be in the last week of November at Balliol College, Oxford, and it will be a joint event with Carmen Bugan, Jenny Lewis, and Lucy Newlyn; I’ll confirm nearer the time.

The main reason for having been poetically silent is that poetry time has been rather swallowed up by painting – most recently, painting a series of responses to the poetry of W. S. Graham. This is proving to be a long-term project, as I’m working out multiple techniques to represent (or perhaps serve as analogies for) his focus on the difficulties of verbal communication. At the moment I’m playing with different ways of applying paint and different compositions; ultimately, I’m hoping to bring them all together. For now, it’s happy exploring, with some surprising results along the way. In particular, I’m noticing how the landscape of West Penwith keeps emerging from abstract marks as in life it does from fog; it’s a landscape Graham and I share, both as incomers (respectively, from Greenock and from Devon or Oxford by way of Edinburgh and Bristol) and I can see this leading to some thoughts about belonging too.

More of this later, perhaps, as the project develops. Meantime, to think about those readings.