alice at the shipyard

It’s just one week now until the poetry reading at Start-Yard in Birkenhead. This beautiful venue is located in an old shed / warehouse which used to be a part of Cammell Laird Shipyard. It’s an evocative place to host an evening of Poetry and Singer / Songwriter. At the first of these events back in March, as we parked the car, there was a huge ship on the other side of the wall at the end of the road (about 50 metres away) which was partly lit up. There’s a dry dock there where ships are repaired. When we came out from the venue some three hours later the ship had gone! Big wow…

I’ve spent the last eight weeks selecting poems to read. I have two slots of twenty minutes each for the reading, so plenty of time to stretch out into and share some of my work. Over the weeks I have worked through all of my writings stretching back to 1984! I shortlisted 60 poems (out of over 600) – which is, of course, far too many. As often happens, I awoke at 5.30 this morning with my head filled with ideas about this – and then dreamt and drifted through a couple of hours until I had the answer. I will focus mainly on poems from the three published collections which are available. These are “Blue: experiments in sound”, “Hang Fire”, and the newly published “alice reimagined”. In the dreams I also came up with the idea of using my phone to play a couple of tracks from the blue album which I made based on the poems in “Blue: experiments in sound”. It’s on bandcamp so it’s very easy to stream.

The arrival of “alice reimagined” has gone well with just one slight hitch. The author copies I wanted to distribute ‘signed by the author’ were very delayed arriving as they came via Royal Mail, a company that is struggling since privatisation (like so many other aspects of Tory Britain!) I now have copies so if you still want to order a copy please do, and it will be with you within days. This collection will be of interest to anyone who has read “The Inner Fire: a coaching alchemy” as it features the anima character ‘alice’. If you enjoy poetry you will love this collection. If you are interested in my work as a coach, it will give you a creative twist on the coaching process. Trust me.

There are 68 poems included. Through the lens of the anima I look at a wide range of topics from the psychological to the political, from existence itself to good and evil. A middle section called ‘The Warehouse of Alices’ features 10 women called Alice from history. And the final section is called ‘A Festival of Alice’ and uses a mix of forms drawing on music, drama and film to create a long-form poem that brings the collection to a close with the lines:

It’s the simple act of smiling
Being aware
Being

Blend to one
As I
I am many.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. It may have taken seven years, but it was an exciting journey of discovery.

Oh, and if you can make it to the poetry reading please do. Details can be found on Facebook here.

By the way – by sheer coincidence the image on the cover of the book is a view of Cammell Laird from across the Mersey in Liverpool as the sun sets over the Wirral.