The Thursday Post: Welcome to my World

I arrived back at work on Monday after three weeks away.  I had left just after the grand reopening of the newly refurbished SPL, and was sad to leave the glittering space filled with so much light and laughter, but I was heading off on an exciting trip that would take me to the 2015 Aldeburgh Poetry Festival (read the blog here), to a reading in Norwich at Café Writers and a wonderful stay with the poets Helen Ivory and Martin Figura, through London to visit my friend –  the composer Samantha Fernando – who was on the Jerwood Opera Writing Programme with me this past year, and then to Barcelona for a meeting about international poetry exchanges with our partners in the new European poetry platform Literary Europe Live, headed up by Literature Across Frontiers.  I was especially delighted to be introduced to a number of amazing vegan restaurants in Barcelona, including the Cat Bar and the INCREDIBLE Flax & Kale, as well as being looked after with beautiful vegan food at the not completely vegan but very accommodating CCCB C3 Bar and La Biblioteca Gourmande, with beautiful books literally hanging from the ceiling. Thanks to all at CCCB, Literature Across Frontiers and all those extraordinary restaurants for convincing me (and even some of the meat-eaters among us) that Barcelona is a vegan foodie paradise.  The fact that it was over 20 degrees and sunny in November also helped!

It was a stimulating, inspiring and overwhelming trip, and made me glad that I am not in a touring band as I don't think I am made for laying my head down on a different pillow every night.  The hardest part of the journey was flying back from Barcelona via Paris on 14 November (more on that here), coming home to the news a few days later of my dear friend, the poet Alexander (aka Sandy) Hutchison's passing, and also learning that the Poetry Trust is closing its doors, so the vibrant and rich festival I attended may – I hope not! – but may be the last one, at least for some time.  That feels like a lot of loss in a short period of time. The news this morning that David Cameron and his cohort had dropped bombs on Syria hasn’t made me feel any better.  I am flabbergasted that people, especially people in power, have such a hard time learning the lesson that history has made so very clear – violence begets violence.

In the face of all this I’m trying to educate myself, to feel deeply, to meditate and to write.  Also to spend my time concentrating on goodness, beauty, compassion and positive ways forward.  One of Sandy’s poems, ‘Everything’ (watch him reading the poem here), which I suspect will become increasingly important and well-known as time passes, chimes with the words ‘Love each other, love each other.’ I remember at the time thinking how brave it was to address his audience with such a simple, epic decree – but now, especially in his absence and in a world so fraught, these are the words I keep repeating to myself.

JL Williams
Poet and Programme Manager, Scottish Poetry Library