Thoughts on Kendal Mountain Festival November 2018:
What a weekend! Apart
from feeling sad not get to the launch of Watch the Birdie anthol. (Beautiful Dragons Press, ed. Rebecca Bilkau) at RSPB
Leighton Moss on Friday 16th November, I loved every minute of the two events I read at, at Kendal Mountain Literature Festival. From This Place I Know (Handstand Press, eds. Liz Nuttall, Kerry Darbishire and Kim Moore) reading to yesterday's launch of Waymaking, (Vertebrate Publishing, eds. Helen Mort, Camilla Barnard, Claire Carter and Heather Dawe) from wandering along the sunlit
banks of the Kent, hoping to see otters - didn't see any, I live in hope!
- to sitting quietly in
Kendal Parish Church before yesterday's reading... enjoying a coffee, chatting
to lay preachers about poetry and moments that light you up
- then back to KMLF to
plunge into the high energy buzz! It was fab, and I was absolutely thrilled to
be part of the readers, listening to women's tales of adventure... from bike to
ice, to falls, to moments of synaesthesia*, (I can identify with this!)
kayaking, running, visiting First Nation peoples, to pondering on the body, on
pain and endurance...
Big thanks to Paul
Scully, Claire Carter, Heather Dawe, Camilla Barnard, Helen Mort, AlpKit, all at Vertebrate Publishing and Kendal
Mountain Film and Literature Festival, Jacquie Scott (Director), all the
wonderful readers, organisers, editors, publishers and especially to the
lively, friendly audiences on both days... I'm feeling so buzzed, I need a swim!
channelling Mum's words! "But words are magic, too" Photo: Kevin Moran (copyright)
***
Still buzzing from
the weekend! Lesson plan, handouts, writing prompts for Saturday's Write on the Farm workshop -
sorted! Had a wild, leaf-skittering stride through Conishead Priory woods
this morning, onto the beach, tide just turned, waves flinging themselves
about... with the blown around leaf-crisps swirled up into air, I felt part
of the wind and the sea...
... back home, quick
turnaround and off to Birkrigg where I did a spot (spot being the operative
word here!) of running, that adrenalin buzz from KMLF is still whizzing around
my body!
Watched two jays
nut-gathering in a field, hopping back and forth, heads cocked, pause, then
quick beak-stab down... snowdrop shoots were pushing up near the dog graves...
way too early, surely. Sat for a while, in calm, under the Cedar of
Lebanon... thought about what poems to read at the Wordsworth Trust on
Wednesday 21st, ... clouds, grey and white against a mauve-pink sky...
leaves fallen from
next door’s beech tree means I can now see Birkrigg from my window.
|
Geraldine Green, 19.11.2018
*“In these catalytic moments
it’s possible to feel the colour brown instead of smelling that newly dug
flowerbed, or embody green when the rising sap of a young birch tree reaches
out”, ‘Rewilding’ by Lee Craigie, p.66-67, fr. Waymaking Vertebrate Publishing
All royalties will be split
equally between two charities: Rape Crisis the John Muir Trust.
Photo: Kevin Moran (copyright)
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