I Reframe the New Year

I re-started 2024 today. But it's already 12 days in, you may well observe. And so it is.

I started 2024 on schedule, and in London too, thanks to my sons' present of tickets for a family trip to My Neighbour Totoro on New Year's Eve afternoon. It was a spectacularly wonderful, life-affirming production. After the show, I checked my phone - my goddaughter had sent me a message letting me know that  Day 1 of Adriene's 30 Days of Yoga 2024 would start on New Year's Day. I made my resolution - I enjoy Adriene's videos, and I've got out of the habit of bending and balancing. 

The New Year's Eve fun continued when we went to Brasserie Zedel for dinner, as close an experience of Paris as you can get near to Piccadilly Circus. The young people went off to their various celebrations and my Longest-Serving Friend and I wandered through London's lights which were, it has to be said, several cuts above Shrewsbury's, and made sure bedtime was well before midnight. Next morning, we got up and did the Burgess Parkrun. That same New Year's evening, heading back home, my eldest son and his girlfriend shared news of their engagement which came about in the rock room of the Natural History Museum. Such an excellent arrangement of place, timing, metaphor, and materials. Such hopeful, shiny news.

Of course, going back to work on 2nd January has a habit of applying the brakes to New Year momentum. But in the not-work part of my life, I somehow, between all the loveliness of actual New Year and the getting into the business of a day-by-day new year, mislaid resolution. Resolution is (I hardly need to mention) a word which suggests resolve. And the word resolve suggests 'to decide firmly on a course of action' (Google English Dictionary). None of these (decide, firmly, course, action) were thoughts I could lay hold of in those following January days; it's been more a case of unresolve: indecision, apathy, physical and mental wobbliness. 

It was poetry that resolved me. It was poetry in community, and wise, compassionate, playful, poetry at that. At Shrewsbury Poetry, we were lucky enough to host Philip Gross and Steve Griffiths for our first get together of the new year yesterday evening. Among our online poetry community, and among open mic poems which resonated and flowed with the thoughts and feelings emerging, Philip and Steve held a conversation. As with all remarkable conversations, this one shifted something for me. 

If I were to pin the shift down to something, I'd pin it down to this. While Philip was reading his poem 'Of Breath (Thirteen Angels)' I visualised my lungs for the first time as wings ("don't look for it outside") unfurling with each breath. The poem came to me as a winged messenger through the black and white memories of my lungs, x-rayed when I was a child for damage after pneumonia. I could see myself now in full technicolor, complete with "pink and glistening cavities" breathing in oxygen, breathing in life, readying for the brief flight necessary to enter each moment, and this new year. 

If I were to pin it down to something, this re-framing, it would be to this: I got up this morning, dusted off my yoga mat, sat cross-legged and breathed. And this breath has given me a sense of a voice which can "step to the body's window ledge and, briefly, fly".

Happy new year to you, dear reader. Keep breathing.

I Parcel Up

My memories of Australia are coming ashore in small groups, and often at dusk when the day's work has been done. I'm waiting for them as patiently as we waited for penguins in Tasmania. I haven't written much about Australia here because I want my memories to stay afloat, swim around where they are most fluent for as long as possible, until they land themselves as poems.

Our guide in Bicheno on the east coast of Tasmania told us, as I waited to see penguins in their natural habitat for the first time, that a group of penguins can be called a waddle (on land) and a raft (in the water). They can also be called a parcel. Parcel's the word he used most often as we watched them come ashore after a long day's fishing out on the reef several kilometres away. They took their time coming up the beach, stopping to clean their feathers, to chatter to each other, and to regain energy before reaching their main aim: feeding their hungry young chicks.

I travelled around Australia for a month, and I've been back home for a month, but the month in Australia feels much brighter, probably because it was. I'm making this feeling of brightness into a parcel of daylight, blue skies and wide horizons full of warmth and t-shirts. I'm writing my way into poems which I may be able to share with you one day.

And while I'm waiting for whatever's coming to shore, I offer to you some of the light - as best I can:

Green Pools, WA

Melbourne, VIC

Blue Mountains, NSW

Nr Hobart, TAS

Harbour Bridge, Sydney, NSW

A parcel of Little Blue Penguins - Happy Christmas xx

I Find Myself

Questions of meaning and existence have been circling in my thoughts all my conscious life. Who am I? Why, how, if, what, and where? If I added up all the time I’d spent pondering, I could’ve made several more dishes of macaroni cheese, and possibly finished my novel. 

It’s come as something of a surprise to me, therefore, to find that I’m located on an intersection in Hobart, Tasmania. In the end, finding myself has turned out to be as simple as looking at a map.

I’m not saying that therapy, writing poetry, making risotto, and camping haven’t had their parts to play in me finding myself. It was in a therapy session, after all, that I made the decision to travel to Australia in 2023, something I’d been pondering since Miss Smith’s feedback on my geography project in 1976. And it was by choosing to camp in Wales with my longest serving friend for years that I saved enough holiday money to afford the airfare.

When planning the Hobart part of the holiday that I’m taking with my younger son, I was browsing a list of restaurants. Up popped the suggestion of ‘Lizzie & Lefroy’. I gasped and stretched my eyes, consulted TripAdvisor. 

At this point, for clarity, I should say that my family and friends called me Lizzy/Lizzie when I was younger. Some of them still do. The spelling fluctuates - y (my parents’ choice) ie (nearly everyone else’s). I dealt with this inconsistency by simplifying things to Liz back in the 1980s.

Lizzie & Lefroy sits on the corner of Elizabeth and Lefroy in north Hobart. It has the most extensive gnocchi menu I’ve ever seen. 

We found it easily this evening and were welcomed by very warm and friendly staff. The walls were lined with Australian wines. The beers from local breweries. There was a log fire in a central glass-sided stove. 

Noticing my name on the booking, the waiter shook my hand, said: “You’re royalty here!” 

Eating delicious beetroot gnocchi and zucchini on a Tuesday in November with my son in my namesake restaurant was a special moment. Eating their sophisticated version of macaroni cheese  (Mushroom mac & cheese croquettes : Pyengana 12-month aged cheddar, garlic crisps, fresh thyme and parsnip cream) was a perfect in-body experience. 

It was all delicious and lovely. All my questions have been answered. I am, it would seem, where I eat.

I Exhale Deeply

Since learning that yoga is not, in fact, a sinister cult but a really useful way of caring for my back, I regularly breathe out deeply. This is something I've done both in classes, and in front of 'Yoga with Adrienne' and her free YouTube videos. 

When younger, I did breathing exercises for wellbeing by default when playing the flute. A lot of my lessons were spent with my teacher encouraging me to develop breath and diaphragm control. I had no idea how useful a life skill this was as I channelled a column of air into a top C. 

More recently, I exhaled deeply on opening a box of copies of Festival in a Book - A Celebration of Wenlock Poetry Festival. I had been holding my breath for two weeks: between the moment of pressing send on the final proofs and lifting out the first book. I breathed even more freely when Anna Dreda, Festival Founder, said she loves the anthology created in honour of her Festival and its legacy. 

It has struck me since that the publication of a book of poetry is, in some ways, an exhalation, a letting go. A breathing out of thought and word and music into the world. Breath and word. The word made paper. It can't be taken back now. And it will become part of other people's breathing, internal and external, when read. 

And so, here she is: the editor, not the book, breathing out, relaxing on the festival's famous knitted poem of Carol Ann Duffy's "The Bees" knitted a decade ago by a large number of volunteers and still as vivid as it was then (photo by Emily Wilkinson, poem now resident at the Poetry Pharmacy, Bishops Castle). 

The poem makes a wonderful yoga mat. 

To buy a copy of Festival in a Book, a Celebration of Wenlock Poetry Festival edited by Liz Lefroy, please email 904press@gmail.com  Cost £15 plus p&p (2nd class UK = £2.40) 

Here's the line up you can enjoy:

I Draw A Comparison

 Back in the days when I was known as Elizabeth by my school teachers, I compiled a project called 'Western Australia'. I was in Lower IV 26. 26 was the room number, Lower IV was year 8. In her feedback, written on a pale orange card, my Geography Teacher, the lovely Miss Smith, wrote: ELIZABETH: mainly WESTERN AUSTRALIA. In the corner of that card, she drew a fairy penguin. I've had a soft spot for penguins ever since.

On the other side of the small card, Miss Smith wrote this: "Your nice grassy folder had some original and interesting ideas in it, with good illustrations. The range of relevant information was wide, from Continental drift to Camels, and even though you veered from your subject by discussing the Barrier Reef, it was still a good effort. A(-)". 

Not much has changed in my approach to projects since 1976-7. The anthology I've been working on, Festival in a Book, A Celebration of Wenlock Poetry Festival, also has some original and interesting ideas in it, most of them not my own. The illustrations (by Emily Wilkinson) and design (by Gabriel Watt) are a bonus. The range of relevant poetry is wide in terms of the Festival itself, and the poets also veer (as you'd expect them to do) towards love, childhood, loss, celebration of nature, and death. 

A brackets minus. What a mark. Thank you Miss Smith. In old school terms, A was for near as damn excellent considering your age and stage, and minus was for not quite. The brackets? They were for but nearly. My project was: not quite near as damn excellent considering your age and stage, but nearly. I was very happy with this grade. If the anthology is judged by contributors and readers as: not quite near as damn excellent considering her age and stage, but nearly, I'll be delighted.

Maybe it was that carefully-wrought mark and Miss Smith's recognition of the effort I'd made that set in my 11 year-old head the bouncy thought that one day I would visit Western Australia, and the other parts of that country-continent that aren't WA but are closer to it than South Hampstead High School, 3 Maresfield Gardens, London NW3. It's certainly been a thought leaping kangaroo-like around my head for a few years: a thought I put into action back in the spring when I booked tickets to Perth, via Singapore. I leave in 5 weeks, once I've completed the distribution and launch of the anthology. 

And now that I've made the analogy between these two projects 46 years or so apart, I'm wondering if there's an equivalent of the Barrier Reef in Festival in a Book - a whole section that's crept in because, well - who wouldn't want to put the Barrier Reef (and Tasmanian Devils and Koalas) into a project on Western Australia to liven things up from a baseline of sheep farming, wild flowers, mining, endless sunshine, and salt lakes? 

My 'Western Australia' project has maps of the places I'm going to visit soon: Perth, Denmark, Margaret River. It has useful advice about the climate. I'll be able to identify the common wax-flower if it's still common and found over areas of coastal sand heaths, usually growing from four to eight feet in height with a mass of white to pink or rose-red flowers. I've shaded in areas of one map of the whole of Australia with 'areas with more than 15 people per square mile' - so I'll know where to look for night-life, and in which direction I need to face to make it to Melbourne, Sydney, Katoomba, Hobart, and Launceston. And all the time, I'll be on the look out for penguins. 

I Mark Time

This past year, I have been working on a book - an anthology of poems which includes many of the UK's leading poets and many of us who are less leading, but no less keen. It's a farewell to the Wenlock Poetry Festival, to be published on 1st September 2023, and it's proving to be a form of closure for that vibrant and popular annual event. In order to facilitate this publication, I have set up a new venture named 904 Press. This is because when I was chatting to my eldest son in a cafe in Hereford about the idea, he asked me how many publishers there are in the UK, and at that moment of Googling, there were 903. "I'll be the 904th," I said. When I searched the question again earlier today, I discovered I'd helped the answer grow to 906. 

Ross Donlon who set up Mark Time Press thought more deeply about the name for his imprint, but we nevertheless arrived at similar places, I think. Mark Time publishes books that mark a place in time, just as 904 Press marks a very specific moment which, were it to be created today, would be 907 Press. 

Publishing: it's all about the moments of decision, dear reader. My friend, Jen Hawkins, makes her moments of decision public on Wednesday 23rd August in the Poetry Pharmacy, Bishop's Castle, when she launches her pamphlet, Moth: Mark Time's latest arrival. Jen has been writing and performing her poetry in Shropshire for several years, and we have enjoyed hearing her read at events. Her friends have encouraged her to set them down more permanently. What publication of her pamphlet /chapbook /collection does is make these poems into a tangible decision, and that decision is to print them now, in a precisely chosen word order, and with details of punctuation, weight of paper, cover image, and price - what price poetry? - finalised.

Committing to commas, semi-colons, and cover layouts is an act of courage not demanded of us in the day-to-day virtual or verbal worlds where mistakes can (usually) be corrected at the touch of a few buttons, or with a cough and repetition of a line. It may not feel like it if you haven't done it yet, but be assured that the process by which Moth, The Bone Seeker (Thirza Clout), Body of Water (Emily Wilkinson), Lucidity (Ross Donlon), and I Buy A New Washer (Yours Truly) (all published by Mark Time) came to be in print form is a matter of precise, finite, and often late-at-night-squeezed-into-the-rest-of-life decision making. It's also a matter of kind discussion with our editor, Ross, of benefitting from his poetry wisdom and skills.

It's the finite, deadline bit that's so difficult: a form of existential angst, made manifest. Never mind that saying, the one about 'abandoning poems'; when you publish them on paper you have to release them carefully, tenderly, precisely, and, it may surprise some, soberly, and after lengthy and serious thought. This is because you release them to the possibility of changes of mind, misunderstandings, and (oh horror!) typos, as well as joy, understanding, and connection.

In the end, to be published is to allow oneself to be vulnerable. Jen Hawkins has taken this on board generously, letting her readers in to see her words and emotions, dancing 'like moths / around dying embered love / drawing ever closer'. She unpacks her 'pixelated patchwork / jigsaw of a heart' for us: a heart which includes sorrow and grief, as well as birdsong and a deep appreciation for ice cream... 

Congratulations, Jen, for marking this place in your time. Graham Attenborough, GKA, whose friendship you celebrate in what I am very partially going to call my favourite poem in Moth, would have loved to have been here, and he would be so proud of you. 

And congratulations to all of us, Mark Time authors and beyond, who commit ourselves to be known a little more fully, a little more deeply: to marking our time on paper. 

I Fall Short of a Food Mile

Potato season is opening, just as raspberry season is closing. That's what's happening locally, at least. When I say locally, I mean within a third of a mile of my kitchen work surfaces. According to my parkrun experiences, a mile is around 2,000 of my paces. 

I harvested the first of my roof garden potatoes (20 paces there, 20 back = 40 paces) this morning. I am growing them in the tubs that my longest-serving friend gave me even though I've been letting the rest of the roof do its own thing. 

Harvesting this year's first portion of potatoes made me think about tonight's supper, though it was only 9.30am. I felt a little dejected, in view of the potato triumph and the fact that I was getting my hair done this afternoon, that I wasn't going to be cooking for anyone else this evening. I decided, notwithstanding, to gather some mint and chives from my window box (8 paces there, 7 back = 55 paces).

As the day went on, a plan started growing in my imagination which was this: to make my supper for one an occasion by cooking a meal for the first time in my life entirely from ingredients I'd grown and gathered myself. 

I wasn't dependent only on my window box and rooftop garden for supper as I've been helping Pete with his garden since last autumn (600 paces there, 600 back, or thereabouts). I offered to help him out boosted by my onion success last year. I've been enjoying planting and tending to runner beans, tomatoes, onions, garlic, courgettes, aubergines all through the cold spring, hot June, wet July. 

After having my hair done, I went round to Pete's (+ 600 = 655 paces) and picked tomatoes,  rhubarb, four remaining raspberries, a courgette, quantities of sage and thyme. I dug up a couple of onions and located the first runner bean. (Thank goodness no one else was expecting supper - I wasn't prepared to share that bean or those raspberries).  

On the way back (+ 600 = 1,255 paces), I picked blackberries from the hedgerows by the River Severn (+ 0 paces as I was going that way anyway). I tipped these ingredients out of my bag onto my work surface to join the potatoes, mint and chives. 

potatoes + red onions + runner bean + tomatoes (green and yellowy-orange) + garlic + courgette + rhubarb + blackberries + raspberries + rosemary + sage + thyme + chives + lemon verbena + mint

Here's what I did with them and my Duolingo French lessons (plus olive oil and salt, and butter, of course):

CHEZ LIZ

 Menu 20th July 2023

Plat Principal

Pommes de terres, trois facons

Tomates vertes frites, avec oignon rouge, ail, haricot vert, thym

Feuilles de sauges sautée à l'huile d'olive 

Petite courgette au four 

Dessert

Rhubarbe braisée au coulis de mûres et baies de saison

A Boire

L'eau Salopian avec feuilles de menthe

Thé à la verveine citronée

I made an occasion of a meal for one, all in well under a food mile and with my hair sleek and tidy. The runner bean came into its own among the fried green tomatoes, baked courgette, deliciously sweet onion, and crispy sage leaves. I cooked and sieved the majority of the blackberries to make an intense coulis to accompany the braised rhubarb and a few whole berries. 

After it had all been translated, there was nothing leftover from today's supper. Judging by the number of red flowers on the runner bean plants, I can look forward to haricots verts plural suppers very soon.