Geraldine Green, poet, tutor, editor and mentor

“My assignment was to review only three from the 20-odd small press publications sent to me, but before signing off, let me recommend a small blue booklet titled The Skin by Geraldine Green, from Flarestack Publishing in Birmingham.  Green’s gift for poetry is naïve – or perhaps the right word is natural – in a way I would have thought impossible these days.  Though she writes in free forms, her poems kept reminding me of WH Davies’.  She writes a good deal about angels (a fashion these days) and about love and the land, but there’s a freshness about her work that brought tears to my eyes.  Real tears, like a child’s.”

-       Anne Stevenson, Mslexia OctNovDec 2003

* update* Geraldine's third full collection, Passing Through, will be published in 2018 by Indigo Dreams Pubs.

UK poet Geraldine Green former  writer-in-residence at Brantwood Coniston Cumbria home of John Ruskin and also former writer-in-residence of Swarthmoor Hall Ulverston, home of George Fox and Margaret Fell, Geraldine has performed widely in the UK, North America, Italy and Greece. 

She began writing poetry after undertaking a BA Joint Hons. Degree in Imaginative Writing/Literature Life and Thought at Liverpool John Moores University, where she gained a First Class Honours Degree. Fired up by her venture into the academic and creative writing worlds, Geraldine undertook a Research Diploma in Ecopoetics, exploring the influence of the land on the poetry of Emily Bronte.  

On moving back to Cumbria she continued her academic and creative writing through Lancaster University where she was awarded an MA (Distinction) in Creative Writing Poetry in 2005. 

This was followed in 2011 by a PhD in Creative Writing Poetry, also at Lancaster University, titled: "An Exploration of Identity and Environment through Poetry".  As well as a new collection of poetry, Geraldine explored the writing of Wordsworth, Lorca, Levine, Harjo and Ehrlich as well as drawing on the works of new geographers, sociologists, linguistic anthropologists and philosophers. Geraldine was fortunate to undertake her doctoral studies through funding by the Arts and Humanities Research Council  AHRC

Here's the Abstract to her Reflective Thesis:

"ABSTRACT

‘The Other Side of the Bridge’

This is a new collection of poems that forms an original contribution to knowledge and 80% of my Ph.D. Themes that have arisen during the writing of this material are: time and place, placement and displacement, inner and outer landscapes and an analysis of my creative process, exploring and questioning my use of free verse, the lyrical ‘I’ and inherited voices. Both collection and thesis are an exploration of identity and environment through the medium of poetry.

Reflective Thesis:

The thesis grew out of a dialogue between the reflective process and the poems and comprises research into the above themes.  Drawing on reading of the works of literary critics such as David Lodge and Terry Eagleton, but also of work by new geographers, sociologists, linguistic anthropologists and philosophers (for example, Doreen Massey, Stuart Hall, Paul du Gay and Noel G. Charlton), the thesis and poems tightened into an ever closer dialogue. It also explores my own creative process, how I write my poetry and why, as well as placing it in a wider context of poets, past and present. (e.g. William Wordsworth, Federico Garcia Lorca, Octavio Paz, Philip Levine, Joy Harjo and Louise Erdrich). Underpinning the thesis and collection are questions of identity, culture and place and of how a poetry collection can be a place in which such questions are explored. It was written to illuminate where my poetry comes from, where it is taking me and what can be discovered from the poetry."

Her work has been widely anthologised in the UK, US and Italy. She’s had four poetry pamphlet collections published through Flarestack Publications, Palores Publications and Swarthmoor Hall Press. Her two full poetry collections titled: The Other Side of the Bridge and Salt Road, were published by Indigo Dreams Publishing Ltd. in 2012 and 2013.

Geraldine’s enthusiasm for poetry shines through in her workshops and courses. Says Geraldine “My passion is for sharing poetry as widely as possible, preferably introducing it to people who perhaps normally shy away from it. My feeling is that poetry, indeed all the performing arts, should be grass-roots led, forming a community, a communality if you will, whereby people gain support and encouragement – as well as being entertained and as fired up as I am about it.”

2015 saw her celebrate ten years of poetry tours in North America at readings that included: The Woody Guthrie Festival Okemah Oklahoma, where she and other poets had the honour of having their work accompanied by internationally known musician David Amram.  Geraldine has also performed alongside Beat Poet Michael McClure in Oakland California, at the Walt Whitman Birthplace Long Island, the Bowery Poetry Club New York City and the William Carlos Williams Center, New Jersey. She regularly reads and co-tutors workshops with New York poet George Wallace.

UK events include reading with Jacob Polley at the Wordsworth Trust, George Wallace for Apples and Snakes Cornwall and the Dylan Thomas Centre Swansea, Penelope Shuttle Cornwall and alongside Jerome Rothenberg at a Kurt Schwitters’ Celebration Ambleside. and Saxophonist Jess Gillam Finalist of the BBC's Young Musician of the Year 2016.

An experienced freelance creative writing tutor Geraldine runs regular creative writing residential courses and workshops at a variety of places in the UK, including Brantwood where she is currently writer-in-residence, for Cumbria Wildlife Trust and for The National Trust. She’s also worked with artists and musicians including ARne Richards and Isabel Knowland of the Oxford Concert Party, digital and visual artists and a photographer.

Geraldine has also had the honour of presenting a Paper on Ecopoetics in the Work of John Clare and Aldo Leopold for the South West Texas Popular Culture Committee Albuquerque; given a talk for for Cumbrian's Women Police Officers in Keswick; and presented a Paper at a Conference on the Work of Lawrence Durrell, Corfu

Her new collection, Passing Through, has been accepted for publication by Indigo Dreams in 2018. 

Geraldine recently co-edited an anthology titled Watershed, a collection of poetry and prose from Cumbrian writers written in response to the 2015 December Floods. Proceeds from the sale of anthology and related readings go to The Cumbrian Community Foundation Flood Recovery Appeal.

Former sessional teacher in creative writing at Cumbria University and the University of Lancaster, she is an experienced freelance creative writing tutor, writer, poetry editor and mentor. Geraldine tutors creative writing workshops for Adult Education, Dallam School, Dallam.

You can hear her read her poem as part of the poetry project on the National Trust's wonderful SY Gondola, Coniston Water:

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/steam-yacht-gondola/features/november-2016-gondolas-annus-mirabilis

Geraldine is an associate editor of Poetry Bay

and blogs at: Geraldine Green Salt Road

This poet takes her place in contemporary poetry with work that shines with joy in and respect for language.  The vitality of life’s many experiences are evoked here with all the senses. - Penelope Shuttle

You can read four prose poems from her third full collection Passing Through which will be published in 2018 by Indigo Dreams: Passing through


and from Salt Road published by Indigo Dreams, here:

'Salt Road'

Review of Geraldine's poetry by Penelope Shuttle:

Geraldine Green’s passion for and knowledge of the natural world and its spiritual energies has its roots and takes its cue from home ground, her native Cumbria.  She has noted her ‘long and deep connection’ with Cumbria. She draws inspiration from light over water, tidal energy, the intent of the land combined with rich tellings of family and local memory.  But her poems and prose-poems also travel the roads and the seas:  from Cumbria to Kansas, New Mexico, Spain, Greece, New York, Skye and Turkey.  

This poet takes her place in contemporary poetry with work that shines with joy in and respect for language.  The vitality of life’s many experiences are evoked here with all the senses.

Penelope Shuttle

and by Graham Mort:

"Geraldine Green’s poems are alert to landscape, seasons, rootedness that draws from deep aquifers of language, change that flits like cloud shadows across the page. Some seemed light as thistle heads but proved enduringly strong, rich with seed. As I read, I almost expected goldfinches to feed alongside me with their otherworldly attentiveness. But that attentiveness was all hers." - Graham Mort

and Sue Sims, Poetry Space "Landscape and Memory"