Prose, Poetry, Postcards and Peonies
Escaping the world of the news
How to exist in times such as these, when our news broadcasts and social media feeds are overwhelming? When our screens are dominated by angry old men and the spectre of the wars they prosecute. When the reality of existing conflicts provoke anxiety and despair. When you find yourself shouting at the radio or the television. Weeping at the poignant, heartbreaking messages fromDr Ezzideen in Gaza (on X) - who moves through the ruins, stitching wounds the world will never see. And at night, writing because some truths cannot remain buried.
The Mental Health Foundation has some sane advice here. I know I need to take heed. I am too easily drawn in. I am drawn in and away from the safe spaces that exist apart from the world of news. Knowing this, I’ve been trying to find or create such safe spaces though I am by no means always successful especially in the darker reaches of the night when I can’t sleep and my phone is at hand. I know, I know, doom scrolling is the last thing an insomniac should be doing. Phones should be banned at bedtime. (Excuse: I use it as my clock. I need to get a clock! )
This week I thought I’d share with you some of the safer places I’ve landed, each as it happens beginning with P.
The first is perhaps not unsurprisingly:
POETRY - If you read my newsletters, you will know that I consider poetry to be essential to a writer’s life, that I agree with Walter Mosley, in This Year You Write Your Novel, when he says: if you have the chance and the time I suggest you begin reading poetry. If there’s an open evening join a poetry workshop. You don’t have to be good at it. Your poems can be bad but what you will learn will include all the tools that can stand you in good stead when it comes to writing that novel you intend to finish this year.
This Year You Write Your Novel, though a slim volume, is one I have recommended before, but I can’t recommend it enough to the would be novelist. Today, as I turn the book in my hands, I find on the back copy another quote which has a ring of truth about it in the context of this newsletter: Don’t let any feeling keep you from writing. Don’t let the world slow you down.
I don’t remember how I discovered the Irish poet, Jane Clarke, but I’m delighted that I did. She is a poet of the natural world, the landscape of the west of Ireland and the lives of its farming people. The beauty of her lines, her storytelling and the deceptive simplicity of her poetry are right up my street and I am currently reading her debut collection, The River.
PEONIES. Who doesn’t love a blousy, frothy, pink peony? Who doesn’t love a house full of peonies which was my house a couple of weeks ago? (A garden would of course be better but as yet I’ve not grown peonies) It happens that my birthday falls when peonies are in season. Family and friends know how much I love flowers, so not only did I have three generous bouquets of these early summer blooms, but within a birthday card I had the gift of peony poetry:
a bee
staggers out
of the peony - Basho
a rice bowl
filled to the brim
one peony - Buson
what peonies!
one poem per flower
will not do - Ryumin
I write about peonies. In my memoir Handmade - Part Two
On Memory and Peonies
2024
A jug of shop-bought peonies sits on my table. They begin as small blind, buds, softening knots of deep pink. Within days they open to blowsy saucers of coral, gradually fading to cream, becoming increasingly colourless as they die. Peonies do not last well, they are fragile and fleeting, like so much of memory. Memory is uncertain, changing colour according to the light, altered by the act of remembering, of telling over and over again. Much is lost, much is evanescent. But in the moments that persist, memory is as fat and open as the face of the flower, as bright as the crimson peonies that bloomed every year in the front garden of number eight South Avenue.
You can read Handmade Part Two HERE
POSTCARDS. The Shipping Postcards, in which members of the Radio Four continuity team travel to some of the areas described in the Shipping Forecast have been my bedtime companions this past week or so. These brief, often touching, pieces speak of safety and calm, of connection with home and the sea. What better litany than the Shipping Forecast to guard against a coming storm?
As I’ve listened, I’ve thought about what the Forecast means to me and I’ve been transported to my grandparents’ home; to early summer mornings lying in bed hearing the radio drift up the steep cottage stairs to the bedroom. Just like the peonies that bring beauty and the warmth and safety of friendship and family into my life now, so the Shipping Forecast brought the beauty of words as well peace and safety to my childhood. Unsurprisingly it also makes an appearance in Handmade Part One
A Dog Called Chang
And now, the shipping forecast issued by the Met Office, on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency...
It's Sunday morning in Edith's house; so many like these, including in the years after we move. I lie in the big bed, sun at the window, the bedroom door open. The smell of bacon frying in the pan drifts up the narrow stairs with the pulse of the radio. The pips are followed by the shipping forecast. A litany impossible to repeat, familiar yet unlearned, mysterious, full of time and place. Full of islands and boats, rocks and mermaids.
There are warnings of gales in Plymouth, Trafalgar, FitzRoy, Sole, Lundy, Fastnet, Irish Sea, Shannon, Rockall and Malin...
A salve of words calling up the day like the dawn chorus, a lullaby to imagination and far-off worlds. The comfort of repetition, the rhythm of reassurance, a deep and sonorous, voice. And downstairs a table waits laid for breakfast, and after breakfast, a walk with Jack and Chang along the Berrow Sands.
You can read Handmade Part One HERE
4. PROSE - finally perhaps the most important of all: prose. Somehow despite the horror of the news perhaps because of it and my need to retreat I have somehow in what has been a busy time with family commitments begun the work of my new, what I am calling, novella.
I have toyed with the idea of a narrative poem or a poetry collection but have come down firmly on the side of prose, albeit in a somewhat fragmentary style. When I say I’ve begun on the work what I mean is not the research, the thinking, the reading, the decision-making, all of which are part of the work, but the actual work of writing itself. I have over 1000 words now edited and saved in a file on my laptop and I have more drafted by hand in my notebook.
There is something about the first thousand words that always feels significant to me. I have made a start out of not knowing where to begin. I have laid down the first stepping stone on my journey. And I am especially excited to be writing about the beautiful city of Durham and about the river Wear which I live alongside. I hope the writing will have equal resonance for those who live in our beautiful County.
Take care. As always, thank you for reading and I hope you find those places of safety and comfort away from world events.
Avril x
You have no idea how much I needed to read this today.. thank you so much for your wisdom… we really ought to meet up for coffee irl x