Read – James Nash

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August 2024August 12, 2024

To completely repurpose T. S. Eliot’s famous line, ‘April is the cruellest month’, August for me is generally the quietest. School work is over for the Big Holiday, workshop activity is very low and I tend to spend a lot of time cycling with friends along the canal or sitting contemplating the sea from favourite look-outs on the east coast of Yorkshire. This year it’s been slightly different; I’ve been waiting for the edits and suggestions re my latest collection from my publisher, and although not particularly nervous about it, am bracing myself for a flurry of intense brain-work before the month is out. Also, I’ve been getting advance notice of events I might be hosting for the wonderful Ilkley Literature Festival this October. I obviously can’t give the game away as to who I may be interviewing about their books, you’ll hear soon enough, but they have enough variety, from gardener to famous actor [who has always been a heroine of mine] to be rather thrilling.

And in other good news funding has been found for me to work in my five favourite Leeds primary schools in the next school year.

It all feels pretty marvellous to be honest. Who knew that a late-blooming writing career could last so long and give me such fulfilment and pleasure. I am truly blest.
July 2024July 2, 2024

Performing

As far as I know Byron didn’t go to open-mic poetry events in pubs or slams in libraries. Let me rephrase that; I’m pretty sure he didn’t do much of that reading in public stuff at all, but I’m prepared to be corrected by a more erudite person. It’s my feeling that performing your own work in public is much more what we poets and writers do these days, the business of sharing with your peers and a wider audience allows us to try out our work and come blinking out of our solitary, writing burrow for a while.

And it is terrifying.

When I work with young people and adults in workshop situations I always talk about three stages of writing for me, which are the first ideas, and then the editing and redrafting and finally the sharing with other people. It’s the sharing that feels very exposing, but over the years I’ve got better at it. It’s a combination of being prepared [having a set-list if you like] and speaking so that you give every word its proper value and weight. Fight the impostor syndrome. Fight any slight note of apology in your delivery. Be proud of your writing. Try to stop [in my case] your left leg from shaking.

This is all very pertinent in the light of the next week when I’m reading in Bingley and then at Heart in Headingley. I’m already thinking of what story I may try to tell in my set-list, the narrative that a series of poems might show. And then the balancing act of not saying too much between each piece, but just enough.

Byron and Homer were in my mind. Byron because he was a rock-star poet who happened to live for a while in Metaxata, in Kefalonia where we were recently staying. The bust of him is in the village square. And Homer because all poetry leads back to him, whether it’s the divine Louise Glück, Adrienne Rich or W. H. Auden and his poetry would have been performed to gatherings of people, just as Beowulf would have been, in a pre-reading, oral tradition.

Cross your fingers for me..
June 2024May 30, 2024

Here is the cover for my next collection due out this autumn. It is by the fabulous Jacky Fleming who has illustrated two previous books. It may change a little when Valley Press use it for publication, but I am sure it will be pretty much like this.

I’m submitting seventy-five new poems and two old favourites to publisher Jamie by the weekend. So fingers crossed everyone!
May 2024May 5, 2024

I’ve been rather quiet of late, thinking, writing and editing my poetry. And yesterday this new poem came almost fully formed, ripe for my new collection ‘Notes of Your Music’ due out in October from Valley Press.

As a poem it’s pretty much first draft, so will probably change substantially by publication date. But it’s how I’m feeling today.

Spring (they/them)

Spring comes mooching around the corner, late,
Does not apologise but does that trick with green
Where trees and hearts light up, inflate
With joy and I mark them in as seen.
For I keep the register, and they’re here
With a coronation-type flummery,
The something special scenting the air,
This yearly fresh leafing ceremony.
My blood is far slower to heat these days
And winters can feel so hard, dark and long
But sitting on my step, the vivid haze
Of growth, the blue sky, the black bird song,
All will be well, my aching bones will warm,
Forget the days of rain and winter storm
March 2024March 5, 2024

Cymru am Byth. It’s St David’s Day and on this date I always feel a bit of my Welsh heritage nudging me. My Welshness is probably on a level with that of my great poetic hero Edward Thomas, Welsh parents but brought up in London. If only I had his genius.

It manifested itself to me as a child in various low-key ways. Watching rugby rather than football on the TV. Feeling a kinship with Welsh actors in films. Having a genetic disposition to love Welsh choir music; the Treorchy Male Voice Choir was on repeat in our west London house on Sunday mornings. My lovely, troubled Dad who never lost the Welsh cadence to his voice, I celebrate his sensitivity and the love of reading which he gave to all his children.

His story of St David’s Day was going to school in Ferndale wearing a leek [he was born in 1909] and having eaten it by lunchtime. Nothing hungrier than a ten year old.

In March I’m hoping for some bardic spirit to infuse me as I carry on with thinking and writing for the next poetry collection. I’m hoping for the inspiration of Dylan, Edward, R.S [all the Thomases] to help me on my way.

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