Passing Through, Indigo Dreams 2018

"I .... am always glad

to touch the living rock again" (John Muir)

Enjoying a beach comb,  Merlin's Cave, Tintagel beach Cornwall 

photo by Geoff Green 2007

"In her ‘love letter to Cumbria’, Geraldine Green weaves together strands of auto-biography, living depictions both of landscape and of inward journeying, moments of revelation always grounded in the actual and the observed, and brings all these qualities together in one sweeping compass to create a volume rich in sensory and meditative experience.  We hear the shining voices of earth, air, fire and water.  This is writing that re-interprets modern pastoral, elemental and contemporary in all its facets.  Using language that is nuanced and open enables this poet to catch, as if on the wing, glimpse after heart-glad glimpse of her part of this beautiful vulnerable planet." - Penelope Shuttle

Stone Renga

What do I know of stones?

Flat, mud-grey ones

on Foulney Island. Layer upon layer

heaped up for feet to scramble and slide on.

What do I know of stones?

Those at Aldingham, dark grey

round as a bird’s egg

shot through with milky quartz

in circles and crosses that lie

warm and smooth in my palm.

What do I know of stones?

Limestone dragons on Birkrigg

dinosaur-shapes glint white

fissures on ancient pavements.

What do I know of stones, their secret

of fossils: ammonites, ferns, feathers

spiralled, whorled worlds imprinted within them

ready  to take flight

when their old stone-bodies

crack open.

Delighted to have this poem in Stone Renga  an anthology written, produced and birthed by a love of stones, ed. Alan Berecka and Tom Murphy, Tale Feathers Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico

  south Walney nature reserve (photo by Geraldine Green copyright)

"Geraldine Green’s poems are alert to landscape, seasons, rootedness that draws from deep aquifers of language, change that flits like cloud shadows across the page. Some seemed light as thistle heads but proved enduringly strong, rich with seed. As I read, I almost expected goldfinches to feed alongside me with their otherworldly attentiveness. But that attentiveness was all hers."

Graham Mort

Burns Beck Moss 16.9.2017 (photo by Geraldine Green copyright)

I recall our walk in Burns Beck Moss,

the softness of ground, the softness of feet, the hush of bodies, the quiet chat and the moss cushioning us, our feet, our chat, our bodies, our thoughts, the frogs’ stretched balletic legs, their crouched sanctuary among the sphagnum, speeding away from boots and trainers, our feet on cushioned silence, crushing their territory.

Geraldine Green, Passing Through, pub, Indigo Dreams 2018

South Walney Nature Reserve, photo by Geraldine Green copyright

At home on the Bay

Its light, its silver, its mud-tanged-tangle-tongued

salt-licked presence and the birds, dunlins, perhaps,

or knot?

too far out for us to catch what they were

without binocs. How they swoop and mimic

the murmurations of starlings, but

are not, these wide-winged verses of song

these wing-spread low-tide flit-flight light-tilted

blown along froth

of feather-mimicked pebbles and foam

interpretations of mud and sky

these birds that rise and fall with the incoming tide

this late afternoon beneath the crescent moon

that rises above shavings of licked-clean shells

and bones.

Geraldine Green (copyright Passing Through pub. Indigo Dreams 2018)

Geraldine at Aldingham, photo by Geoff Green copyright

Whaup

"I take my gladness in the… sound of the curlew instead of the laughter of men”

- ‘The Seafarer’ Anon. Anglo-Saxon poet

In the absence of curlew I must attempt

to call it down, to call it back to fell and shore

call it back to sing the moor alive once more.

In the absence of curlew clouds must learn

to bring back spring, to lay cloud eggs on upland soil

to curve cloud bodies into curlew-grace

into speckled feathers that mimic mica-sand and

mottled stones, the guarding of eggs, slow beating

of wing, curved-down bill that probes the earth

for worms, the shore for crabs, its long wail

the cry of the dead waiting to be re-born.

I must again recall the great whaup’s warning

the dead’s return from dreaming. Listen

to what the night is saying through the piercing

cry of cur leee, of cur-lee.

pub. in Curlew Calling anthology, ed. Karen Lloyd
Geraldine Green (copyright Passing Through IDP 2018)


Thank you Dawn Bauling, co-editor of  Indigo Dreams Pubs. for your kind words:

Passing Through, by Geraldine Green

It is indeed a love letter to Cumbria - like walking through its parts with a lyrical David Attenborough - nothing gets missed, all the history, all the beauty, all the unpredictable wonder of it - from the way the waves lap on Coniston to the history in the old stones on Foulney Island, its minutiae and its grandeur. You want to wander with Geraldine and see with her eyes, her real eyes and her mind's eye. Forget the tourist information guides - if you want to know what the lakes and fells are all about read this. 

Looking forward to reading from Passing Through, to be published in 2018 by Indigo Dreams  at a venue near you! 

Here's and extract from my introduction to Salt Road on the Poems & Poetics website by Jerome Rothenberg 

me, reading in nature, Eycott Hill, 22.7.2017, on the 'Write in Nature' outdoor creative writing workshop I led for Cumbria Wildlife Trust, photo by Jane Moss-Luffram (copyright)

"I .... am always glad
to touch the living rock again
and dip my hand in the high mountain sky"

(Wolf, Unpublished Journals, 221)"

taken from website:

'Knights of Nothingness'

Poems in my new collection Passing Through Indigo Dreams Pubs. 2018 have appeared in the following anthologies and publications:

Poems in this collection have been accepted for publication or have appeared in: Stone Renga, Tail Feathers Press, Santa Fe, NM in 2017; accepted for Waymaking, ed. Helen Mort (due to be published in 2018); Qualia, ed. Roselle Angwin; My Dear Watson, ed. Rebecca Bilkau; The Bees Knees, ed. Rebecca Bilkau, Beautiful Dragons Press; ‘Curlew Calling’ Numenious Press, ed. Karen Lloyd; The Raspberry and the Rowan, Cumbria Wildlife Trust; The City Zine, ed. Kathy Smith, Ohio, USA; Haiku Calendar 2017 ed. Walter E. Harris III Long Island, USA;  SpeakEasy Magazine, Vol.1 ed. Nick Pemberton; Watershed – an anthology in response to Storm Desmond, eds. Nick Pemberton, Ann Wilson, Geraldine Green; Poetry Bay Long Island Quarterly USA; Bright Hill Press 25th anniversary anthology, ed. Bertha Rogers, Catskills USA

 

Waymaking, anthology of women's writing and artwork, Vertebrate Press

Waymaking anthology

***stop press***

Waymaking, Vertebrate Publishing is now available to pre-order from our website.

Here is the link: https://www.v-publishing.co.uk/books/categories/wildlife-photography-and-outdoors/waymaking.html

The book will be released this October in a timely publication that marks the centenary year of women’s suffrage and ongoing discussions about gender issues in the media, and will feature contributions from over fifty writers and artists, including award-winning author Bernadette McDonald, world-leading climber Hazel Findlay, and adventurers Sarah Outen and Anna McNuff.

While 2018 has seen a surge in books written by women for women hitting the shops, one area still largely underrepresented by female voices is the outdoor adventure genre. As the UK’s leading publisher of outdoor adventure titles, Vertebrate Publishing aims to address this imbalance with Waymaking.

Commenting on the disparity between the number of adventure books written by men and women, Vertebrate’s managing director, Jon Barton said, ‘While we actively seek out female authors and never aim to publish a guidebook without photos of both male and female athletes, the majority of our books are written and read by men. At the moment we’re missing fifty per cent of the voices of adventurers and nature lovers. We hope to redress this balance with Waymaking and inspire other women to get out there and to tell their stories.’

All royalties from the sales of Waymaking will be split equally between the John Muir Trust and Rape Crisis, helping to conserve our wild places and raise awareness for the problem of sexual violence in our society and others. Funding raised via Kickstarter will support production and marketing costs.

Waymaking will be published by Vertebrate Publishing on 4 October 2018.

Vertebrate Publishing is an award-winning publishing house based in Sheffield:

Vertebrate Publishing
228 Psalter Lane
Sheffield
S11 8UT
www.v-publishing.co.uk

4     You can find Vertebrate Publishing on Facebook and Twitter:
Facebook – www.facebook.com/vertebratepublishing
Twitter – @VertebratePub
      For further information, please contact Vertebrate’s Head of Marketing Lorna Hargreaves on lorna@v-publishing.co.uk or 0114 267 9277.

Geraldine Green, poet, tutor, editor and mentor

“My assignment was to review only three from the 20-odd small press publications sent to me, but before signing off, let me recommend a small blue booklet titled The Skin by Geraldine Green, from Flarestack Publishing in Birmingham.  Green’s gift for poetry is naïve – or perhaps the right word is natural – in a way I would have thought impossible these days.  Though she writes in free forms, her poems kept reminding me of WH Davies’.  She writes a good deal about angels (a fashion these days) and about love and the land, but there’s a freshness about her work that brought tears to my eyes.  Real tears, like a child’s.”

-       Anne Stevenson, Mslexia OctNovDec 2003

* update* Geraldine's third full collection, Passing Through, will be published in 2018 by Indigo Dreams Pubs.

UK poet Geraldine Green former  writer-in-residence at Brantwood Coniston Cumbria home of John Ruskin and also former writer-in-residence of Swarthmoor Hall Ulverston, home of George Fox and Margaret Fell, Geraldine has performed widely in the UK, North America, Italy and Greece. 

She began writing poetry after undertaking a BA Joint Hons. Degree in Imaginative Writing/Literature Life and Thought at Liverpool John Moores University, where she gained a First Class Honours Degree. Fired up by her venture into the academic and creative writing worlds, Geraldine undertook a Research Diploma in Ecopoetics, exploring the influence of the land on the poetry of Emily Bronte.  

On moving back to Cumbria she continued her academic and creative writing through Lancaster University where she was awarded an MA (Distinction) in Creative Writing Poetry in 2005. 

This was followed in 2011 by a PhD in Creative Writing Poetry, also at Lancaster University, titled: "An Exploration of Identity and Environment through Poetry".  As well as a new collection of poetry, Geraldine explored the writing of Wordsworth, Lorca, Levine, Harjo and Ehrlich as well as drawing on the works of new geographers, sociologists, linguistic anthropologists and philosophers. Geraldine was fortunate to undertake her doctoral studies through funding by the Arts and Humanities Research Council  AHRC

Here's the Abstract to her Reflective Thesis:

"ABSTRACT

‘The Other Side of the Bridge’

This is a new collection of poems that forms an original contribution to knowledge and 80% of my Ph.D. Themes that have arisen during the writing of this material are: time and place, placement and displacement, inner and outer landscapes and an analysis of my creative process, exploring and questioning my use of free verse, the lyrical ‘I’ and inherited voices. Both collection and thesis are an exploration of identity and environment through the medium of poetry.

Reflective Thesis:

The thesis grew out of a dialogue between the reflective process and the poems and comprises research into the above themes.  Drawing on reading of the works of literary critics such as David Lodge and Terry Eagleton, but also of work by new geographers, sociologists, linguistic anthropologists and philosophers (for example, Doreen Massey, Stuart Hall, Paul du Gay and Noel G. Charlton), the thesis and poems tightened into an ever closer dialogue. It also explores my own creative process, how I write my poetry and why, as well as placing it in a wider context of poets, past and present. (e.g. William Wordsworth, Federico Garcia Lorca, Octavio Paz, Philip Levine, Joy Harjo and Louise Erdrich). Underpinning the thesis and collection are questions of identity, culture and place and of how a poetry collection can be a place in which such questions are explored. It was written to illuminate where my poetry comes from, where it is taking me and what can be discovered from the poetry."

Her work has been widely anthologised in the UK, US and Italy. She’s had four poetry pamphlet collections published through Flarestack Publications, Palores Publications and Swarthmoor Hall Press. Her two full poetry collections titled: The Other Side of the Bridge and Salt Road, were published by Indigo Dreams Publishing Ltd. in 2012 and 2013.

Geraldine’s enthusiasm for poetry shines through in her workshops and courses. Says Geraldine “My passion is for sharing poetry as widely as possible, preferably introducing it to people who perhaps normally shy away from it. My feeling is that poetry, indeed all the performing arts, should be grass-roots led, forming a community, a communality if you will, whereby people gain support and encouragement – as well as being entertained and as fired up as I am about it.”

2015 saw her celebrate ten years of poetry tours in North America at readings that included: The Woody Guthrie Festival Okemah Oklahoma, where she and other poets had the honour of having their work accompanied by internationally known musician David Amram.  Geraldine has also performed alongside Beat Poet Michael McClure in Oakland California, at the Walt Whitman Birthplace Long Island, the Bowery Poetry Club New York City and the William Carlos Williams Center, New Jersey. She regularly reads and co-tutors workshops with New York poet George Wallace.

UK events include reading with Jacob Polley at the Wordsworth Trust, George Wallace for Apples and Snakes Cornwall and the Dylan Thomas Centre Swansea, Penelope Shuttle Cornwall and alongside Jerome Rothenberg at a Kurt Schwitters’ Celebration Ambleside. and Saxophonist Jess Gillam Finalist of the BBC's Young Musician of the Year 2016.

An experienced freelance creative writing tutor Geraldine runs regular creative writing residential courses and workshops at a variety of places in the UK, including Brantwood where she is currently writer-in-residence, for Cumbria Wildlife Trust and for The National Trust. She’s also worked with artists and musicians including ARne Richards and Isabel Knowland of the Oxford Concert Party, digital and visual artists and a photographer.

Geraldine has also had the honour of presenting a Paper on Ecopoetics in the Work of John Clare and Aldo Leopold for the South West Texas Popular Culture Committee Albuquerque; given a talk for for Cumbrian's Women Police Officers in Keswick; and presented a Paper at a Conference on the Work of Lawrence Durrell, Corfu

Her new collection, Passing Through, has been accepted for publication by Indigo Dreams in 2018. 

Geraldine recently co-edited an anthology titled Watershed, a collection of poetry and prose from Cumbrian writers written in response to the 2015 December Floods. Proceeds from the sale of anthology and related readings go to The Cumbrian Community Foundation Flood Recovery Appeal.

Former sessional teacher in creative writing at Cumbria University and the University of Lancaster, she is an experienced freelance creative writing tutor, writer, poetry editor and mentor. Geraldine tutors creative writing workshops for Adult Education, Dallam School, Dallam.

You can hear her read her poem as part of the poetry project on the National Trust's wonderful SY Gondola, Coniston Water:

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/steam-yacht-gondola/features/november-2016-gondolas-annus-mirabilis

Geraldine is an associate editor of Poetry Bay

and blogs at: Geraldine Green Salt Road

This poet takes her place in contemporary poetry with work that shines with joy in and respect for language.  The vitality of life’s many experiences are evoked here with all the senses. - Penelope Shuttle

You can read four prose poems from her third full collection Passing Through which will be published in 2018 by Indigo Dreams: Passing through


and from Salt Road published by Indigo Dreams, here:

'Salt Road'

Review of Geraldine's poetry by Penelope Shuttle:

Geraldine Green’s passion for and knowledge of the natural world and its spiritual energies has its roots and takes its cue from home ground, her native Cumbria.  She has noted her ‘long and deep connection’ with Cumbria. She draws inspiration from light over water, tidal energy, the intent of the land combined with rich tellings of family and local memory.  But her poems and prose-poems also travel the roads and the seas:  from Cumbria to Kansas, New Mexico, Spain, Greece, New York, Skye and Turkey.  

This poet takes her place in contemporary poetry with work that shines with joy in and respect for language.  The vitality of life’s many experiences are evoked here with all the senses.

Penelope Shuttle

and by Graham Mort:

"Geraldine Green’s poems are alert to landscape, seasons, rootedness that draws from deep aquifers of language, change that flits like cloud shadows across the page. Some seemed light as thistle heads but proved enduringly strong, rich with seed. As I read, I almost expected goldfinches to feed alongside me with their otherworldly attentiveness. But that attentiveness was all hers." - Graham Mort

and Sue Sims, Poetry Space "Landscape and Memory"

WRITE IN NATURE, EYCOTT HILL, 6TH APRIL 2018

WRITE IN NATURE, EYCOTT HILL

Thanks to all who came to yesterday's Write in Nature, shared wild winds and poetry, out on Eycott Hill, Cumbria Wildlife Trust's Nature Reserve, north Cumbria nature reserve near Mungrisdale (northern Fells). 

Car shared from Mungrisdale Village Hall to Eycott Hill, and, just as we set off, a red squirrel hopped across the road in front of us as we drove from Mungrisdale Village Hall to Eycott Hill - a good start to our day! 

Saw shrew trails through blond grass and sphagnum, Luing cattle, curlews, wheatear - whose name is nothing to do with wheat. Or ears. But means white rump, or white ears (go figure!); larks (a fair few!), buzzards, a kestrel, saw grid work of old peat cutting areas, contrasting with the many round images: sheepfold, mole hills, cow pats, mouse holes 

and around us the shaking-you-alive wind that had us sheltering on the north/north-west facing side of the acid green lichened slabs of Eycott Volcanics, when we reached the top, to stop. Lunch. Listen to one of the group reading 'Sedimentary' by Katrina Porteous.

Still streaks of snow on the tops, we were in the company of Blaencathra (rocky chair) Carrock fell, with its Iron Age Hill fort, its sides a mass of juniper, the valley the peat brown beck with dubs, ideal for a plunge and swim. To the west, Grizedale Pike, Causey Pike, Catbells; to the south the Kirkstone Fells; east to a limestone ridge fringed by Ash and beyond, to Cross Fell, Hartside, the Penines home of the Helm Wind... north to Carlisle and the Solway ... what a place! Well worth a visit.

Looking forward to reading poetry and prose later in the spring/summer and collating it with Jody Ferguson (Cumbria Wildlife Trust) into an online e-anthology for the Trust's website.

Finally, big thanks to Jody Ferguson of Cumbria Wildlife Trust. You  can find out more about Eycott Hill on their website.

Jody Ferguson

Eycott Hill Communications and Events OfficerSupported by the Heritage Lottery Fund

Cumbria Wildlife Trust

Gosling Sike Farm

Houghton Road

Houghton

Carlisle, CA3 0LD

http://www.cumbriawildlifetrust.org.uk/eycott-hill

Geraldine Green July 2nd 2018
photos: copyright Geraldine

Passing Through, new collection with Indigo Dreams Pubs.

Thrilled to have my third, full, collection out soon with Indigo Dreams Publishers Ltd. Thank you Ronnie and Dawn!

You can pre-order here:

http://www.indigodreams.co.uk/geraldine-green-pt/4594309588