This post might make more sense if you read the ones below first – or at least An Arvon course and a poetry prize

It’s the half term break, but I was at work anyway – I know that lots of people would be envious of my 10 weeks annual leave, but to be honest, it was partly because of the long holidays that I went into teaching in the first place, and when I started working in Adult Education, I got 14 weeks, so having that reduced to 10 in the last few years, hit me quite hard – but at least I still get a certain amount of satisfaction from it, and I’m pretty sure that this is due to my other ‘career’ – my writing.

I’ve already mentioned that the Arvon course at Lumb Bank changed my life, but there was a lot more to it than winning first prize in the Envoi poetry competition, and being invited to be part of the poetry ensemble, Late Shift.

I’ll be saying more about Late Shift soon, but first, there are other opportunities that can also be traced back to that same course. Maybe the most important for my writing development was the fact that I became a life member of the Friends of Arvon, and this entailed a regular news letter. The first one I received mentioned that there were still a few places left for the M.A. writing course at Nottingham Trent. The part-time option would involve a two year commitment of two evenings per week during term times.

I rang for more details, and liked what I read: This didn’t seem like a strictly academic approach, involving huge amounts of research into Eng Lit. It sounded very practical – everything would be based on our own writing and on critiquing each other’s work, with guidance from a small team of lecturers. There was a compulsory core programme which comprised weekly lectures given by relevant members of the university staff, and by visiting published writers. The other evening of each week would be set aside for the chosen subject area, one for the first year, the other for the second. I chose to start with fiction and then move on to poetry.

Just as I had sensed the need for a poetry writing group that would offer me challenge as well as support, I had already realised that, for my fiction in particular, I needed to be mixing with other writers who had the same needs, and taught by those who had already enjoyed some level of public recognition for their work.

To start with, though, what I felt I needed was support. In bucket-loads.

I had become (gradually) a confident , outgoing, outspoken person in my workplace. I enjoyed my job, which brought me into daily contact with all sorts of people. In fact, one of the unforeseen benefits of enrolling on the MA course, was that it would force me to cut back on the ‘gift time’ I was donating to my job, often working four evenings a week, instead of the expected two, simply because I found it so stimulating working with the students, constantly trying out new ways of helping them to use the wealth of the English language to express their own ideas more effectively.

I knew who I was in that environment – but here, back at university after all those years, conscious of being one of the few, much older ‘mature students’, unsure of the quality of my own expressive skills and creativity, I was suddenly as vulnerable as my teenage self had been.

(This post might make more sense if you read the ones below, first)

I’ve already had my main holiday abroad this year (the inspiring poetry course in Spain at Almaserra Vella, run by Penelope Shuttle, but the weather then was cold and wet, so I’m hoping to get some proper sunshine in August during my summer break from my job with the Birmingham Adult Education Service.

This August, it’ll be thirteen years since that poetry course at Arvon’s Lumb Bank Centre in Yorkshire. Joining that course was far more daunting than floating around in the sky, firmly linked to a boat in the coastal waters of Gran Canaria. It was also a more significant stepping stone into the future I wanted: being a writer. It’s amazing to think how far I’ve got with my writing since that particular turning point in my life.

I’d been dabbling in poetry during the previous years, when my job took up more and more of my free time. Not that poetry can easily be squeezed in to a brief half hour, here and there, but it was something that helped to satisfy that creative itch, and is still a significant part of my writing life.

Various friends and family members had said, ‘That’s really good.’ But then they would, wouldn’t they? I knew I needed to brace myself for something more objective from someone with more experience and knowledge of the craft of poetry.

The workshops, run by Joan Poulson and John Lyons were an inspiration, but I always dreaded the time when we were expected to subject our half-finished creations to the comments from the tutors and the group. It was fascinating to hear the contributions from all the others and I’d marvel at the standard of these offerings. I found it very enlightening to see how the tutors focussed in on the best parts, and explained what they felt had worked well, and why, with suggestions on how the piece might be further developed.

My life-changing moment came with my one-to-one appointment with Joan. She looked through the poems I’d brought with me and seemed to consider some of them worthy of publication. I’d known nothing about the various small poetry presses and she suggested a few that I might try.

One of these, Envoi, was running a competition, with a deadline that October. That was my very first success with poetry. My poem, Something Like a Stone won first prize – a cheque for £100 !

Anyone who’s ever written poetry or fiction can imagine the size of the smile on my face for hours after receiving this news.

The next hurdle was to find somewhere to lodge this cheque. I’d decided years earlier to use my maiden name of Coleman for my writing endeavours, rather than my husband’s name that I’d (willingly) taken on at our wedding. I was shocked to find how hard it was to open a building society account in my own, original name. For the first time in my marriage, I felt like ‘goods and chattels’ as I was sent home to fetch my birth and marriage certificates, my passports, and a bill for the water rates that just happened to be in my married name, rather than his.