Popular Tags:

Dreams of the Blue Poppy out now as an e-book!

April 5, 2013 at 8:34 pm

If it hadn’t been for my sister buying a Victorian garden and building a house there, looking over at Pennine Valley, I would probably never have written Dreams of the Blue Poppy, my novel originally published by Robert Hale. It was there, in that garden, that my sister showed me meconopsis grandis, the Tibetan Blue Poppy, growing against a sandstone wall. I had never seen a flower so beautiful and such an amazing blue, and despite never having really taken an interest in gardening before, I set out on a quest to find out about this incredible flower. I was already very interested in Tibet, and when I began researching the book, I felt I had to go to the Himalayas to see where the Blue Poppy grew naturally on the mountainsides….

Now, Dreams of the Blue Poppy is coming out as an e-book, with innovative new publishers The Book Mill, masterminded by Neil Ferber and author Kathleen Jones. Available on Kindle, Kobo and Smashwords.

Click here for further details at Amazon.

Kathleen Jones has written a great review of the book, with a very insightful resume which you can read on her review blog – one of the best around – at http://www.kathleenjonesdiary.blogspot.co.uk/

And there’s an interview on Kathleen’s blog which you can find at http://www.kathleenjonesauthor.blogspot.com

The Book Mill have done some beautiful artwork on the book, which I’m really thrilled about – especially the cover. It’s really a work of art!

I originally went to Nepal and worked with the Tibetans as part of my research for the book, and this led to the publication of my travel book about Nepal and the Himalayas On Juniper Mountain which came out in 2009 with O – Books. Dreams of the Blue Poppy also led to the foundation of Juniper Trust our international charity which works sustainably with communities across the world, which I began in Nepal, and which now works in partnership with travel specialists KE Adventure Travel and a group of fantastic volunteers to build schools and improve health across the world.

Looking forward to this years Words by the Water Literary Festival

February 19, 2013 at 11:09 pm

I am really looking forward to hosting once more at the Words by the Water Literary Festival this year at Keswick’s Theatre-by-the-Lake. It is always a highlight of the literary year in Cumbria for me – meeting old friends and making new ones, and really stimulating the brain cells! It is fantastically well attended, and received with much enthusiasm by people all over Cumbria and far beyond. There is always an amazing selection of authors – non-fiction and fiction alike. I’ve learned so much from the experience of hosting, meeting the authors and reading the books. Everything from the Arctic and Antarctic, to the experience of a granddaughter searching out her grandmother’s Buddhist roots, a lady Victorian artist whose work is on display at Kew, a stonewalling poet, the life of Edward Thomas, the history of old Peking, and that amazing Cloud Spotting man Gavin Pretor-Pinney. It’s been a fabulous rollercoaster ride over the years, and I’ve been lucky to appear myself with two of my books – Dreams of the Blue Poppy and On Juniper Mountain. This year I’m hosting three fascinating authors – prize-winning author Nadeem Aslam’s with his ‘searing’ novel, set in Afghanistan and Pakistan, The Blind Man’s Garden, a brilliant travel writer Gavin Francis, with his book about Emperor penguins, Empire Antarctica, and the iconic columnist and now stand-up comic, Virginia Ironside, with her novel No! I don’t need Reading Glasses!  Reading such contrasting books has been a fascinating journey in itself, and I can’t wait to meet the authors!

The festival runs from the first to 10 March 2013, and you can find out more at www.wordsbythewater.org.uk

View the full programme below…


 

 

 

The Iona Writing Course is on again!

January 25, 2013 at 12:04 pm

Writing and Meditation 2013

8th to 13th May

The Iona Writing Course is on again!

 Why doesn’t that surprise anyone who knows me? I had so many people asking me whether I might change my mind after cancelling in December, that I have decided I will go for it after all. Also, the thought of not being on that magical island in May, which is so much part of what I look forward to every year, and the wonderful companionship of my fellow writers on the course, is such a joyful occasion, so it seemed awful not to do it again this year…

 But after 12 years I am reinventing the wheel and there will be different elements – it’s slightly later in May, so should be warmer, and I hope to have a few classes outside on the magical spaces on this island – for example, Port Bahn. There will be painting for those who are interested, with help for beginners. If you have been before, or are looking to come on this writing course, which I have been running now for more than 12 years, with some amazing people as your companions, you will be very welcome – whether you are a complete beginner or more experienced, even a published, writer!

This is the perfect place to write! You may never want to leave…

Hope to see you there!

Click here to download this year’s brochure.

Warmest good wishes

Angela Locke MA

An artist in the family…

November 20, 2012 at 10:42 pm

A blatant piece of nepotism here!  Our daughter Emma, who is studying for a Design degree, as well as managing her growing family, has suddenly flowered as a painter in the last year, with much success.  I know I’m biased, but I think her paintings are sensational.  In fact I have her painting of Blue Poppies on the wall in my study to inspire me with my new book, and a lovely painting of Iona which she gave me for my birthday.  She has an online gallery at http://www.emmajlock.com          , and I’m reproducing one of her latest paintings below, which I think of as a kind of Meditation.  When I look deeply into it, I find I am drawn into the stillness of the landscape, which is very much inspired by the Lake District where we live. Emma also has a shop at the handmade online community Etsy and you can ‘Like’ her page on Facebook.

 

Juniper Trust in Kathmandu…

November 2, 2012 at 12:10 am
I’m so pleased that we at Juniper Trust are continuing with our work at Chobar Helpless Children’s School in Kathmandu.Since we co-built the school with Jersey Overseas Aid, we have fulfilled our pledge of always keeping our connection and support for every project we are involved with. Many thanks to our project officer Cheryl Frost, who is going out in December to inspect progress.
Chobar School – Kathmandu
The Juniper Trust have donated $1800, in support of the orphans housed at Chobar School. Chery Frost, a long term voluntary member of Juniper Trust.

The Washerwoman by Ann Ward; a story for Halloween…

October 31, 2012 at 11:05 pm

I am delighted to be able to publish on my website the wonderfully spooky story by Ann Ward, one of the writers who came with me to Finistere on the first French Writing Retreat this September.  The story is an original ‘take’ on the legend of the washerwomen of the Mont d’Aree – a very frightening legend indeed, and very suitable for Halloween!  Prepare to be scared!

The Washerwoman

Roger’s cousin owned a house in Brittany, surrounded by trees at the edge of a forest. The cousin, recently separated from his wife, had turned against the house, claiming, in fact that he had never really cared for it. As soon as his affairs were set in order, hopefully within the next few months, the house would be sold.

          Meanwhile, Roger was welcome to stay there for as long as he liked. Roger was also on his own, between jobs, between women. He quite liked the house, though now in the damp mists of autumn, it was beginning to feel chilly. Now, each day he would put on a thick sweater and take himself off for walks through the forest. One day, having set off earlier than usual, he found himself in more open, rocky country. He had been heading for a standing stone he had been told about, but realised that he must have missed it. He had come further than he expected, so decided to turn back.

          He stopped walking, and in the misty silence heard a woman’s voice calling out to him in, he supposed, the Breton language. As he looked round, puzzled, she switched to French. She was holding out, in both hands, a bundle of white cloth.

          Not an attractive woman, he thought, as he struggled to understand what she was asking. He felt impatient, reluctant to be bothered with what promised to be an uninviting task. For it seemed that she wanted him to help her fold some kind of sheet. Here, of all places, with no habitation in sight. Could she be insane? Her red hair was wild, her face strong-featured with piercing blue eyes. She was dressed in some long black garment, without shape or style. Not his type, he thought, though now that he looked more closely, she seemed to be younger than he had at first supposed.

          Still, as a temporary resident, he thought, he could hardly refuse to help a local. He inclined his head without enthusiasm. Impatient, he seized one end of the damp cloth and started to help her to fold, hoping to get the task over with as quickly as possible, especially now that drizzly rain was starting to fall.

          But the woman was shaking her head. He was folding the wrong way, it seemed. Oh, this was too bad, he thought. He would do it in his own way, and she would just have to put up with it. He went on folding, and if anyone could be said to fold aggressively, this is what he did. When he glanced at her face, it occurred to him that he had never seen a person’s eyes literally flash before. A trick of the light, he supposed. And actually, he thought she was not such an unattractive woman. He tried to smile at her, but she did not smile back.

          Now the cloth, the sheet, seemed to have developed a mind of its own. It seemed to stretch wider and longer. Its texture, perhaps because of the damp air, was thickening. Surely, also because of the moisture, it had become heavier. So heavy, in fact, that the woman had lost her grip on it. Nor did she, to his annoyance, attempt to retrieve her end of the cloth. She stood there, staring, her hands on her hips. Well, two could play that game, Roger thought, and tried to let go of his end of the sheet. But the damp linen clung to his fingers. It was coiling round his thighs, too.

          “Help me!” he called. But the woman only smiled, her eyes stony. And now the sheet was entangling his legs, so that he could not take a step. And although the air was still, the material flapped, rose around his hips, his chest, his neck. A corner, cold and clammy slapped his ear, his cheek.

          The last thing he saw before he was pulled to the ground, and oblivion, was the woman’s face, incredibly beautiful, incredibly mocking.

 

 

Annual Crabbe Memorial Competition, Aldeburgh Oct 14th…

October 26, 2012 at 10:51 pm

It was lovely to be beside the sea at Aldeburgh on October 14th for the annual Crabbe Memorial Competition results, with the Suffolk Poetry Society.  The sun was shining, the sea was flat as a blue pancake (is there such a thing?)  – we were on the East Coast!  My old alma mater.  I met some great people, including re-meeting, with great pleasure, Harriet Thistlethwaite, who had been one of my writers on the Iona Retreat a few years ago, and re-meeting poet and this year’s judge Kenneth Steven, who has previously written a wonderful book of poetry about Iona, just called Iona, and is about to have a new poetry book published.

I grew up in Suffolk and lived there, apart from going away to study, until I was in my early 20s.  I was adopted early on by SPS as their protégé and given enormous encouragement – the only encouragement I got as a writer for many years.  My father didn’t approve, for a start, and thought I should have a respectable profession, so I eventually trained as a teacher, while still editing the college magazine, writing jazz poetry, and later working part-time as a journalist.  Ipswich High School GPDST, my school, was not always as enlightened in those days as it is now, and although I had a splendid education there, for which I’ll be forever grateful, they were not always very keen on my rather experimental poetry.  However, the then Head of English (rather terrifying) descended upon me one day in the Sixth Form corridor (I can still smell the polish) to pronounce that if the Suffolk Poetry Society, a venerable institution even in those days,  has taken me under their wing, she supposed she would have to put me in the school magazine.  After all, I was a bit of a rebel, and my first poems were probably something of a shock!

Anyway, one of the poems which had won a prize this year at the SPS Crabbe Poetry Competition was Green Jell-O, was also previously long-listed for the Bridport Prize and is still up there on their website.  The poem is actually about the East Coast, and was written during a workshop which Grevel Lindop and I were doing together in Keswick for the Society of Medical Writers Conference, and was prompted by memories of rowing with my father in the pram dinghy up the Orwell River, the subject of, and inspiration for, so much of my writing.   Despite the privations of the sleeping in a damp fo’c’stle, under rough army blankets, and with Kilner jars of stew for dinner, I loved every minute of it.

 Moon moon moon , the other prize-winning poem, which received a Highly Commended, was inspired by my grandson Joe, who especially loved the moon when he was small and would stand looking out the French Windows repeating moon moon moon- almost his first words.  Now, like any healthy seven year old he is keener on football, rugby and Barcelona!

You can hear my reading of the two poems on the links below.

http://suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk/content/angela-locke-green-jell-o
http://suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk/content/angela-locke-moon-moon-moon

And/Or see them in print here…

Green Jell-O

 

I can never remember

what I wore in those old days, only the jellied

coolness of the water, pressing on my trailed fingers

as my father rowed the Ransome river,

me in the stern, and he pulls and pulls

so the slow shock of the water comes into my palm,

away between the spaces in my fingers.

I imagine it as the Jell-O they gave me at the American party

for the girl who wore tartan silk, green jelly in a lettuce leaf,

impossibly exotic just after the war.

 

Whatever I wore those days in the pram dinghy

rowing ashore on the ebb tide

through that long green river, its shingle banks exposed,

gulls strutting, the stink of estuarine mud,

old canvas trousers maybe, barefoot. My party dress

-that time of the green jelly and the American girl-

made of crepe paper by my Gran,

(don’t stand too near the fire) a pale pink confection

in response to rationing, no material here

– that tartan silk, that jelly,

the jelly river between my fingers,

old canvas trousers, on a cold day walking chap-footed

up the jetty, canvas shoes to put back on.

 

I’m left with a longing for old rivers,

for all those people I have loved,

for the smell of salt on my arms,

for tartan silk dresses, for puffed sleeves,

for the running, time-lost scent of rivers long gone,

memories too long, old dinghies,

boat tar, memories too long melted

in my empty, outstretched hands.

Moon moon moon

 

It’s all about the moon tonight, spreading light

as quicksilver on the land. Moon sparkle on snow, diamond-cut,

moon shadows feathering the white stillness under Ash,

moon hanging between oaks as a great globe in the rose

window of the sky, and then the night, its stars cut like spy

holes into some glorious room. Here the child, hair white

as the moon, stands pressed against the glass, as close

to the night as he can get, saying his first word, hushed

in awe: moon, moon, moon. It’s an enchantment.

Even in sleep this moon, so huge and full over the fell,

calls us out. We cannot bear inside a moment longer.

Some power wishes us into this silent landscape,

as dead as the moon except for owls and sky,

so we may drink this light like a libation. Our faces

small moons bathed in its silver water,

we lift ourselves, adoring, into the old story,

that old myth of glory.

 

 

Happy memories of Finistere…

October 21, 2012 at 10:56 pm

I’m very grateful to Charles Woodhouse for the first photograph from the Finistere course.  It brings back such happy memories of a successful week, with so much great writing.  We had an amazing time in Roscoff, exploring Travel Writing, and then moved to Huelgoat where we had two days in the ‘enchanted’ Forest at the famous Autre Rive café, and then moved up to Le Cloitre, as the guests of Phil and Rosie Roe, who gave us fantastic hospitality. The standing stone at Le Cloitre was just mind-blowing – and this photograph shows some of us working around it.  I felt a definite vibration deep within the stone on the left-hand side – and the picture shows me trying to find vibrations on the right-hand side, which I didn’t!  I guess if the ancient peoples who first erected the standing stone knew about magnetic fields etc they would not be surprised to know that there is some ‘echo’ within the stone.  We then had the privilege of enjoying a fabulous dinner which Phil and Rosie put on for us on our last night in Huelgoat, crowned by our being able to see the standing stone by moonlight.  Again, there was an extraordinary glow around the stone, not entirely explained by the light of the moon.  I found other people had seen that effect too, very thought-provoking, which led me to wonder what ancient peoples knew that we have forgotten…

Dave Riley; truly inspirational!

October 7, 2012 at 3:24 pm

I was desperately sad to hear of the death of Dave Riley on Wednesday.  An outstanding policeman, great family man, and a towering figure in the Mountain Rescue Community and in the life of SARDA, the Search and Rescue Dog Association, he was one of the major subjects, alongside John Brown’s dogs Sam and Tyan, of my second Search and Rescue book, Sam and Co, about the dogs who heroically work alongside the Mountain Rescue teams with their amazing handlers in terrible conditions across the country and beyond.  Dave Riley’s dog Loch found someone alive after nine days in the aftermath of the earthquake in El Salvador, for which he was awarded a gold medal for outstanding services to humanity.  Returning to this country, Loch sparked a national search in the Lake District mountains after, disorientated during a blizzard on his first search since his return, Loch was lost on St. Sunday Crag for four days.  Daily Mail kindly allowed me use the dramatic photograph they took from a helicopter of Loch leaping into his master’s arms, when they were finally reunited on the snowy mountainside.

Dave Riley was an amazing person to work with, truly inspirational, full of humour and wisdom, and hugely loved and respected by everyone in the community of Search and Rescue, of which he was a pivotal founder member.  It is hard to believe that he is gone.  We will all miss him very much.  I have so many wonderful memories of working with him on  ‘Sam & Co’, interviewing him everywhere from his daughter Charlotte’s sandpit in his garden, to sliding in his Volvo down the Kirkstone Pass in Cumbria in extreme weather, and in a snowstorm in a Lakeland Valley.  The book was hugely popular with the Mountain Rescue community, and is still greatly in demand, despite the fact it never went into paperback or into foreign editions, only Large Print and Talking Books.  I have been reduced to buying copies for my own use on Amazon!  We hope that that a lack of copies may be redressed in the near future, as hopefully there will be soon the paperback edition. I hope too that book will be a small tribute to the outstanding human being who was Dave Riley, to whom I owe an enormous debt of gratitude for his generosity in sharing his story with me.  It was an immense privilege.  Our thoughts go out to his wife and family at this very sad time.

The photograph below is from the back cover of Sam & Co, and shows Dave Riley on a mountainside during a search with his Search Dog Loch.

 

Celebrate National Poetry Day 2012…

October 3, 2012 at 10:49 pm

As tomorrow is National Poetry Day, I would like to pay tribute to all the great poets out there and to the wonderful writers I have been privileged to work with through the years in my own workshops. Their poetry continues to inspire me. Also to Chris Pilling’s great poetry group in Keswick, which has taught me so much about my own work as a poet. I was very pleased to gain a Highly Commended in the Suffolk Poetry Society’s Annual Crabbe Poetry Competition for my poem moon moon moon ( inspired by my grandson Joe) and a Commended for Green Jell-O  about rowing on the River Orwell in Suffolk, which was previously longlisted for the Bridport.  I am reading both at the Awards Lunch in Aldeburgh in October. My old stamping ground, as I grew up in Suffolk and was supported from early on in my career by the SPS – www.suffolkpoetrysociety.org

In honour of my Suffolk childhood, here is a poem from my collection Whale Language: Songs of Iona (available from Indigo Dreams Bookshop) which is about sailing down the Orwell at dawn in our old, patched-up Farne Island cruiser, on our way to our annual holiday on Arthur Ransome’s Flint Island (really Stone Point).

Dawn on the River

It is dawn on the river.
Mist lies on the still surface like smoke.
We are travelling down to the estuary
to catch the tide. All other boats are asleep,
their portholes steamed with night breath,
cockpit doors shut, hatches fastened.

But we are free and new, beginning.
We are travelling down to the estuary,
we are going to the island, and over time
to the golden field. Here, the corn is not yet cut,
new light sits red gold on stalks; there is a misty sun
touching old elms, and one cottage with curtains closed,
dark around it, and dreams. But we are new and free,
beginning. Cows on the water’s edge look up
as we pass, this strange object to puzzle them,
passing before their slow eyes.
Then, looking down to drink,
they let us go.

©Angela Locke 2010