On Warwick Castle: new digital edition

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Back in 2008, my poems from the Warwick Laureateship were published in pamphlet form by Nine Arches Press. Since that pamphlet 'On Warwick' is now out of print, there is a new digital version available on Kindle only.

Priced at only 77p, this new edition contains the long title poem 'On Warwick Castle', and two other poems commissioned during my stint as Warwick Poet Laureate, 'On the Renovations at Leamington Spa Station 2008' and 'Leamophants', on the history of elephants in Leamington Spa.

'On Warwick Castle': "On Warwick is the product of Jane Holland’s year as Warwick’s Poet Laureate. It’s not unusual for local laureates to write poems about major landmarks of the area, but the main poem in the collection, ‘On Warwick Castle’—described in David Morley’s foreword as Holland’s “modernist piece de resistance”—is probably one of the more ambitious works of public poetry generated through a local laureateship." David Floyd, writing in Sphinx.

High praise indeed!

If looking at this ebook on Amazon, do please click LIKE there if you feel able to. This apparently helps the book's visibility to browsing punters. Thanks!

End of the Laureateship

So, about a week ago, I very cheerfully handed over the Warwick Poet Laureateship to Cathy Whittaker, who will hold that post from 2008 - 09, and am now free as a bird. She says, ironically. In fact, I have so many irons in the fire right now, I'm in serious danger of burning my little pinkies.

I'm now studying at Warwick part-time (part-time has actually worked out as four days a week though, so it's more like full than part-time), sending out my teen fantasy novel in the hope of finding a buyer, continuing to work on new poems, editing issue two of Horizon Review, and possibly adapting my long poem "On Warwick Castle" for the stage.

In other words, life is challenging at the moment (especially when it comes to finding somewhere to park at Warwick University!) and far more pressured than before. Hence the absence of blogging in recent weeks.

Indeed, I've had to turn down several offers of work this month alone because I simply don't have time to squeeze in any more commitments. But no doubt as the year moves on I'll grow accustomed to this more rapid pace of life and feel able to take on new projects. For which, watch this space!

During my Laureateship, I wrote my long poem, "On Warwick Castle", and published that last week along with other Warwick-related poems in a pamphlet from Nine Arches Press, plus wrote several locally commissioned pieces, as well as six riddle poems for Tescos and sixteen poems to accompany Anand Chhabra's photographs in the Warwick Words Poetry & Photography Exhibition. I also visited a few schools in the region as Poet Laureate, and performed at a number of social events, including a rather delicious fish and chip fund-raising supper at the medieval Lord Leycester Hospital in Warwick.

Meanwhile, although I shall miss being so closely involved with poetry in the Warwickshire region, I'm excited to be turning back to my own personal writing projects, and wish the new Laureate, Cathy Whittaker, all the very best in her year ahead!

On Warwick: poems from the Laureateship

I've just sent off the final draft of my manuscript to Nine Arches Press, who have very kindly taken me on as their debut publication later this year, bringing out a pamphlet of my Warwick Laureate poems to coincide with the Warwick Words Festival.

It's only a very short pamphlet, but quite varied in content. There's my long poem, 'On Warwick Castle', and various pieces of commissioned writing from bodies within Warwickshire, plus some required writing for the Laureateship. That last category includes a selection of poems that will be exhibited alongside the photos which inspired them (taken by Anand Chhabra) at the Festival Poetry & Photography Exhibition.

The whole pamphlet will be called, very simply, 'On Warwick'. Once I know what the cover will look like, I'll post it up here. Possibly with an extract.

Camper Van Blues & Beyond

This week I'm putting the finishing touches to my final draft of Camper Van Blues, due out from Salt Publishing this autumn. It's a difficult and painstaking task, deciding for the last time - in this book, at least - how each poem will appear on the page, and indeed in what order they will appear.

To be honest, I'm prey to a little dread at times, wondering if I'm making the right choices. But there's also an excitement about the process, knowing that a brand-new book of poetry is about to emerge after nearly two years of writing and fiddling about with various drafts. And like a new baby, you always hope this one will turn out to be less trouble than the rest!

At the back of my mind, though, whilst carrying out this task, is the equally exciting knowledge that I have another piece of work on the burner. Still simmering away nicely, though very much in a proto-state, being written piecemeal whenever I get a few moments to myself, still poised to shift or swing in any direction as the weeks unfold. That's my Warwick Castle project, a long poem at the moment, and growing steadily longer as each new fragment takes it place in the whole.

First public reading of that poem will be at the Warwick Words Festival in October, so I'll have to get it finished by then. No pressure!

Notes on a Long Poem

The River Dart

I was at a 'live' interview with the poet Alice Oswald at last year's Aldeburgh Festival, where she was discussing her inspiration and writing methods.

For those who don't yet know her work, she has published three books of poetry and edited a recent anthology entitled The Thunder Mutters: 101 Poems about the Planet. However, to my mind, her most ambitious and achieved work to date is her book-length poem 'Dart', which is about the River Dart in Devon and those who live and work along its banks or on the water itself.

During the Q & A session at the end, I asked Alice Oswald how she had managed to keep the feel or pulse of such a long poem constant during the writing of 'Dart'.

She replied that 'the poem evolved as I evolved', adding that the poem changed moods just as the river did, not fixed in one particular form or mood, but remaining fluid during the writing process.

Fascinatingly, this idea of the river enjoying thought and a sort of human personality tied in well with her later observations that the river itself was 'an eye by day, looking out, reflecting back' but by night, 'almost like a mind'.

Later Oswald had this to say about the connection between the rhythm of a poem and the poet's thought processes: 'It's hard when writing not to allow rhythm to boss you about. Writing is a sort of destructive activity; it crystallises your thoughts.'

She then described the particular writing habits she has developed which allow her to avoid that locking-in of the poem as it's being written. For problems of self-limitation Oswald advocates: 'Blind field note-taking. Just jot down whatever you're thinking, feeling. It holds a record of the place that you can have access to later.'

Now, some of you will be aware that I recently committed to a lengthy new project myself, a long poem - or possibly a sequence of poems instead, if I bottle the epic narrative - on Warwick Castle through the ages.

Hence the blog post title 'Notes on a Long Poem.' Though it could as easily read 'Notes Towards a Long Poem' or even 'A Long Poem Composed Entirely of Notes'. Because that's how it's being written. As a series of field notes - not in prose, but odd lines of poetry or little runs of lines of poetry, along with multiple squiggles and arrows - taken down at the time of visiting Warwick Castle or in the immediate aftermath of visits.

Not in conscious imitation of Oswald, of course, because it was only after I'd made several days' worth of notes that I recalled her comments at Aldeburgh, but as a rough-and-ready, stop-gap method of getting the words down, any words down, that would prevent the essence of what I wanted to realise on the page from getting away from me.

I can't say if the method will be successful, since that won't become clear for some months, perhaps even years, but certainly instead of a strong visceral reaction to the genius loci, and a vision on the air as I walked up through the portcullis gate into the inner courtyard, I have page after page of notes towards a poem, or poetic notes, or a poem in note-form.

No doubt as I begin to unravel them, invent or work out the connections, smooth over rough patches and bring them nearer to a 'finished' form, I'll discover whether this truly is the groundwork for a long poem, or merely another sequence.

Strange Likeness

A short period of illness can be useful for a writer, forming a firebreak between stretches of intense mental activity; not so much scorched earth as a fertile space where new ideas can spring up, free from other influences.

So my brief spell in bed most of Easter and into this week has been useful for that reason, and also as physical downtime, good for recharging the batteries, or refilling the well, however you want to see it.

Filled with new energy, I took myself into Oxford today and renewed my Bodleian card in order to read this book, which I couldn't afford to buy and which is simply not available through the usual library channels.

It was a worthwhile trip. Not only did I manage some research into the impact of Old English on modern poetry - my pet project this spring - but a few phrases in Chris Jones' magnificent Strange Likeness: The Use of Old English in Twentieth-Century Poetry struck hard, in particular when touching on Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns, and left me far more sure of my direction as I begin work on my own extended poem/poem sequence inspired by Warwick Castle:

The present book's title comes from the twenty-ninth of Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns, a sequence of poems that dissolves historical linearity to superimpose glimpsed shards of the reign of Offa ... with fragmentary images of the twentieth-century Midlands, a mosaic of the familiar and the unfamiliar which prompts the speaker in the hymn to comment: 'Not strangeness, but strange likeness.'

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Now playing: Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark - Souvenir
via FoxyTunes

Camper Van Blues

I have now officially finished Camper Van Blues, my third poetry collection, and apart from the usual fiddly last minute stuff that manuscripts always seem to demand, I'm free to start work on my next big project. Which is probably going to be a sequence of poems about Warwick Castle, in association with my work as this year's Warwick Laureate, though I haven't yet decided what final shape that will take.

I am also free to post up new review work again on Raw Light. I've got an ever-growing stack of poetry books that I'd like to mention here, so reviewing is near the top of my to-do list for March. I also have some commissioned review work to undertake for a magazine, plus a long critical essay to plan and discuss with another editor. So while I swing out of one tree, there's another creeper waiting for my hand ...

There she is above, my old seven-berth Mercedes camper van. Gone to the great parking lot in the sky now, alas, but she was a wonderful ship.

Warwick Castle: a first visit

My version of The Wanderer continues. Slowly, painstakingly. About four lines a day on average. This must be the longest it's ever taken me to write a single poem. Perhaps I ought to be worried. Still, this being a translation/version, I suppose it should be possible to take a good month over the composition without losing the thread ... after all, this poem's been kicking about for so many hundreds of years, it's not going anywhere.

The big news is, I finally organised myself to visit Warwick Castle this weekend. And I was impressed. The place had an immediate and profound effect on me; I could feel lines and phrases carving themselves out on the air as I wandered about its high-ceilinged halls and narrow stone passageways.


For those unsure what this visit is all about, I decided back in October - on becoming Poet Laureate for Warwick - that I wanted to write some poems about Warwick Castle - once in decline, now beautifully restored and one of the best examples of a 'working' medieval castle in England.

My friend Julie Boden, based here in Warwickshire and herself a former Birmingham Poet Laureate, advised me early on to decide what sort of legacy I wanted to leave behind once my stint in the Laureateship was over. And while I had all sorts of grandiose schemes in mind, the only one that's really stuck has been this simple idea of writing about Warwick Castle.


Oddly enough, David Morley was also there this weekend, a major Warwickshire poet and the writer in charge of the creative writing programme at Warwick University; I spotted him in the 'medieval' cafeteria, lunching with his family, and went over to say hello.

Apparently fancying himself as the man from Porlock, David stopped for a quick word a few minutes later while I was scribbling down some notes and phrases over a latté. Luckily, I have no intention of starting to write any of the Warwick poems until much later this year, so his efforts were in vain!

Basically, my visits this weekend have been purely preliminary, just looking about the place and setting my mind in motion. But it's proved an extremely worthwhile thing to do, far beyond what I had initially envisaged.

At first, I thought Warwick Castle might provide inspiration for two or three poems. But having received such strong vibes both from the castle and its grounds, I've got a hunch this could easily become a much longer-term project.

Time to start blocking in 'Warwick Castle poems' on the calendar, perhaps.