Antique shop cat

I love antique shops, especially ones that are overflowing with things. Piles of maps, pyramids of old china and glassware. Dust and corners where people can't quite reach and the items lie undisturbed. I really like vintage photographs although I find them emotional to look at. All those once loved faces, long dead and forgotten and not cherished in a family album but stacked in a shop of curios. Their names are sometimes written on the back but mostly they are anonymous.

Whilst I was at Much Wenlock poetry festival this year I spent a happy half an hour looking at a rack of photographs. I wanted to buy quite a few but I resisted as I collect too much clutter and I had just had a clearout before I left. However, this small picture (it is the size of a large stamp) could not be left behind.

Photographs were expensive but someone bothered to take a picture of this little cat. I imagine it is marmalade and white and it doesn't look very old. It is watching something/someone. I have been carrying it around in my wallet every since and look at it sometimes imagining the person who owned the cat. Was it a child playing with the camera or an adult who loved their cat? A test shot? It's not a great picture; the cat blends into the lawn and bushes but it is still there, cheating time and death, a surviving image of a long lost cat.

Jenny Hope: Poet

Read her poems here...

Poetry at Ledbury!

I have been enjoying the sunshine so much. After eleven months of gloom and grey skies this is a wonderful change. It has been an incredibly busy month for me. I have completed my MA, finished a PTLLS course, had a dear friend to stay from abroad and gone to Ledbury poetry festival. For a poem obsessed person having the festival on my doorstep has been a luxury.

I helped MC the Writing Squad event, run by Writing West Midlands, at Ledbury poetry festival. I have been a volunteer writer/helper on the squad for the last five months. It's a writing course for 8-11 years run by the poet Jenny Hope. We meet at the Hive once a month and it is lots of fun. My daughter, Pamela read a poem at the event so I was very proud of her. The children were so talented it was a pleasure to see their enthusiasm for poetry.

Then I helped on  the poetry take-away stall. It was run by the poet Tim Clare and he handled a difficult customer with flair and diplomacy, which resulted in a brilliant poem. There was another fine poet called Dave Reeves (Radio Wildfire) also writing poems to order with me. It was fun. Some really unusual poems were requested and I enjoyed the thrill of quick thinking and aiming to please my customer.

After that I went to hear the American poet C.D Wright read. The poems left me quite speechless; they were so good. This is what I love about poetry, hearing a voice I have not heard before and words that thrill me. The poems were written with a fierce, intelligent wit and were saturated in the voice and vivid landscape of her home, Arkansas.I brought the book 'One With Others' and now my life has mellowed out I plan to enjoy reading it in the garden.

Finally I performed as part of the Vaginellas. It was a joint event with the Decadent Divas, who are an awesome group of poets from Birmingham. Over a year ago I read at an open mic event in Kidderminster and after, I was drinking with some of the poets, Jenny Hope, Catherine Crosswell and Sarah James and we were talking about different forms like the villanelle. However someone described it as a vaginelle instead and we all thought it was an excellent slip of the tongue. After, we all emailed each other some tongue in cheek villanelles with vagina themes, just to make each other laugh. This turned into a blog and then a reading for Worcester Literary Festival; the Vaginellas first performance got some very good reviews so I pitched it to Ledbury and we were booked for the Thursday night, after the cider event which boded well for the audience liking our slightly smutty versions of classical forms.

It was a very hot evening and Ledbury looked beautiful. The Divas arrived from Brum, looking radiant and ready for action. The Vaginellas went on first and any worries it may not have a large audience were quashed when we saw the queue outside. It was so full people had to sit upstairs to watch.The atmosphere was excited and it all went without a hitch. The audience reaction was fantastic with lots of wonderful comments. The Divas were hilarious and the last poem by Laura Yates celebrating Birmingham was the perfect poem to end on.

the V's

And we all got a blue Ledbury bowl which, as I told my non-poet friends who were baffled about my illuminated reaction to piece of pottery - 'In the poetry world this is really prestigious.'

Yes, they answered sagely, but in the real world it will be a good bowl to serve nuts in.

by Sue Thompson

V.Press published a chapbook of the Vaginella poems. You can buy the book here...