The New Year has blown itself grey- skied through the garden and the house. The wind is warm, the rain on the glass roof sweet-tempered. The house, finally empty, spins still with voices and goodwill. It has been a Happy Christmas. 2015 beckons invitingly. My suprise Christmas present was a PDF of the book cover for my collection of short storie, Millie and Bird and Tales of Paradise, which landed in my Inbox on Dec 30th. I opened it, it filled the screen and tears welled. To have someone believe in your work enough to publish it is a rare gift. My thanks to Iron Press and the indefatigable Peter Mortimer.
I’ve begun the New Year reading Sharon Olds – Stag’s Leap – words that come to mind: intimate, accessible, brave, honest… and shocking in its generosity.
I like what Sharon Olds has to say about writers and writing, she is refreshingly uncomplicated. Here she is in an interview with Sam Parker following her TS Eliot prize win
‘Here’s the thing – writers are not confident people… We work and we hope and we doubt ourselves. And for women of my age, who grew up in very patriarchal times – even more so than it is now – I think the pleasure is in just being able to be writers as the world changes around us. You don’t wake up in the morning feeling ‘acclaimed’. We try to acclaim ourselves a little bit every day, but not too much. Just some…”
This brings me to a very special blog post for New Year’s day written by the poet Anthony Wilson. In this post he writes himself a letter for the coming year – he has inspired me to do the same – I will post it here once it’s done, also a preview of the book cover.
Happy 2015 – my first newsletter of 2015 will be out on Mon Jan 5th
