Writing Retreat

I'm off up to North Yorkshire tomorrow, to a remote little cottage nestled on the edge of the moors, not too far a drive from the salty air of Whitby. There's a log fire if the weather turns gloomy, and a table out in the pretty garden for sunny days. There I intend to write my novel and think deep thoughts, surrounded by my research books and listening to music.

Sounds idyllic?

Yes, it would be idyllic - if I wasn't so hard up against my deadline. Instead, picture me hammering away at the keys like a lunatic, pacing the small living room of the cottage as I consider how to get from A to B, or staring out of the window in despair because the story has stalled.

Meanwhile the final copyedits for my first historical novel, The Queen's Secret, will be sitting on the table, laughing at me. They are due back with the publisher just after my return from Yorkshire. They involve tricky and detailed research on which stuffed birds might have been served at Elizabeth I's table, other than the varieties already mentioned in the book, and some fiendish logistics which will probably have me tearing my hair out as I confront their impossibility.

I shall take one or two of my mother's diaries with me for comfort and inspiration. There's nothing like reading over a few random entries in her journals to burst my bubble of self-importance, reminding me in my darkest hour of 'Why me?' that writers have existed who write quicker, harder and without complaining so much.

Catch you all on the flipside.

Pond: a poem from Camper Van Blues (due soon from Salt Publishing)

Pond
(for Yvonne)

Up to your thighs in our new garden pond —
or what will be a pond by half past five —
you seem less human, more amphibian.

To make inert black plastic come alive
with forms that creep, crawl, swim and reproduce,
you heave yourself around collapsing sides

with the ingenuity of an Odysseus.
Soil bouncing blindly off your spade like light,
you tack the liner down that’s working loose.

This muddy sluice is all we’ll have tonight.
The after-dinner speech is ‘Stocking Fish’.
Meanwhile, the garden’s a construction site.

It won’t be long before we come to wish
we’d never started this, both unprepared
to excavate so broad and deep a ditch.

You level up. The pond is nearly there,
one thing we can’t divide now if we part:
a permanence whose origins we share;
the leaky moon inside a sinking heart.


First published in Poetry Review

Apologies to those who may have read this poem before when I posted it up last September. I'm off on my annual writing retreat first thing in the morning and have much packing to do.

I shall post up a previously unseen poem on my return, promise!

Retreating

The inside of my mind right now ...