I stagger to the counter, an armful of book packages clutched to my chest. “Hello!” I say through the perspex slot. “It’s me again.” Mrs Goggins in the post office leaps into action and five minutes of weighing, printing and sticking begins as post codes and zip codes are checked. While the growing queue behind…
Category: Cumbria
Incoming … World Curlew Day 2022
Incoming I am not your enemy dear messenger,but still your intent feels murderous. And though your reckless, adrenalinefuelled passes and dopplered cries have sent these old instincts into fullflight mode, my head disappearing into my shoulders, my sixty year oldbody separated from my bicycle to lie expediently on this damp grassy bank,I cannot help but…
Science and Poetry
So this is happening soon. Katrina Porteous performs a World Premiere of ‘Under the Ice’, an immersive half hour performance combining Katrina’s poetry with electronic music by Peter Zinovieff on June 23rd 2021 in the Wordsworth Grasmere poetry series ‘Go to the poets, they will speak to thee’. On the Wordsworth site we are told:…
Kendal Poetry Festival … a retrospective
An Em Humble film 🙂
Wings On Windermere
Linked with the article ‘Wings On Windermere’ over on the Yorkshire Times, I’ve written a poem for young people about the story of ‘The Windermere Children’. Photograph curtesy of Trevor Avery at the Lake District Holocaust Project. #Poetry #Cumbria #WindermereChildren
To Infinity … KPF 2021 Zooms into the Future
Kendal Poetry Festival 2021 … Poetry For Everyone: a review So I was organising my hot chocolate, arranging with the family my sole and undisputed access to our comfiest armchair, practising my skills on Zoom and looking through the programme on the Kendal Poetry Festival website, when an e-mail pinged into the virtual letterbox from…
Poems from the Fridge …
Here are some of the fun poems ordered, written and performed during the Contains Strong Language Festival at Tullie House in Carlisle last year (Poet in a Fridge 2020) …
Countdown To The Kendal Poetry Festival …
I miss going to live poetry events: meeting friends, visiting the bookstalls, the bustle for perfect seats, listening to poets you admire while nursing a glass of wine (beer, coffee, hot chocolate etc.) and being inspired to try and improve your own stuff at the end of it all … So, in these times of…
One Called Paul (revisited)
A few years ago, while cycling back home along a country lane from Kendal’s Saturday market, I was attacked. The assailant came out of nowhere, making an unearthly noise, causing me to fall onto the grass verge before she escaped over the fields. On reaching my destination, slightly bruised, I persuaded my wife to come…
Goodwill to all Men and Mice
I am a soft clart. Situations requiring cold, reasoned logic and swift decisive action are often dealt with ineptly when they involve wildlife infestations. Let me paint a picture … In Cumbria where I live, my house is situated next to a field. Along with the help of neighbours, the field is run as a…
November 1st 2020 … déjà vu, all over again
Borrowing the above phrase made famous by professional baseball player and undoubted sage Lawrence Peter ‘Yogi’ Berra, we do seem to have been here before. Back in March 2020, when news of the first coronavirus lockdown was sinking in and the UK came to a shuddering halt, I had been deep in preparations for an…
Jonathan Humble 