Poetry Evening at the Cumberland Arms

How exciting! My friend Amina is arranging an evening of poetry at music at the Cumberland Arms in Ouseburn (or is it Byker) to raise awareness (and possibly funds) for her Borderline Books project. And what is even MORE exciting is that she has asked me to host the evening!
Well goodness gracious me, that sound like lots of fun.

She has made a rather odd poster for it, but she means well.

Proud Poets

Well I had an absolutely splendid time at the 'Northern Pride Festival' on Saturday. I was engaged, along with some other notable local poets, to perform in the Womens' Tent. First of all the weather was gorgeous, which made a huge difference. I didn't have to wear my new, terribly costly Wellington boots, and had a little time to potter in the garden before coming on stage. In fact I still had my gardening gloves and my sun hat on! This charming photo was taken by Roweena Russell, bless her.

Now, I was a little perplexed by the title of the festival, since I had assumed it had something to do with being delighted with being British, proud of our Empire and generally celebrating this historic Jubilee, Olympic year. (Oh, Amina tells me I might not be allowed to use what she calls 'the O word' at the moment. How very silly.
It seemed, however, that the festivities were about something a little different - there were lots of young men walking around holding hands (such a nice change from all the aggression we sometimes see) and a number of ladies doing the same. It occurred to me - on further investigation - that young people these days have so much more choice than we had in our day. L - G - B - T - Q? Heavens above! When I was a gel, ladies had companions and men - well that was illegal, so the less said, the better.  Good for Queen Victoria, if you ask me.

Amina kindly bought me raffle tickets from Newcastle Carers Centre. The top prize was a Jubilee Tea Set.  Unfortunately the telephone has not rung, so I am afraid our luck was not in this time.

This teapot, however, seems much more dignified, so perhaps I may purchase it as a memento of this historic year.

Rain Stopped Us Playing

Oh, what a shame! I had an engagement on Thursday at Studio Q in Sunderland and was looking forward to it so much. But what should happen than we had the most amazing storm from about 4.30 til 6.30 (just when we should have left). There were floods all over the place, public transport was in chaos and traffic was backed up for miles so that it was impossible to get there on time. Our hosts phoned to say that so few people had managed to come that - unless we were already almost there - there was little point in our going.
They have said they will reschedule the show - and I jolly well hope they do. I had some wonderful new items to show everyone and I was so excited.
Never mind, we weren't washed away, so everything is all right.

A Delightful Evening

My goodness what a delightful evening we had. I was invited to give a poetry lecture at Floor 6 of Commercial Union House in Newcastle.
Since young people have quite a short attention span it was agreed that the lecture should be punctuated with interludes of music and dance by some dear young people called Neal, Lee, John and Alex - Alex is of the female gender, by the way and wears some quite startling eye make-up.


Neal and Lee are very accomplished musicians playing a range of instruments from 'cello and viola to trumpet and trombone - such talent and virtuosity! I do hope that we will have the opportunity of sharing a stage again in the future.

The audience was very friendly and responsive - though for the life of me I never understand why people are apt to giggle at some of the most profound of my poems. Nonetheless, many of them came to me later to say how much they had enjoyed it. I am thinking of starting a writing group of my own since these youngsters are clearly hungry for literary education of the kind that only I can gi ve.

I took the last two Jimmys along - Jimmy 25 in his glass coffin, and Jimmy 26 who was turned into a keyring by a clever taxidermist. Jimmy 28, still in a bag of water came along for the ride as well.

Thank you to Jonathan at CU House for the kind invitation and generous remuneration.

I was also able to announce that I will be appearing again at the Gay Pride Festival in July which is exciting, though I'm not sure what it's all about. Never mind, as long as they are eager for some real poetry I'm sure we'll all have a lovely time.

A new poetry season

Frankly, the less said about the ARC Debacle,
 the better.

*********

May is a new season with new possibilities and we are delighted to have been invited to two very exciting events - first, on Empire Day one will be reading at the Cumberland Arms. This is so terribly appropriate for a patriot such as myself. Empire Day has been largely forgotten, which is such a shame. It was Clementina Trenholme who first had the foresight to introduce the celebration in Canada back in 1898 - a little before my time. By 1904 Empire Day started being celebrated in the United Kingdom - particularly in schools, and from there it spread across the entire Empire. May 24 was - as of course you know - the birthday of our dear Queen Victoria.

In 1958 the day was renamed Commonwealth Day - definitely a little common if you ask me - but I suppose we had to keep up with the demise of the Empire - otherwise known as 'post-Colonialism'. 

Frankly I think the rest of the world didn't know when they were well-orf. All that independence nonsense - where has it got us in the end?

Worse was yet to come, when in 1976 'Commonwealth Day' was moved to March, thus losing its connection with the Empress of India. Well, I ask you, what have things come to? For me 24 May will always be Empire Day.

But let's leave politics aside, it's really not a suitable subject for nice women. Speaking of which, one has also been invited to read at the Women's tent at the Northern Pride Festival. Now that seems a splendid idea. We should all be proud - especially in this Jubilee year! - Aren't you all frightfully excited?

I have been knitting Union flags ever since January and will be stringing them up outside the house at the beginning of June. By then I hope my window boxes will all be blooming red white and blue, in spite of the very difficult weather we've been having.  I have also been teaching Jimmy to swim in time to the National Anthem, which he is managing quite well...

considering.