The Blog Tour

Welcome to my post on The Blog Tour, and please follow the links at the bottom to some great blogs by other writers.

What am I working on?

Oh, so much poetry! I have about half a collection together.  Loss, separation, grief, hope, love, touches of humour, responses to nature and landscape, the visual arts and to music are all in there. The despair of bereavement finds a place beside the joy of creating new work. The power that creativity has to help us not only to survive the worst that life can throw at us, but to make ourselves anew, is what it's all about. The collection loosely charts a personal journey and shares with the reader some of the experience of grief – from the numbness to anger and many other emotions, to re-awakening, to re-invention of self and the emergence of a new voice.
 

I also have a collection of haiku almost ready to go to press. It was a project for my 60^th year and I wrote haiku almost daily throughout that year. I love the form and I am going on a course on haiku writing in May at Ty Newydd, the writers’ centre in Wales --  www.tynewydd.org . After that I aim to complete the work on this collection and move towards publication.

Through 2014 I am also taking part in the 52 poetry project –  http://fiftytwopoetry.wordpress.com/  – which provides a great prompt each week. From this I already have plenty of new work to revise and edit as the year goes on; and it is fantastic to share and discuss work with many other poets in the online workshop.

How does my work differ from others in the genre?

Every poet’s voice is distinct from the next.

Why do I write?
 

I have to. It’s not a choice, it’s essential, I can’t imagine life without it.  

 

How does my process of writing work?

Make no mistake, it is work. I can feel incredibly tired at the end of a day of creative writing.
I am inspired to write by so many things – the emotions we live with daily, art, music, all of the natural world and local, national and world politics.  My background in journalism (that’s how I earned my living for 40 years) will always influence my work and I’ll often research a topic before writing, especially for the social comment/political stuff. See for example: http://jackie-news.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-cull-of-2013_22.html

All the stories in that poem are true.

Once an idea is formed, the process begins – I spend time with the idea, free write, make notes, walk the beach, always walk the beach, if it’s a social commentary piece I do research and I make more notes. Then stop, wait, meditate, do yoga, sit down with the idea, walk the beach again, allow myself to spend time in that magic zone where the creative process happens, then begin to write, just begin. And in that still place inside of us the grey haze of mist that is the creative process turns and swirls and begins to form into something. Each thought, each word leads to the next, just keep going.

Next week The Blog Tour takes us to:

Poet Maggie Harris: http://maggieharrisdotcom.wordpress.com/

Noveslist and children’s fiction writer, Nina Milton: http://kitchentablewriters.blogspot.co.uk/?spref=tw

Thanks to poet Sue Moules for inviting me to join The Blog Tour: http://suemoules.blogspot.co.uk/