Showcase Event - October 10th

In many ways, this evening was the culmination of my year as Cheshire Poet Laureate (even though there were nearly three months to go. It was a chance to invite an extraordinary variety of friends – artists, poets, members of various groups, people who don’t read poetry at all – and present some poems in the context of the story of this year. In the event, about 80 people turned up to the Beswick building in the University of Chester.

Here’s a set list with comments. I used a data-projector to show pictures of the different events and some pictures to go with particular poems.

1. Give me your hand. David Hart wrote to me that the Laureateship would be really good if I could ‘find ways of meeting by means of it.’ This simple poem is about that – the way poetry can help to create community.

2. Retina. Quote ‘My / planet on which everything / touches down.’ Poetry as a way of looking at the world.

3. This is a Fair Trade Poem. (in this Blog) My first commission was for Macclesfield Fair Trade fortnight, and led to a series of workshops with children, writing on bananas!

4. Footnotes 4 (Foxhill). These ‘Footnotes’ poems are observational walks with close looks at natural objects.

5. This is how it will be was commissioned for a Cheshire Schools’ Celebration. I introduced it with the words written for Radio Merseyside’s ‘Thought for the Day.’

Poetry and children
Children seem to have a hotline to poetry. Sometimes they just come out with words and phrases that take your breath away, that an adult would have to sweat over for weeks.

I think this may be something to do with the newness of what they see, the way they look at the world for the first time and notice what we take for granted. To a child, ‘Morning has broken, like the first morning…’

Every spiritual tradition starts with awareness, opening your eyes to what is real. The famous words of Jesus - unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven – are a constant challenge to us world-weary adults.

I wrote this poem, which is a sort of blessing, for a Cheshire Schools Celebration. I think it’s possible for this to be true for every child, I hope and pray that it can be.

6. A million teachers was commissioned for the opening of the large new extension at Holmes Chapel Library. It appears in vinyls on the library windows, and on thousands of bookmarks issued with books.

7. It is written is a new poem from the Isle of Arran. The ‘writing’ on each part of the landscape that is a kind of prayer.

The first part finished with the Willaston Worm-Charming, two poems and a song:
8. A Long Thin Charm for the Worms
9. Sonnet of the Worm-charmers
10. A Worm’s Life

Part 2
11. The greenest frog and the smallest bird
12. Footnotes 1 (Fron Isaf) Another ‘Footnotes’ poem, this time from Wales.
13. Commonplace. I ran a village workshop in Manley where residents collected memories around Manley Common. Barbara Foxwell and Chris Mowap, residents of the village, joined me to read the memories that intersperse the poem. This poem was presented at the Local Government Association conference in Chester.

On the theme of stories:
14. Descent
15. Pablo Neruda, my father and me

And a poem about the artist, Samuel Palmer:
16. Palmer’s Moon

The final part of the evening focused on ‘Lines on the map.’ This poem probably started it all:
17. Twemlow Green
18. Footnotes 6 (Llanystumdwy)

And, lastly, my ‘signature tune’ poem:
19. Here

Lines on the Map - 20,000 Readers!

I have just received some statistics showing how ‘Lines on the Map’ has been used since it was launched in March. After a lot of initial publicity – in newspapers and on local radio – about 9000 people visited the site in the first month. This reduced steadily in April May and June – perhaps the novelty had worn off – but the number of visits almost doubled in July, then again in August. September reached a peak of over 13000! Poems have trickled in by email – about half a dozen each month. The Summer popularity of the site may be accounted for by:

1) the Holmes Chapel Library bookmarks. Every borrower got a poem bookmark with details of the web site on the back.
2) Listing on the Poetry Society ‘Poetry Landmarks’ web site.
3) ‘Word-of-mouth’ publicity after children’s workshops and school visits.
4) A second press release about ‘Lines on the Map’ on local papers.

On average, visitors to the site look at 3 pages – making a total so far of nearly 60,000 page views by nearly 20,000 visitors. This is a very large audience for poetry, where most poetry books and magazines only have runs of several hundred, and shows a successful outreach of poetry to new audiences. The table below shows the most visited towns and villages. Unsurprisingly, Chester – with a large population and a number of poems – attracted the most visitors, but every dot on the map has attracted a respectable number of readers.