Saturday 30 September 2017

Reviews of my poetry collections: Anne Stevenson, Djelloul Marbrook and Denis Gray



Couple of reviews: for my first pamphlet collection, The Skin (pub. Flarestack 2003), The Other Side of the Bridge and my second, full, collection, Salt Road (both pub. Indigo Dreams 2012 and 2013)

“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 WHDavies’.  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 StevensonMslexia OctNovDec 2003


Review of ‘The Other Side of the Bridge’


"The Beloit Poetry, one of America's most venerable, famously reads submissions aloud. If they read Geraldine Green's poems aloud they will think inevitably of e e cummings' regard for punctuation as impediment. 

Her very first poem, "Me and Janine," is full of information and yet it tells its story-sings it-without punctuation simply because Green's mind possesses unerring musicality. She thinks musically whereas some poets translate their thoughts into music. The difference shows up again and again in this remarkable, stylistically diverse manuscript, The Other Side of the Bridge." -  Djelloul Marbrook

and Salt Road by Geraldine Green pub. by Indigo Dreams:

It has all I want in a book with its careful attention to language, heart, and soul.  I was overwhelmed by the book's introduction. How intimately and personally it was written. As if it were written for the world of people, never mind their ethnicity or culture or life experience. I read it to begin the book, but also again when I finished it. It touches the beauty of what human discovery entails, the absorption of knowledge and ideas and truths.

As for the poems, there are so many that are memorable. But just to name a few, "The echo-sounder." I looked for him last June/ found only green shoots/growing like music through stone. "Cave of the Honey-Bee, Cave of Arachne." When she woke/ dawn was spreading pink-gold fingers/ across the sky. And "Doors" what an adventure that sings of mystery and seeking and then the finding.




This is a compelling book that only a person with a joy for living could write and bring to life with such exuberance and understanding."  -- Denis Gray, New York, August 2015





Saturday 23 September 2017

UK POET GERALDINE GREEN - BIO





English poet Dr Geraldine Green is a native of Ulverston UK and writer in residence at Swarthmoor Hall. She has four poetry collections, The Skin 2003 and Passio, 2006, (Flarestack Pubs. Ed. Charles Johnson); and The Other Side of the Bridge 2012 (Indigo Dreams, Ronnie Goodyear). Poems of a Mole Catcher’s Daughter, under pseudonym Katie A Coyle, was published in 2009 by Palores Publications, Ed. Les Merton. Her fifth collection, Salt Road (Indigo Dreams), is scheduled for release in 2013.
http://www.indigodreamsbookshop.com/#/geraldine-green/4565286878


Her work has been widely anthologised and appears in poetry magazines in the UK, USA and Italy, including Orbis, Tears in the Fence, Envoi, Smoke, Seventh Quarry, Poetry Cornwall, Citizen 32, Rain Dog, Obsessed with Pipework, Hortus Conclusus, Primal Sanities – A Tribute to Walt Whitman (Allbook Books), On a Bat’s Wing (Five Leaves Press), Simply Connect (Cinnamon Press).

She’s read widely in the UK and North America from Scotland to Cornwall and New Hampshire to New Mexico, also Italy and Greece, including: The Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea, Woody Guthrie Festival Okemah, Oklahoma, Walt Whitman Birthplace Long Island, Laurel Bookstore, Oakland California, the International Women’s Arts Festival, Kendal, CatStrand Dumfries & Galloway, Bowery Poetry Club New York City, Poetry on the Lake, Orta Italy, Skiathos Rooftop Celebration and the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere. Workshop exercises are included in: Writing Works, A Resource Handbook for Therapeutic Writing Workshops & Activities Jessica Kingsley Pubs. 2006.

In February 2009 she was invited by the South West Texas Popular Culture Committee to give a talk at their Conference in Albuquerque on ‘Ecopoetics: An Exploration of the Work by Aldo Leopold and John Clare.’

Geraldine obtained her PhD in Creative Writing Poetry from Lancaster University, UK. She has wide experience as a freelance creative writing tutor and mentor and has worked collaboratively with musicians, artists and photographers on a variety of community projects including: the National Trust, Equality Cumbria, Cumbria Multicultural Women’s Network, Rusland Writers, Mungrisdale Writers, Cumbria NHS Mental Health Trust, Society of Medical Writers, Intergenerational Projects in the Eden Valley and Penrith MIND. She is an Associate Editor of online magazine Poetry Bay www.poetrybay.com

Further information can be found on
a-gender.org/poets/geraldine-green or www.poetrypf.co.uk
http://jacket2.org/commentary/geraldine-green-stories-connect-introduction-her-book-“salt-road”

Wednesday 6 September 2017

WRITE ON THE FARM DATES FOR 2017




Come and join us! and write with us on the farm. A wonderful upland farm set between the Lakes and the Dales 10.30AM-4.30PM £35 incl. refreshments. Please bring own lunch, waterproof footwear and clothing as part of the afternoon session takes place outside.

All welcome!

2017 Autumn/Winter dates:

Saturdays, 10.30am-4.30pm

September 16th
October 21st
November 25th

2017 Spring-Summer Dates:

25th Feb - poetry and music: morning session with Christine and her harp
18th March - on the farm
22nd April - with co-tutor Catherine Ayres
20th May- Briggflatts, Sedbergh meet at Jane's Farm, 10am, car share to Briggflatts, return to Jane's for quiet writing time, read back/feedback
24th June -  "Write in the present, unearthing the past" - meet at Jane's 10.15am, followed by short ride, car sharing, to a mini archeological dig



You can read more about the Write on the Farm workshops on my previous blogs, as well as on Christine Cochrane's blog 'Harping On'. I'm delighted that Christine will be co-tutoring a poetry and harp session with me at the farm in February 2017.


photos: copyright Geraldine Green 17.9.2016