Indigo Dreams poet, Geraldine Green: Newsletter Autumn/Winter 2018, with details of readings, workshops and courses in 2019

IDP poet Geraldine Green has autumn lined up with plenty of readings, workshops and courses!

September 15^th, Scarborough saw her leading a full day workshop for LAPIDUS Scarborough, this was followed by Geraldine reading from her new collection, Passing Through.

September 29^th/30^th once again she was thrilled to run a full day workshop at Cumbria Wildlife Trust’s Nature Reserve, South Walney. Called ‘Write on the Shore’ participants were welcomed to the full day workshop on Saturday. Accommodation at Coastguard Cottage, 29^th/30^th, soon became fully booked!

Says Geraldine “ It was an honour to be invited to read at the poetry event ‘When Norman Nicolson met Percy Kelly’, but sadly, it was the same day as ‘Write on the Shore’. Big thanks to event organizer for offering to have someone read my poems on my behalf! I was there in spirit, looking across to Black Combe and Millom, Norman Nicholson’s birthplace.”

Looking ahead:

‘Write on the Farm’ full day workshops: October 20^th, November 24^th. Booking is through Geraldine.

Thursday November 1^st, 7pm-9.30pm: Brantwood Coniston Cumbria, Poetry Evening, Open Mic and Supper: IDP poet Geraldine Green once again hosted and read at the Poetry Evening, Open Mic and Supper in the lovely Terrace Café, Brantwood, with guest poets:

Graham Mort

Helen Mort (will read in 2019!)

Kerry Darbishire

Booking through Brantwood

enquiries@brantwood.org.uk

Friday 9th November: Workshop in Penrith Library with Penrith Reading Group

Friday November 16th: Launch of anthology 'Watch the Birdie' ed. Rebecca Bilkau, Beautiful Dragons Press RSPB Belighton Moss

Saturday November 17th: Kendal Mountain Film and Literature Festival: 11.30-1pm reading from 'This Place I Know', eds. Liz Nuttall, Kerry Darbishire, Kim Moore Handstand Press

Sunday November 18th: Kendal Mountain Film and Literature Festival: 2.30pm-4pm official launch of Waymaking eds. Helen Mort, Claire Carter, Heather Dawe, Camilla Barnard, Vertebrate Press

Wednesday 21st: November, 7.30 – 9.00pm
Wordsworth Trust Grasmere, Jerwood Centre: Indigo Dreams evening: Geraldine Green and Kerry Darbishire, introduction by Polly Atkin

Geraldine is delighted to be reading with Indigo Dreams poet Kerry Darbishire as part of their IDP Northern Tour. They’ll be reading from their new IDP collections Passing Through and Distance, Sweet on My Tongue.

This event is free. Please contact the Wordsworth Trust for more details: wordsworth.org.uk   
Tel. +44(0)15394 35544

2019: IDP Northern Tour cont. Geraldine and Kerry have poetry readings planned for 2019, including:

March 17th: Brantwood Coniston, Geraldine will host and read this event alongside guest poets Pippa Little, Kathleen Jones and Kerry Darbishire, 3-5pm £5 incl. refreshments

Booking is through Brantwood

enquiries@brantwood.org.uk

Geraldine, Madison Square Garden, November 2012

July 2019: Geraldine will be taking her new collection Passing Through on a poetry road trip with her to America. 

July 27th: Brewery Arts Centre Kendal, Verbalise! host: Ann Grant

October 4th-6th: Borderlines Festival Carlisle (date/time tbc)

November 7th: Brantwood Coniston Geraldine hosting and reading with guest poets Helen Mort, Graham Mort and Kerry Darbishire - and you! Open Mic and Supper

Graham Mort

Helen Mort 

Kerry Darbishire

Booking is through Brantwood

enquiries@brantwood.org.uk

Enjoying the surf! Cedar Beach, Long Island July 2015

Her poems in her new collection Passing Through (IDP) have found homes in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including Grey Hen Press, Waymaking Vertebrate Press, This Place I Know Handstand Press, Riggwelter, High Window and BEAT-itude Local Gems Press USA, celebrating the Beat poets.

You can read a review of Passing Through by Bernard M. Jackson in Issue 240 of Reach Poetry.

Check out more workshops/residential courses including Brantwood, here residential courses and readings 2019

After the WAYMAKING event, Kendal Mountain Film and Literature Festival, 18th November 2018

reading from Waymaking The Maltroom, Brewery Arts Centre at Kendal Mountain Film and Literature Festival November 2018. Photo: Kevin Moran (copyright)

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)

BRIEF BIO, PLUS FEEDBACKS FROM WRITING WORKSHOPS

Geraldine with her dog, Roy, Crag Head Brantwood 27th October 2015. Photo by Geoff Green

Geraldine Green is an experienced freelance creative writing tutor, mentor and associate editor of Poetry Bay www.poetrybay.com  She was first Writer-in-Residence at Swarthmoor Hall, Ulverston, Cumbria and also first Writer-in-Residence at Brantwood Coniston. 

She, has worked collaboratively on projects alongside musicians, photographers, visual and digital artists and tutored on a variety of creative writing workshops including Cumbria Wildlife Trust, Cont. Education Lancaster University, Adult Education Dallam Community Centre, Cumbria NHS PartnershipTrust, Society of Medical Writers, National Trust, Brantwood, Lancaster University, Suffolk Poetry Society and the University of Cumbria. 

She gained a PhD in creative writing titled "An Exploration of Identity and Environment through Poetry"   from Lancaster University in 2011.

Her collections are: The Skin and Passio {Flarestack}, Poems of a Mole Catcher’s Daughter (Palores). The Other Side of the Bridge (Indigo Dreams). Her latest collection Salt Road was published in 2013 (Indigo Dreams). You can read reviews of Salt Road here:
www.indigodreamsbookshop.com/#/geraldine-green/4565286878 

Review by Steve Matthews, Bookends, Carlisle

Review of 'Salt Road' on Poetry Space website  

Her poetry has been widely anthologised in the UK, US and Italy and translated into German and Romanian. Talks include: ‘On Meeting Lawrence Durrell’, Centenary Celebrations, Corfu, and ‘Ecopoetics: The Works of John Clare and Aldo Leopold’ at The South West Texas Conference, Albuquerque New Mexico. She’s also contributed to Writing Works - A Resource Handbook for Therapeutic Writing Workshops and Activities (Jessica Kingsley).

Geraldine, who frequently performs her poetry in North America, has read at WoodyFest, www.woodyguthrie.com/ on a number of occasions, including an extended poetry trip to Oklahoma and Kansas in July 2013; alongside Jack and Adele Foley and Michael McClure, Oakland, California 2009; with George Wallace, Penelope Shuttle, Caroline Carver and Victoria Field on a poetry trip to New York, Long Island and New Hampshire in 2007, with poets George Wallace, Linda Graham and Rhonda Ward in New York City, Long Island and Connecticut 2005.

She  also reads widely in the UK, venues include: International Women’s Arts Festival Kendal, with Carol Hamilton, Janine Pommy Vega and Rhonda Ward; Everyman Theatre Liverpool; Solfest Cumbria; Wordsworth Trust Grasmere, Cwmdonkin Drive Dylan Thomas’s House, Swansea, Apples and Snakes Cornwall and Kendal, Ted Hughes’ Festival Calderdale Reader Development Hebden Bridge, CatStrand Theatre New Galloway; Kurt Schwitters Celebration Ambleside, alongside Jerome Rothenberg

Listen to Jack Foley read and discuss her work here: www.kpfa.org/archive/id/81889 
Read about her work here on Jerome Rothenberg's blog:
http://poemsandpoetics.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/outsider-poems-mini-anthology-in_19.html

Or visit her blog ‘Salt Road’: http://geraldinegreensaltroad.blogspot.co.uk

Feedback received from participants on Geraldine's workshops:

"Brantwood, still the best poetry party in town!" from one very happy participant on last August's poetry course at Brantwood.

From Suffolk Poetry Society members:

Some lovely feedback I received after the last workshop I ran for SPS:

"I wanted to say how much I enjoyed the workshop - I found it inspiring and supportive, and you are so warm and such fun as well... thank you so much. I hope to work with you in the future."

"Thank you for a wonderful workshop... and thanks for saying you don’t mind me ‘borrowing’ some of your ideas. I particularly loved the foreign language activity. Genius!"

“About fifteen of us enjoyed a stimulating poetry workshop with Geraldine Green last Friday. The workshop took place at UCS, and was followed by a delicious meal, poetry reading by Geraldine and Open Mic session at Arlington's in Ipswich.

The day of poetry was organised by Ian Griffiths and The Suffolk Poetry Society. I, for one, came away with pages of draft poems and raw material on subjects as diverse as gooseberries and the Caryatids on the Erechtheion in Athens!

Geraldine's relaxed approach gave us the confidence to experiment, and we enjoyed sharing our efforts - and making new friends in the process. I never cease to be amazed (and impressed!) by the care and neat hand writing employed by some poets in their initial phase of drafting.” – Caroline Gill

and some more rather lovely things about my workshops!

SOME LOVELY FEEDBACK FROM PARTICIPANTS ON TWO RESIDENTIAL COURSES

JUNE 2014, BODY PARTS WITH PENELOPE SHUTTLE /GERALDINE GREEN, SWARTHMOOR HALL

SUMMER SOLTICE POETRY WITH GEORGE WALLACE/GERALDINE GREEN, BRANTRWOOD CONISTON - Plus very positive things to say about both venues, Swarthmoor Hall and Brantwood Coniston:

Did the workshop meet your expectations? More than! It was a lovely group of people

Would you recommend it to others? Unreservedly!

Which aspects of the workshop did you like most? Everything!

Geraldine & Penny were fab 5 star tutors

Were the handouts helpful?

·      Yes!

·      More than helpful they were great!

Were the workshops well planned by the tutors?

·      Absolutely!

·      Brilliant!

·      Yes, and very stimulating

Did you enjoy them?

·      Yes, and challenging too

Would you come on this workshop again?

·      Definitely

·      Yes!

·      Yes

Where did you find out about the workshop?

·      Geraldine. I came last year and wanted to come again.

·      From a previous workshop with Geraldine

·      From the internet

·      From Facebook

·      From Penny

Which aspects of the workshop did you like most? The group warmth and collaboration, the fast exercises, i.e. the immediate, time-limited tasks

Would you recommend it to others? Yes!

Yes, for these tutors.

In overall terms did the workshop meet your expectations?

·      Yes, exceeded!

·      100% and more!

·      Exceeded!

Any final thoughts?

·      I feel stimulated and supported, thank you!

·      Thank you so much. I have learned such a lot in 3 days! You have given me the tools and inspiration to move on with my writing. I leave excited, inspired and pen poised. Thank you.

•   “I've been on Geraldine's face-to-face and online workshops and have also booked her to lead several workshops in the past. All her workshops that I've been to have been inspirational so I highly recommend her as a workshop facilitator. She brings her poetry expertise and knowledge to the workshops so I always come away with poems that I’ve written, but also names of interesting poets to read more of.  Another thing I love is that Geraldine creates a lovely supportive group in her workshops and manages to include everyone regardless of whether they are experienced or a beginner or have learning disabilities.” - Carol Ross

•   "I thought the (National Trust Create by the Lake) workshop was very well facilitated, you [Geraldine] really encouraged participants to think creatively and to feel comfortable with sharing what they had produced. You had a lovely manner with people and we would definitely call on your expertise again with future creative writing events. I really look forward to working with you again in the future. I think it's great to do really creative activities in the outdoors, it worked really well on the site. The only thing that people said in their feedback was more time, so we'll have to think about that again in the future!" - Naomi Hewitt Project Manager, National Trust Derwentwater Foreshore Project, Keswick, Cumbria

·       Feedback emailed to me from Anna Turner, from a poetry workshop I ran in October for Calderdale Reader Development and The Elmet Trust, Hebden Bridge:
http://www.theelmettrust.co.uk/

In response to the question: "Was there anything you particularly liked about the day?” The following responses were received:




“Giving and receiving feedback from everyone in the groups – esp. Geraldine’s workshop. Everyone feeling confident to comment and risk.”

“Geraldine’s workshop was very warm and friendly”

“I enjoyed the afternoon writing exercises with Geraldine Green”

“Great group with Geraldine Green!”

•   “I've been on Geraldine's face-to-face and online workshops and have also booked her to lead several workshops in the past. All her workshops that I've been to have been inspirational so I highly recommend her as a workshop facilitator. She brings her poetry expertise and knowledge to the workshops so I always come away with poems that I’ve written, but also names of interesting poets to read more of.  Another thing I love is that Geraldine creates a lovely supportive group in her workshops and manages to include everyone regardless of whether they are experienced or a beginner or have learning disabilities.” - Carol Ross

•   "I thought the (National Trust Create by the Lake) workshop was very well facilitated, you [Geraldine] really encouraged participants to think creatively and to feel comfortable with sharing what they had produced. You had a lovely manner with people and we would definitely call on your expertise again with future creative writing events. I really look forward to working with you again in the future. I think it's great to do really creative activities in the outdoors, it worked really well on the site. The only thing that people said in their feedback was more time, so we'll have to think about that again in the future!" - Naomi Hewitt Project Manager, National Trust Derwentwater Foreshore Project, Keswick, Cumbria

·       Feedback emailed to me from Anna Turner, from a poetry workshop I ran in October for Calderdale Reader Development and The Elmet Trust, Hebden Bridge:
http://www.theelmettrust.co.uk/

In response to the question: "Was there anything you particularly liked about the day?” The following responses were received:




Giving and receiving feedback from everyone in the groups – esp. Geraldine’s workshop. Everyone feeling confident to comment and risk.”Giving and receiving feedback from everyone in the group – esp. Geraldine’s workshop. Everyone feeling confident to comment and risk”

“Geraldine’s workshop was very warm and friendly”

“I enjoyed the afternoon writing exercises with Geraldine Green”

“Great group with Geraldine Green!”

Please contact me via Poetry PF www.poetrypf.co.uk 

if you're interested in my running a creative writing workshop, giving a reading or a talk - thanks!