BLOG OF THE WEEK - AN UPDATE WITH LAURA BLOOMSBURY

This week, my friends, we are flying across to London, England, to visit the poet Laura Bloomsbury, who blogs at Tell Tale Therapy - for the not so word shy. We haven't checked in with her in a while, so it will be good to get caught up. Let's pour some Twining's tea, for it is teatime in London. Draw your chairs up close and let's settle in.

Sherry: Laura, we last spoke with you in 2015. Would you bring us up to date with what you have been up to since then? 

Laura: “Time passes. Listen. Time Passes,” to quote Dylan Thomas and since we last spoke, it feels like nothing more than a day under Milkwood! I find it puzzling to measure time in pendulous years – rather it accelerates in uneventful nanoseconds. 

London South Bank,

the Thames in the foreground

There have been a couple of over-too-soon visits to different parts of Spain, though I’m laggardly in my approach to learning the lingo and the land is so vast I wish I had begun journeying there as a youth! 

Sherry: Spain! How lovely!

The rooftops of Seville 

Laura: Last year brought illness and injury – both of which I am more or less fully recovered from, and am feeling much less smug about my age and health now. Some recent hand surgery has put right an old injury.

Sherry: Oh, it is difficult for a poet to have one's hand immobilized! We are glad you are mending. In your busy life, how does poetry factor in? What do you love about having this means of creative expression? Do you have a set writing routine, or do you wait for inspiration to strike? 

Laura: The best of writers are disciplined with their time. Many keep diaries and set aside fixed routines, but I’m somewhat wayward and resist regimes. The idea of a notebook appeals in theory but I edit and re-edit constantly, so rely heavily on word processors. Any writing I do is jump-started by inspiration from others, whether it be in theme prompts or just reading. Certainly that helps broaden the topics. 

The Thames, London Cityscape 

At night I tend to listen more to audiobooks and poetry readings – it gives my eyesight a rest and alerts the ears to the beauty of the word. (I have even begun to record some of my own poems – tentatively). More recently, snatches of inspiration arrive when I walk around the streets and parks of London, which I try to do at least three times a week.

Sherry: That sounds like a perfect array of inspiration! Are there three poems you would like to share with us? And tell us a bit about each one?

Laura: I welcome the chance to review some poems and have snatched three simpler, shorter ones from 2017, beginning in January, and my first serious brush with hospital. I was struck by how illness forges a community in the midst of very personal struggle.

In Recovery

We came from all directions
a caravan of tatters

To the uninitiated this passage
of peoples must look as random as a rout
a driven seasonal ritual or word-of-mouth
pilgrimage to hear a prophet speak
of reasons and unfathomable answers

Some of us left there
bewildered by the pitiless nature of affliction
and the core of humanity that smoulders
in such fevered ashes

This second poem starts light-heartedly and exhibits the pull-push of the Romantic versus the Realist. The latter usually wins. It also has a play on words as title – something I am particularly fond of - beginning with a reference to an Ava Gardner film.

Bare Souls

a Contessa went barefoot once
in a touch of inverted snobbery
Hollywood’s requisite razzle-dazzle

at times we have all downed our shoes
there in the sand to run against the grains
or discarded killer heels after the first dance

barefoot conjures carefree
more often though it is just beggardom
hardening the soles

soldiers strip the dead for boots
going hell for leather on their long march
hungry enough to eat the hide

This last poem is quite simply a seasonal ode, contrasting temperatures and conjuring panic at the pace of time as another year draws towards its end. It employs the image of stone as both wintry metaphor and summer memory.

November Now

Now the calendar has turned about face
grudgingly I give the penultimate nod to November
scenic layers of litter in umber tones for an umbral burial
the earth moulders – inert in stone cold wormholes
though songbird throats are warming up some melodies

my own throat narrows in panic at this headlong hurtle of a pace
hands close over the marled and mindful meditation stone
smooth as toffee but without its mid-summer glimmer
the coruscation that urged me to lift it from layers of beach litter
– after all it is November now

Veterans at Whitehall, London

Sherry: Your poems are wonderful, Laura! Thank you so much! I feel the pace of time alarmingly, as well,  so I resonate with your words. Do you have any  writing plans or objectives for 2018?

Laura: I once attended a Masterclass with a renowned British writer who was encouraging but felt that my own voice was somewhat stifled. It takes time to find that voice – maybe I should learn how to sing (how I wish I could have sung with a band instead of just singalonging! ) Thus any intentions I may have are simply to keep writing and, since by nature I’m a naturalist, I’d like to write more in this vein, as honestly as John Clare for example…though I am easily seduced into using more oblique figures of speech around intangible topics!

Leaving London for a quieter and more affordable life is on the cards, though still only sketched out on paper. Also for many years I have tended the gardens of others and would wish for one of my own before I become too infirm.

Sherry: Some space for a garden plot sounds like a dream worth working towards. I do hope you make that happen. Life does slow its pace, out of the city!  Do you have any plans for travel in the coming year?

Laura: Much of my travel is day tripping or going off to visit loved ones, as we have sown the seed and scattered – though still within reach. I am considering another visit to Spain by combining a language course with my other hobby – photography – but that is in the ether. Other than that, I like to take the train and visit or even re-visit parts of England and explore our green and pleasant land whilst we still have it. My roots lie in Dorset and that is where I am planning to plant myself eventually.

Coastal Dorset, Bournemouth

Sherry: I can see why you hope to return to the coast. So beautiful! Your photography is stunning, Laura. Thanks for sharing some of your work with us in this feature. Let's take a look at some of your digital art.

Fetter Lane Office Reflections

Cove with Church in Sepia

Sherry: These are so beautiful, Laura! Truly works of art. What other activities do you enjoy when you aren’t writing, or taking photos?

Seedheads - an Abstract Drip Painting

Laura: In short, walking and going to the gym, the occasional cinema and salubrious dining, Tai Chi and Chi Gung, gardening, creating digital art, as well as reading and cooking simple, healthy meals for two – but not necessarily in this order!

Sherry: It all sounds wonderful. We so appreciate your sticking with Poets United, Laura, over the years. Do you have anything to say to our community?

Laura: Yes indeed! Without Poets United I would never have ventured so far and for so long into poetry. Previously my attempts were erratic and covert, driven first by a childlike love for nature and then as immature lover. This community was the first safe and constructive place to consistently lay out my lines. Thank you one and all for your encouragements.

And of course, many thanks to you Sherry for these interviews which offer insights into our fellow poets and keep us in unison.

Sherry: Poets United has been all of that for me, too, Laura. Thank you very much for your kind words. And for this lovely visit today! We look forward to enjoying much more of your poetry and photographic art.

Wasn't this a lovely visit, my friends? Do come back and see who we talk to next. Who knows? (for I don't, at this particular moment!) It might be you!