My diary posts are the place for a bit of my news, poetry community news, plus my adventures in creativity
The plan is to have a LONG BREAK once I get a bit of admin out of the way and keeping this short and sweet. So August traditionally, in the U.K. at least, is when the poetry scene goes to sleep for a bit. Does this happen where you are? Gives me a chance to do some DIY, more accurately DIWALHFVAF or do it with a little help from a friend, in this case one of my neighbours, as there are bookcases to shuffle around, yeah that!
Though cleaning up the bomb site that has evolved after eight months without a proper break is all down to me. Ok, hyperbole! I exaggerate! And hopefully will see friends, get away with luck. So how are your summers going? Mine has been the collision of really sucky weather, the jet stream dipping again apparently, a climate change phenomenon I’ve gone into previously, and raining inside my heart. Sorry for sucky song lyric.
Have been writing though, it it just flows and flows. A recent encounter seems to have effected my practice, process, health, and soul in a very good way. Over the last couple of months been writing love stuff, actually it’s more about love, work, family, relationship, communication, miscommunication and mental health at a time of huge precarity and uncertainty, the cost of living crisis, the climate emergency and all the rest.
I’m not sure if the new poems are to fill in what was missing in the collection in progress (it’s taken me two years to admit there’s a collection in progress) or a new collection, there a lot of editing required but I’ve got two years under the tutelage of Glyn Maxwell and Meryl Pugh to look forward to.
The XR Rebel Library launch party was a huge success, no hitches, no glitches, when we started, confessed we were all nervous but excited, after we were all saying, can’t believe it went so smooth!
Guest readers Ben Okri and Laline Paull were enchanting, other guests generous with their library recommendations. Liz Jensen, co-founder of XR Writers Rebel, reiterated, “We are building a community.”
We don’t seem to have a recoding of the launch it included a section on guest recommendations. You can make your recommendations to the library too. We’re always looking for contributors to our growing collection of literature to explain and explore the climate and biodiversity emergency.
If you’re a writer or poet and would like to share your work or ideas, get in touch! Contact mattroselibrary@gmail.com for prose or poetsrebelxr@gmail.com for poetry.
We raised a glass to the library and to Iggy Fox who inspired the library, a wildlife biologist and Extinction Rebellion activist who died so tragically young. The library is dedicated to his memory.
Anyway here are shots of Laline Paull from Adrian Peacock, who read from her novel Pod, and Ben Okri, who spoke and read and illuminated. Image from @sarahmears10 in twitter quoting Ben saying “stories can capture the sunlight of the truth of the human condition.” The phrase that I will carry in my heart forever from Ben is, “a waterfall is gods tears” from a poem I believe.
Link to the library here https://rebellibrary.com
On another tack, if you want check out and sign this Authors Guild open letter calling for “consent, credit and fair compensation for all historic and future uses of copyright materials in the training of AI systems.”
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So I will resume full diary posts in September with notes on what’s coming up and out now and looking to interview other writers on their practice, process and influences. That kind of thing. If you think that’s you drop me a line via the blog with a brief bio and a line or two on why you write.
If appropriate happy holidays! And if not stay strong we have a new world to build and this earth to save from the fires, floods and droughts, my heart goes out to Sudan and all the other places on this blue, green, golden planet where people struggle with war and dictatorship while at the front line of the climate emergency.
A blog post by Anne Enith Cooper
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