Snow on the Balcony

Snow Trees

Pictures speak louder than words!

Bench of Snow

Playground of Snow

Side Garden Snow

Snow Bath

Snow Drive

virtual movie making with Steve and Barry – I thought my brain hurt when I was trying to write my thesis – but a day with these two’s finished me off completely!!

Here are a few random comments (in no particular order!)

Steve, my world’s going round
Yes I’ve been around the block a few times as well
Hang on, I’m going to beam you both up
Hell Steve, Miss Shanon’s lost in Kirth Hax’s private quarters!
Bugger it; I’m going to abandon ship!
No no – don’t do that, you need to go back to the hangar
How!
Just click on your wall. Now go and get another bloody spaceship!
This is a different ship – I’m not used to it.
Oh for f**** sake!
Steve, I’ve let Mark 2 drop off the edge of the building
F*** it – can’t I get some decent staff to work with: poets and bloody parish councillors – other people get professionals – what do I get, bloody poets and parish councillors!!
Where am I?
Did you go up in that lift?
Which lift?
You must have gone up in the lift
I don’t even know how to open the lift doors!
Steve, there’s no stuff coming out
That’s nice, I came past its nose
Tell Charlie I’m coming
I’m out of it
I can’t go any further back Steve
You’ve backed into a wall for God’s sake
Abandon ship!
The lift’s gone
What do you mean – gone!
What am I doing down here?
Steve! Steve, who’s this blond girl with the short white skirt
Dunno – go and talk to her
How
C***** have you forgotten how to walk already!
She’s winking at me now
Do something
Do what? – Where’s she come from?
Dunno, it’s someone’s attavar from somewhere else in the world -
do you realise, Maureen, you’re communicating with someone else somewhere else in the world
Don’t like it!
Steve! I’m floating round and round in the clouds again
Get back to the bloody hangar
How – oh yes I remember
Ah! I’ve entered a black hole
Abandon ship!
Steve, how do I turn round?
C***** A******* I leave you alone for two minutes and you forget how to turn round! I said walk towards me – why have you stopped!
I didn’t stop – look I still have my finger on the button – I have, haven’t I Barry!
She has
F*** – Try it now
Does it matter if I keep walking and knock you down?
I’d rather you didn’t,
OK, I’ll try not to
I’ve got a black one now – don’t like it as much as my other one
Yes but it has plumes – it will be better
Like my other one better. Can I try and get one from the other pod? Ah it’s blue this time – that’s better
For C*****’* sake!
Abandon Ship!
Do I press teleport now Steve?
Steve! Do I press teleport now?
Do what the F*** you like!
Why am I walking like this?
We haven’t animated your walk properly yet
Oh!
Look it’s really coming down now, I’ll never get up the bank.
Hang On, I’ll change the weather
No, I mean, it’s really coming down now – look
I said, hang on, I’ll change the F****** weather
No! No! look outside; the snow – the real world, I mean the real world
F*** – Abandon ship!

Delighted to say that three poems from ‘Chasing the Ivy’ have been included in the December, 2009 edition of the Classical Association News

Banner of CA News (December 2009)

3 Poems in CA News (December 2009)

We take our loved ones, those who love us and those whom we love so much for granted and I have reflected a lot on this over Christmas because we can take nothing for granted. These reflections have been my way of bringing what’s really important into sharp focus.

Well I’m glad to say that yet again I earned some stickers from the children.

Today we had ‘cat’ as our word of the day, and I wore my cat earrings. We found rhyming words for cat and identified words that begin with cat. We talked about different kinds of cats and I read them some of Spike Milligan’s funny poems about lions, tigers, cheetahs and leopards and we talked about how the same word can mean different things, e.g. spot as in the spot on a leopard and spot as in another word for see.

I read them the fabulous old poems ‘McCavity the Mystery Cat’ and
‘The Owl and the Pussycat’, I’d forgotten how wonderful old poems like this are and how musical. We then talked a bit about rhyming couplets and the children identified where these two poems rhymed before trying to write two pairs of rhyming couplets of their own.

Last Tuesday I started a new project at a primary school just outside Newcastle. I’m working with thirty absolutely delicious five-year-olds and their lovely teacher.

The project will carry over into 2010 and I will have nine sessions with them in all. Last Tuesday I gave them a word for the day which was ‘gold’ and we had lots of fun finding rhyming words and connected words and I read them the story of King Midas which they loved. I must have been OK because I was awarded two paper stickers, (photograph attached).

We made a poetry corner and I’m really looking forward over the coming weeks to filling their heads and hearts with poetry. There is something really grounding about working with such young children. I hope I will be able to give them a gift, a love, a way of seeing things that will stay with them.

We read limericks including one about a giraffe (I wore my giraffe earrings) and I made up a new limerick for them about a giraffe.

I wonder if they will give me a sticker this coming Tuesday when our theme will be cats.

Ivy Leaf from a Thoughtful Reader

Isn’t it funny how the smallest things can give you such pleasure. I received an order recently for my latest poetry collection, ‘Chasing the Ivy’ and the person ordering the book included a single ivy leaf. Such a small thing but a hugely thoughtful act and it gave me such pleasure.

I have already put the leaf with my reading programme and will take it with me as a good luck charm to my launch next Wednesday evening at the Lit and Phil.

I was thrilled to be part of Carol Ann’s ‘warm-up act’ at Durham Town Hall last Friday night, 30 October and to have shared the stage with four great north east women poets.

It is so encouraging to read to such a big audience and everyone was so marvellously attentive. This north east region has been rich in poetry events over the past two months. The Seamus Heaney nights in Newcastle in October were magical. Seamus is such a gracious man despite his profile – wonderful.

At Durham I read from my latest collection, ‘Chasing the Ivy’ [which has its official launch at the Lit and Phil in Newcastle on 11 November at 7pm. At half-time we did book signing and I assumed that everyone would probably keep their hands in their pockets until it was time to buy Duffy books [and who could blame them, she’s terrific], but no, I’m glad to say that I had to sign quite a few and loved receiving comments like, “my husband is a classicist – he’ll love these”, “gosh I didn’t realise that the contemporary poetry world had so much in common with ancient Rome”, “he sounds like a great guy, this Horace of yours”. I’m so glad that my latest collection, like ‘The Works’ which preceded it, is appealing to classical scholars and the wider public – job done!

Maureen Almond is delighted to announce the official launch of her sixth collection, (Pub. Biscuit, 2009)

Chasing the Ivy

 at the

 Lit and Phil in Newcastle

 on

 Wednesday, 11th November, 2009

  at  7pm

FREE ENTRY – Wine and Nibbles

Professor Stephen Harrison

(Fellow and Tutor in Classics, Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Professor of Latin Literature, University of Oxford)

Maureen Almond has taken her place in a line of distinguished English
interpreters of Horace-a line which includes Milton, Marvel, Dryden, Pope, and
Tennyson. In The Works, she produced what is surely the most significant creative
engagement with Horace’s Epodes in recent times. Her work will continue to be seen
as one of the significant contributions to the tradition of English poetry linked to the
classics, and one of the freshest and most original bodies of English poetry in our time.

Dr John Talbot

(Associate Professor of English and Affiliated Faculty in Classics, Brigham Young University)

Chasing the Ivy is a brilliant and wholly original take on the world of contemporary
British poetry, of arts-funding, sponsorships residencies and the glittering prizes.
Maureen Almond draws on Horace’s Odes to lay bare the vanity, envy, snobbery
and ambition of so much of the poetry scene – fading poets, fashionable poets and
amateur poets – with the satirical bite of Pope, Swift and Dryden. But Chasing the Ivy
is also a hymn to the civilised Horatian virtues of work, community and friendship,

gentle comedy and wise seriousness.

Andy Croft

The recurring concerns of Maureen’s work – trenchant social analysis, ageing and
nostalgia, contemporary politics, and the difficulties of maintaining one’s own voice
in the face of a competitive literary community and established poetic tradition – make
for a strongly Horatian brew, but in Chasing the Ivy the originality of conception,
sensitivity to structure, and liveliness of language go well beyond the laborious
straitjacket of translation.

Dr. L. B. T. Houghton

Department of Classics, University of Glasgow

I’m pleased to say that I have a chapter in the just published ‘Living Classics: Greece and Rome in Contemporary Poetry in English’ (Ed S.J. Harrison) published by Oxford University Press

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Living-Classics-Contemporary-Classical-Presences/dp/019923373X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251845455&sr=1-1