Authors Electric

So here we are almost three months into lockdown. Strange times. Conspiracy theories abound. It’s 5G, Bill Gates, big Pharma, some other kind of plot I can’t be bothered with, it’s not a virus, etc. I’ve got my head well down, sieving compost, planting beans and tomatoes, re-potting lilies and begonias, baking far too much. Hauled my sewing machine out to make masks, cut out the fabric, that’s as far as it’s got. I lose track of time. Every week, we have choir via Zoom and wear something silly. It’s an hour of delightful companionship which always leaves me feeling peculiarly flat when it’s over. Writers have also been meeting via Zoom, but this week, weather and the new restrictions permitting, we plan to meet in my garden at suitable distances from each other – just about possible with five of us. I’m taking an online course on poetic forms, put on by the excellent Live Canon team, which has meant getting to grips with sonnets (Petrarchean and Shakespearean) terza rima, se...

I wish everyone a happy, healthy and creative 2020! 2019 had its share of horrors with which we’re all too familiar, but to start the new year I’m going to concentrate on a huge December lifting-of-the-spirits for me. I signed up to Live Canon’s Poetry Treasure Hunt, which began on December 1 st and ended on 31 st , with a new clue and a new poet’s work every day and a grand finale on 31 st incorporating all the clues.     Each day, an email arrived with a short biography of a poet, a link (or links) to a video of the poet or someone else reading their work, sample texts and a particular poem which contained a clue – in every case, a missing word to be identified and recorded. The range was very wide, across continents, traditions and time, from the 17 th century to now. It included 8 poets whose work I knew, or rather, some of whose work I knew: Christina Rossetti, Derek Walcott, John Betjeman, U A Fanthorpe, Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, George Herbert, Isaac R...