I have been pretty poor on the writing and photography front, with a combination of being ill, family members being ill (nothing too exciting, just the cold), editing a poetry collection for Red Squirrel Press which will come out in March of next year, but I do have a little nice news.
Today my poem On the Calendar has been published on the excellent online journal Ink, Sweat and Tears. It is one of the few of my poems with identifiable people in it, but it was a long time ago, and I’m sure they won’t mind!
And in the new year, I am going to be writing a regular column for the blog of Interlitq, based in Argentina, but with a wide international readership. Check it out, and see what a rich and varied range of topics it covers! I am very honoured by this proposal, and very grateful to the president, Peter Robertson, for asking me. I will let you all know when my first column appears – it will cover the same areas as this blog – poetry, creativity, environmental and cultural issues, and so on, but hopefully it will be a bit more focussed, and try for more extended thinking, rather than these jottings.
And since I have finally realised that the next batch of poems for Burnedthumb won’t write themselves, I started thinking about art and craft in the lives of women, and went to see the exhibition of May Morris’ work at the Dovecot Studio in Edinburgh yesterday. I have meant to get there for a long time, and found the building itself very beautiful (nice cafe, too!), and like the exhibition very much.
May Morris was so completely overshadowed by her father William, that her own talent and achievements have gone without due recognition, but I was impressed by her designs, by the simplicity of her stitching, combined with her very sophisticated use of line and space and colour – also her preference for the smaller and less flamboyant flowers – clover, violet, and borage. I took photos for reference, but this was the only one that came out well enough to share. You’ll have to go and see the exhibition for yourselves!
