Here is another wonderful picture taken by Glyn Goodrick and my poem to match. If you’re tempted by these poems and/or pictures, they are from ‘Recollections’ available from flambard press.

Fortuna

Your wings
are still buried
in our muddy river
yet you offer, with your right hand,
a drink.

Top Up
every barrel
daughter of Jupiter.
We owe our rough times and our smooth
to you.

So cheers!
Our Geordie cups
will always be half-full
not half-empty: that’s our nature.
Good health.

Who knows
the stone’s story
or what blessings it brought,
but we are the inheritors.
Our thanks

Fortune,
You smiled on us.
First angel of the North,
from your horn of plenty you filled
the Tyne.

Like most men of Shields he loves clubbing
chasing daughters of night beyond dusk.
It’s a madness that frees him from labours,
a kind of apple-lust.

On the pull and undressed-down to kill
he’s out on the town with a vengeance
two pints and he struts like a lion;
wears the skin on his sleeve.

And if his right arm’s raised in passion
it’s not that he’s waiting to strike.
Travolta-slim hips on the wriggle;
that’s the action he seeks.

He’s more of a god than a hero
to whole legions of men in the north.
The sight of him makes every woman
fall in praise at his feats.

They see past his hard reputation
past the belt-grabbing lover of ale
to a disarmed man who would travel
the far ends of the earth.

Look again at the Shields man the god;
test his metal against other men.
Then tell me who you’d rather ride with,
in the bowl of the sun.

Ruins of St. Andrews Cathedral, The Thorn Tree in the Quadrangle of St. Mary’s College. This tree is purported to have been planted by Mary Queen of Scots in 1563, and finally, St. Andrews Castle.

During the week commencing 21 April I spent a great four days at beautiful St. Andrews. It really is the most amazing place. Staff at the school of English look out on St. Andrews Castle and then out to sea. I really don’t know how anyone manages to get any work done, given the view they have from their windows.

It was lovely catching up with Robert Crawford again and chatting with Don Paterson. Isn’t it funny how the busiest of people can always somehow manage to find time for you!

In between planning presentations and the usual exciting stuff of housework, (and Oh yes! being informed that next year I am to become the mother of the bride and that dreaded figure, a mother-in-law)I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the usefulness of poetry, linked of course to Horace’s view that it should be both beautiful and useful.

Naturally, when Horace talked about ‘useful’ he had entirely different ideas in his mind than I have now - I wouldn’t dream of setting myself up as a teacher of morals and behaviour, but then I guess he wouldn’t have gone to down town Rome to tackle issues of exclusion, or to an endangered patch of green to provide an opportunity for the local community to express their views and anxieties. Which ever way you look at it though, I suppose both Horace and myself are making a social commentary - would that I could make mine with his eloquence!

I’m not sure yet whether this is the name by which our group will be known, but basically we are members of the Poetry Society with
TS, DL and DH postcodes. This evening, 31 March, marked our second meeting as a group and I have to say that I’d forgotten how enjoyable it can be meeting with like-minded people simply to discuss poetry and poems in an informal setting.

Poetry, especially poetry-writing can be quite a lonely activity, sometimes you can be so close to your own work as not to be able to cast a good critical eye over it. Even more remarkably sometimes there are threads and sub-texts in your work that you didn’t know were there until someone else told you.

If anyone reading this blog wants to find out more about the Poetry Society or Poetry Society Stanzas go to

Join the Poetry Society: www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/membership/

Please see http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/membership/news/.

Contrary to popular belief I have not left the country, I’ve just not been blogging recently.

My residency at the Museum of Antiquities has come to an end. It has been a great experience and I’ve worked with some fantastic people on this project. The director, Lindsay Allason-Jones commissioned me to write a small collection of 28 poems to celebrate the closing of this wonderful museum prior to its incorporation into the Great North Museum.

The collection with great accompanying photographs taken by the Museum’s IT and media officer, Glyn Goodrick is available from Flambard Press at www.flambardpress.co.uk

PS If you want to see the poem that goes with the little figure of Hercules, click into the ‘poetry’ section and look for ‘South Shields God’

Along with Professor Stephen Harrison I contributed to the series, ‘The Essay: Greek and Latin Voices’ on BBC Radio 3 last night, 18th December, 2007 at 11pm

If you missed my comments and reading why not use the Listen Again facility on the BBC website, the link for this programme is:

www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/speechanddrama/index.shtml

Calling all Horace fans: Listen to BBC Radio 3 at 11pm on Tuesday, 18th December, 2007 to hear Professor Stephen Harrison, Fellow and Tutor in Classics, Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Professor of Classical Languages and Literature, University of Oxford, giving a commentary, and myself reading some of my ‘versions’ of Horace poems.

The programme is called, The Essay:Greek and Latin Voices

Friday 16 November was an evening to remember for me and I hope too, for the sixty or so members of the audience. Well done and thank you to everyone who came and made Friday such a success. A special thanks to Kay Easson at the Lit and Phil for inviting Stephen Harrison and myself to deliver this event.

I owe a big thank-you to Professor Stephen Harrison who came up from Oxford specially to give commentaries on how my poems relate to the Horatian texts and I know from the feedback I’ve had so far that everyone found his explanations very interesting and enlightening.

After the event a twelve of us went to supper and I must say I felt very supported by the classics professors, lecturers and senior lecturers from Newcastle, Durham and Glasgow Universities.

For me this was a celebration not only of my own poetry but of Horace himself and the evening ending with a lovely supper made the whole event feel like a proper Horace symposium. In terms of nunc est bibendum, it was and we did! Cheers Horace!

It’s Sunday night, 16 September and I’m preparing to return home tomorrow. There are strains of a lovely jazz concert coming from the Old Bank Hotel, really soulful and pensive which sort of sums up how I feel right now.

It’s been a eventful visit actually, apart from my recording the programme for BBC Radio 3 and visiting Chedworth and Cirencester, I spent all day last Friday at a conference about Theorising Performance which was very interesting and there were lots of overlaps between the idea of performance and poetry readings. I then went to a lovely launch party and supper at Magdalen for Oliver Taplin’s latest book. We had an open-air supper under the cloisters at Magdalen and it was great catching up with so many people I know and meeting new ones.

Anyway, back to the packing!

This face, darling, could bring wise men to war,
it doesn’t need your macho-man protection.
I’m used to being the centre of attention,
it’s jealousy I seek, not country air.

The smell of goat’s best sampled from afar,
as for lyre-skills, dear, that’s pure invention,
a ruse, to make you think it’s my intention
to sooth your muse, not follow my own star.

I’ll gladly join you in a glass of red,
but I’m not for interweaving through the night.
By ten I’m usually ready for my bed,
to dream of Cyrus’ passions at their height.

And turning men to pigs; that’s in your head.
You do it to yourselves – put out the light.

For the first time since I arrived I finally got to my favourite spot in the Corpus library. I’m in search of information on Horace’s women, so that I can give them the opportunity to answer back in my version of Odes Book I.

I had another fascinating lunchtime chat about that very subject with Robin Nisbet on Wednesday. He’s an absolute fountain of knowledge and of course I do appreciate that it is a matter of debate about whether the named women in Horace’s Odes actually existed. One of the good things about writing poetry is that one can take liberties, so whether or not they really did exist in Horace’s poems, I have given them a life in my versions, based on information and inspiration from various Odes.

I don’t feel brave enough to share them with Robin, but have posted one in my poetry section - enjoy!

I visited the Roman Villa at Chedworth and Cirencester Museum on Thursday and saw some fantastic mosaics. If I could have floors like this I would rip my carpets up tomorrow!

I found the ones at Chedworth really inspiring because they are still positioned in exactly the place they were originally laid down. I found myself wondering how many sandal-clad feet had trodden those mosaics, imagined the chatter in the bath house, it’s so much more real when these things are left in their original places.

I bought a couple of lovely postcards of some of the mosaics, but I can’t put them up here because of copyright restrictions. I’m hoping that a photograph I took will turn out OK so that I can put one up here later.