‘…under the cloak of winter lies a miracle’ Barbara Winkler

Beneath elegant beech trees,
pause at pillows of moss
until a coracle’s in view.

Not yet in the water,
the boat is waiting.

Step in
and settle
on striped animal hide.

Mist wraps and rises,
all else is still.

Peace falls.

No swallows, no lilies, no damselflies.
Nothing moves.

Silence stirs
and the fagus listen to a promise
heightening in the haze.

Under the cloak of winter
changes occur;
drift with the current.

You will row again,
energy restored,
as the season shifts.

Polly Stretton © 2020

I’ve had some lovely news…for the first time in ages I entered a poetry competition and, to my surprise and delight, I’ve been told that my poem For Walls is ‘one of [the] top three winning poems’. I can’t tell you how pink I’m tickled!

This made me think about reviewing my publications and gives me the opportunity to let you know about my forthcoming collection, so here goes.

In 2012 I self-published Girl’s Got Rhythm, in 2014 it was picked up by Black Pear Press and they reprinted it in 2016.

2014 found me busy researching Thomas Chatterton the tragic 17-year-old poet, a new-Romantic, who died in a garret.

I called the series of poems, written from the  viewpoints of people who were close to him, Chatterton. Only 50 copies were printed and they soon sold out. It’s still available on Kindle and I was delighted to receive keen interest and feedback from the Thomas Chatterton Society in Bristol. They asked me to give a presentation about the collection to the society.

I’ve always loved Croome Court, so when I saw a Tweet from them inviting artists to apply to join their ‘Soul to Sole’ project I sent a copy of Girl’s Got Rhythm and Chatterton to them and asked if poetry was planned as part of the project. They immediately asked me to a meeting and the two poems I wrote, one about Anne Somerset, Countess of Coventry, and one about William Dean, the head gardener of that time who worked with Capability Brown, featured in the basement display of the project. I was asked to join the Croome Poets—there were eight or nine of us altogether—we put together poems about Croome Court and the surrounding grounds and delivered them that summer. I listened again to the wonderful Apples and Snakes audio that Heather Wastie put together: go to this link: https://www.mixcloud.com/applesandsnakes and search ‘Poets at Croome’ to listen to some of the poems created for Croome Court and gardens. It was a wonderful experience sharing work with so many talented poets. My poems from 2014-2017 can be found on my Croome Court website.

The next publication was a collation of WWI poems and stories called Remembering the Somme, published in 2016.

Remembering the Somme is an anthology, a collection of poems from many different poets, compiled as part of the WWI commemorative Big Ideas projects; many of the Worcester Writers’ Circle sent in submissions. We were asked by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to join the Big Ideas company at the Military cemetery in Maidenhead for Armistice Day that year. By gum…it was cold! But wonderful to see the results of many projects nationwide.

In 2017 a second Big Ideas project saw me curate another anthology about the First World War—this time the book was to commemorate The Unremembered of WWI and that became its title. It focussed on those who are not traditionally remembered from the war, folk like the fishermen, miners, the fruit pickers, milkmen and so on, and within a year there was a request for a second edition so The Unremembered—World War One’s Army of Workers—The British Story was published in 2018.

Also in 2018, Big Ideas gave a different slant on WWI to write about, Motherhood, Loss and the First World War. This brought in amazing poems and stories from all over the country. There was no charge for the books, though many gave donations to the Royal British Legion and other charities, which is why you’ll find all four of them on Amazon for practically nothing—the nominal payment you’re asked for is simply to allow them to be uploaded to Kindle or any other platform. There was a marvellous commemoration of WWI at The Guildhall in Worcester where people who’d been involved in projects met and displayed the results of their endeavours.

2019 saw me corralling another anthology of poetry in collaboration with the Worcestershire Poet Laureate Charley Barnes. The poem that won Charley her laureateship was about sunflowers and I’d written a poem about sunflowers some years before; I sent it to her and she said, ‘Let’s ask other poets to send in poems about flowers’—we did—and Pressed Flowers was born.

All of the above are still available either from Black Pear Press—I’m one of the team alongside Tony Judge and Rod Griffiths—or from Amazon.

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing what I’ve been up to over the past few years, so now onto what I’ve been working on more recently. First, there’s a collection of poems written to prompts at 42Worcester, the spoken word event that I’ve been part of since 2012. You can imagine that over nine years there are many many poems. Selecting the ones for the collection was quite a task; luckily, some of my friends from 42Worcester were happy to help with the selection. The resulting collection The Alchemy of 42 consists of 42 poems all written to 42Worcester prompts.

Later this year or perhaps early next year, I hope that a second collection, called Growing Places, will be published. It’s currently being held up as I sent it elsewhere and I’m still awaiting their comments. Whatever they decide, I’m lucky that Black Pear Press are eager to publish it, so we’ll have to wait and see…I confess that I’m not very good at waiting and seeing! The poems are in a sequence covering places where I grew…it brings together memories of childhood and other places both real and imaginary where my growth, or growing, continues. I’m immensely grateful to everyone who read, commented and supported me in selecting the poems for Growing Places. Having an idea for a poetry collection and turning it into a book is as hard as it sounds; the experience is both challenging and revealing. Here’s a sneak preview of the cover:

If you’ve got this far, thank you for reading. I believe this is the longest post I’ve ever written so you deserve a gold star if you haven’t given up! All my books are available from Black Pear Press or via Amazon.

I hope to catch up with you soon.