Hi Everyone,
firstly sincere apologies for not replying sooner to those of you who commented recently – comments are so special to me and I hate to miss them. I can only blame it on the long haul of Covid. Like many, and many worse than me, I’m finding it very tough to get over this virus and I keep having major setbacks. It really is no fun. It means that work and writing and enjoying myself! have had to take a back seat and time is measured mostly by the weather at the window and the wind in the garden. So if you’re out there in the world again please do take care and stay safe, you don’t even want a mild version of Covid.
On a positive note I have good things materialising in September, so lots to get well for! They include a Paper Bag and Book project with my publisher Linen Press, more of that later… a contribution to North Pens film on writing in lockdown, including I hope some filming of my postcards, and then some really unexpected good news which I can’t yet reveal…
So, I will be back with more of all of this in September, as well as still aiming for Berlin and my eye treatment.
In the meantime here is something I wrote last night:
Midnight hot and there’s no moon to speak of/so I think maybe I’ll write/ notebook and pen being more substantial than a flickering screen/it might just do the trick, send me to sleep/but then an absence of words, Alice Oswald’s Mist and fog-self/I turn to books that scatter bed and shelves/lulling the dark, cushioning/ will copying be enough, a comforter? I think of Kathleen Jamie’s roses that cascade over backstreet walls/ her stags, her swifts, The Overhaul./ And Robert Hass, I think how I love his poem Late Afternoon in June When the Fog Comes in/ I copy the last line put it down on the white page/ Time: Thick honey and no one saying goodbye/ I’ve always loved that line, but now I think, this is not that sleepy dog afternoon but it is hard, cold night/ Time: the honey running thin and too many saying goodbye…
