Venues, grand and otherwise
From the pub to the convent Over the last few weeks I’ve been involved in a number of performances in a bewildering range of venues. Poetry readings in pubs, my latest play in a National Trust property, choral Dvorak in a 14th century convent (pictured) and jazz under the watchful eye of Yehudi Menuhin. That’s […]
Surrey Unearthed – and Dorking Talking
Surrey Poetry and Summer heat It was a hot evening on Monday and the 38 people crammed into Narnia didn’t make it feel any cooler as Mole Valley Poets unveiled their latest anthology. Narnia? The back room of the Old House pub in Dorking, so named because you enter through the wardrobe. There were no […]
Chalk, Chalk Gardens, and Elizabeth Taylor
Old friends and new Sometimes everything feels connected. I have been working recently on poetry walks, an anthology launch, and writing some poems myself – all on the subject of Surrey Unearthed. This is a Mole Valley Poets project aligned to a much larger arts project being run by Surrey Hills Arts and involving a […]
Arts Alive
The brochures are here I’ve just picked up a supply of brochures for the annual Mole Valley arts festival – Arts Alive. The arrival of the brochures is a turning point in the summer for me. It reminds me that autumn is coming, it gives me key dates for the autumn diary, and it is an […]
Not the comfy chair
Image courtesy of Renee, via Flickr Creative Commons The personal chair I’ve been thinking about armchairs. Not sure why. When you come down to it though, an armchair is a solid and important presence in a room. It provides comfort and seating and, depending on design, support for the back, even the lolling head if it […]
Poems to Keep
image courtesy of bucaorg (Paul Burnett) and Flickr 1000 monkeys I went to a poetry event on Monday. Read some poems. In a pub. Nothing unusual in that, but this was a bit special as it was the launch of an anthology and all the readers were poets who had poems in the anthology. A wonderful mix […]
Learning and networking
It’s not just about writing It seems obvious now but one of the things I wasn’t expecting when I took to writing as my main focus was the need to learn about social media. When I started I was an innocent in this area, my only touch point being a little used Linked In account. […]
Blank screens and random images
Inspiration? I’m not sure whether it’s a good idea to write this. The idea of a weekly blog giving you the discipline to write something when there’s nothing obvious to write. I don’t mean it’s a bad idea in itself, just that there’s only one time I can get away with doing it. Maybe. Maybe not. […]
Asking for feedback
We all do it, all the time, ask for feedback. What we don’t necessarily do is mean what we say. I suspect what we really want is for everyone to say we’re brilliant, gifted, producers of fine work and an example to the rest of humankind. The sort of feedback that makes us feel good […]