Wherever We Live Now 2011The Territory of Rain 2015Signs of the Times 2017
All of these books have reached the point where the publisher no longer holds any copies. However, I still have some, so if you want them you can still get them from me via the shop. (You can find poems from them on my poetry page, if you would like to try a sampler.) Wherever We Live Now and The Territory of Rain are still on the database at shops like Waterstones and Foyles, but any requests would still have to come to me, so why not approach me directly, and get signed copies? I don’t charge for postage and packing within the UK, and though the shop runs on PayPal, I can accept other methods of payment if you email me via the contact form.
Here we are at the launch of Charlie Gracie’s first novel To Live With What You Are. I was lucky enough to get an early copy, and I can tell you that it is a beautifully written account of the lives of two thoroughly dark characters. How he manages to make them so understandable, and to convey their darkness so completely without using the kind of language that would give you nightmares I don’t know. It has a delicate precision and careful balance, so you’re dragged into places where you would rather not be before you notice.
As you can’t really see, it was a well-attended event, full of friends and family and writing buddies from our shared experience with Stirling Writers. There were spiced orange squirrel cookies – a flavour I was very pleased with – and fig rolls because they feature in the novel, and we talked about poetry and prose, and where they overlap and how they differ, and about haggards and wild places, and I’ve made a date to go and see the wild angelica on Thornhill Common with illustrator (she’s worked with David Bellamy) and children’s book author Jill Dow who lives there and are inspired by it. There are more herb poems to come! We sold lots of books, which was very welcome.
And while I think about it, may I remind you that you can buy my books from the shop on this site (if you don’t like using Paypal get in touch and I’ll sort out another payment method), or from the brand new shiny Red Squirrel Press website. Neither Red Squirrel Press nor I charge for postage within the UK, but if you are further afield, please email and I’ll check the postage to where you are.They also appear on the Waterstones database, so you should be able to get them from there, and you can also get Wherever We Live Now and The Territory of Rain on Amazon.
There will be a newsletter going out shortly to all my subscribers, with news of something I’m going to try from March next year. I had a Facebook group called Herbs and Poetry, and this has gone a bit quiet lately, but I thought I might do some herbs and poetry newsletters, with a herb of the month, and a poetry prompt and short discussion related to it. Please sign up to the newsletter if you’d like to get it.
This site is likely to be a bit erratic over the next week or two. I’m writing a series of posts about publishing and being published, and the editing process, and that are taking a bit of revising.
But this week I wrote a piece for the Wild Woman Press Wild Woman Web Project, and you can find it here:
This has just gone up on the Corbenic Poetry Path near Dunkeld. It is in a beautiful spot, overlooking the River Braan.
It was inspired by my poem Ivy:
Ivy
It is the vigour that amazes – the lithe sprawl over the rockery, the spring and spurt up telegraph poles. Stems in pin feather up as fast as April’s hatchlings, become a cloak of pentacles, witchy jade-veined green full of sparrow’s nests, barbed with feet like caterpillar’s feet, dug right in. Its extravagant adaptability and hospitality to bees make it seem domestic. It is not. Its massed and twining weight will bring down oaks, and institutions.
From Wherever We Live Now
Thank you, and many congratulations to the sculptors Adrienn Gorbe and Gheorgita Bori, and to Martin Reilly and founder of the Poetry Path Jon Plunkett. It looks absolutely wonderful, and I am very imatient to see it!
I’ve had a busy week! On Thursday, I was at Natural Callander, an event in the Callander Summerfest, reading poems on the theme of the natural world alongside my friends Sally Evans, Charlie Gracie, and Helen McLaren, and with additional poems from George Colkitto, Finola Scott, Ann Murray and people who had attended a workshop during the afternoon. It was held in a beautiful airy room in the Callander Hostel – a great night, with excellent readings and a warm (really, it was before the rain, and we were boiling! but also metaphorically) receptive audience.
On Saturday I was at the Pamphlets Pimms and Periodicals event at the Scottish Poetry Library, where we had a fair for all the small presses producing innovative and beautiful magazines and pamphlets. I was there mostly to promote the Scottish Pamphlet Poetry Facebook page, which is a place for poets and publishers to share their news and events. Small presses are at the cutting edge of publishing, a sound way for emerging or experimental poets to test their work, but opportunities to see the range of what’s on offer are few. We are hoping that having a common space to share our news will help raise awareness of what they do. You will find many photos of the event on the facebook page, but I will share this beautifully curated table, from Julie Johnstone’s Essence Press.
I was also selling copies of The Charm of Nine Herbs translation which I did last year, and taking sign-ups for my newsletter, and had some very interesting conversations with people on the subject of herbs, traditional knowledge, and nature writing, particularly by women. It seems there is a serious demand for this kind of writing, and I am giving some serious thought, not only to my own work, but to furthering the writing of other people in this area, perhaps by running workshops, perhaps in some other way. I have had a few warnings to take care of my health lately, so this might be a slow process, but it will happen in some form. There will be a newsletter soon, in which I will explore options, and ask for feedback.
Yesterday was our wedding anniversary, and we took a trip to see the Poetry Path at Corbenic. There are some beautiful sculptures there – here is one holding a fragment of poetry by Chris Powici,
but I have to admit, I am very excited by this one:
my own poem, Ivy, from Wherever We Live Now. The group of young sculptors who created some of the pieces you see along the path are coming to create a setting for it this summer, and I’ll post a picture as soon as I have one.
It’s back to auld claes and parritch now, as I have a lot of editing in hand, but this has been a week to remember!
Last week I read in Sheffield at the lovely Writers in the Bath, alongside a New England poet, David Troupes, whose website you can find here: https://www.buttercupfestival.com/. It was a good night, warm and friendly, and I heard more about the tree protests from Jennifer Hockey who was arrested during a dawn raid at one one of them. Jennifer has a poetry collection coming out with Oversteps later this year, so watch out for updates on this.
On Saturday I went to The Birks Cinema in Aberfeldy for a day-long conference on the connection of women to the land. It covered many interesting topics – women’s nature writing, access to the countryside (with some relevant insights into ageing and stereotyping of elderly women), talks about Nan Shepherd and Jessie Kesson, Gaelic, herbs, song and storytelling and the strangely recidivist attitudes towards women in farming and land ownership. It was spectacularly well-organised, and the scones were wonderful, but the energy in the room was palpable, and there was a lot of demand for ‘more of this sort of thing.’
I’m thinking about this carefully – I have had to sever my connection with the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics, partly because of health concerns (my own as well as my family’s), partly because I want to be able to give more to my own writing, but also partly because of the weight of organisation involved in last year’s Expressing the Earth conference, both before and following up. It isn’t just the work – it’s knowing exactly what experience you are trying to set up, and how you expect it to develop. The explicit hope at Aberfeldy was that other women would be inspired to set up similar events in their own areas, and I’m not sure I have the stamina! But it does show that there is more engagement and interest in the kind of issues I’ve been looking at than is generally thought, and I’ll be looking into ways of following it up – in a way that is within my capacity.
I’m aware that I haven’t done a territory post for a while – I’ve been away or at the computer too much! But I have been taking photos
Thanks to Colin Waters of Vagabond Voices and the Scottish Poetry Library, this poem appeared in The Scotsman this weekend.
I’m always surprised at the poems that attract attention. I had the phrase ‘a kist of light’ haunting me for about ten years before I found a poem to put it in, and right up until I sent the MS out for review, I wasn’t sure how much anyone would like it. And yet, this poem, and one called Schoolish, are the ones people quote or ask for, which makes me very happy.
A couple of people have asked where they can buy the book – you can bet I’ll have copies for sale wherever I am, but you can also Get it via the website of Red Squirrel Press who don’t charge postage, or from my shop (neither do I) if you want a signed copy. I have set up Paypal to make it easier, and I’m just about to create a page where you can find out what you are buying!
I can also reveal that you can buy Wherever We Live Now and The Territory of Rain on Amazon, if that’s what you do, and I would be very grateful for reviews, if you have the time! Thank you!
In addition to the Glasgow readings mentioned in my recent events posts, I have advance news of some later readings:
Glasgow Launch of Haggards. The Scottish Writers Centre will host this on the 8th May, at the CCA Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow alongside books from Brian Johnstone, Judith Taylor and Tim Turnbull. 7-9pm.
St Mungo’s Mirrorball. I will be reading at this event which takes place at the CCA, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow on 31st May 7-9pm.
Writers in the Bath Sheffield. I will be reading at The Bath Hotel, 66 Victoria St, S3 7QL (off West Street) on Tuesday 12th June, along with David Troupes.
Callander Writers Group Thursday 26th July (time and venue to be confirmed), along with Sally Evans, Charlie Gracie and Helen McLaren.
This is the original of the new website home page – a picture of my stockbed in July 2015. My lovely web designer, Naomi Rimmer, and I thought we should have a new look for the new book. Have a look around! It’s simpler in some ways, and there’s a shop page for buying books, which I hope will be easier to manage. When I have my head round it, I may add some free pdf. downloads, too, but the ones I used to have up needed a bit of editing and a makeover, and I think I will be taking some time to think about prose writing over the summer, as well as colour poems, ark poems and a lot of editing commitments.
In the meantime, Haggards is getting its formal launch tomorrow, 10th February at the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh at one o’clock. I hope to see many of you there.
Thanks to Colin Waters of 
