Monday 27 September 2010

NATIONAL POETRY DAY



Hey, like I said before, on NATIONAL POETRY DAYThursday October 7th 2010 – I will be giving a reading at NANTWICH LIBRARY on this year’s theme of HOME.

This means I will be reading poems of my nearest and dearest, and reading from Village Verse my collection of poems about my beloved Mow Cop.

The event will begin at 2pm and extend for about an hour.

You will be made most welcome and I am looking forward to a good time there.

I just wanted to remind you to come along.

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Each year for the past five years, on the Friday of Fresher’s Week, along with my Writing colleagues at MMU Cheshire, I have had the joy of taking the new intake of Writing undergraduates to Mow Cop and Mount Pleasant Village Hall to give a short talk on the history Mow Cop and to read them some of my Mow Cop poems.

We then all troop up to the top of Mow to have a look at the places the poems have been about. The students take notes and then we all pile off back to the village hall for them to do some writing of their own.

It’s all to do with having a larf, facilitating them getting to know each other, and to remind all us writers of the importance of a sense of place in our writing. It is always a pleasure and good fun to boot and this year's do (Friday 24th September) was no exception.

It was a particularly poignant occasion for me seeing as ‘ow I’ve been forbidden any teaching on campus any more. This year’s students are a great bunch – more of them than usual too – and I really really envy my colleagues teaching them.

Only me and Julie could make it up there this year. I managed to seriously mis-direct the coach driver by taking him up the wrong road for a coach and getting us stuck. The driver was a top human being – stoic and patient – and with great skill, managed to bale us out of the predicament I had placed us in with a 1,000 point turn and a bit of pavement scraping.

The photo was taken on an earlier Mow Cop expedition by my friend and colleague Heather. One of the figures is known locally as: The Old Man of Mow.

***
So get along to Nantwich Library on National Poetry Day if you possibly can.

In the meantime, may all your roads be smooth, well-lit, safe and wide enough; may all your loads be light.

Terry

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