Children’s Poems for National Poetry Day

It’s National Poetry Day, and earlier in the week I ran some poetry workshops in two schools in Warwick – Westgate Primary and Newburgh Primary – as part of the Warwick Words Festival. They were two very special days and what made it more special for me was having my daughter Helen working with me. I think we made a great team, and some of the poems the children wrote during the course of the workshops were excellent. They showed such enthusiam for poetry and for the writing of poetry, such a joy in the creative use of language, that we both came away energised and optimistic too about the future of poetry. So thanks to Jane Perry of Warwick Words for organising that, and for the teachers whose own enthusiam helped the sessions go so well.

I wrote a few poems on the theme of Home especially for these sessions, and if you’d like to read them, there’re here. Home Poems Please do feel free to download and use them if you wish.

Great Bear Last Post

This is the final posting, for the time being at least, of extracts from my work-in-progress, The Hunt for the Great Bear. There are a few reasons for this, one being that this final extract concludes the first part of the novel, and that seems a good place to stop for now. I’m still writing the second part and would rather not post anything from that while it’s still being worked through. Also, it was never my intention to post the entire novel, as I do hope, when the whole thing is done, that I’ll be able to publish it in print.

So I hope you have enjoyed reading what I’ve posted here. I have enjoyed reading the comments that have been posted, and found them very helpful. And will find them even more helpful when I come to do a final draft of the entire novel. When it’s finished. Whenever that may be.

Thanks again for reading.

You can read the final section of Part One here The Hunt for the Great Bear 6

The Hunt for the Great Bear Part 5

Here’s the latest instalment of my work-in-progress, which you can read by clicking here The Hunt for the Great Bear 5 

As I’ve posted elsewhere before, this is a work-in-progress, not the finished article, and there are sure to be many rewrites, alterations, corrections, deletions, additions before the final draft is finished. So, as I’ve also posted elsewhere, any comments or suggestions or points of view you dear readers may have and wish to post in the “comments” section will be more than helpful.

I also should say – if I haven’t already – that I don’t intend to post the entire novel here. That’s still being written, and I don’t want to scupper my chances of the novel being published in print form by putting it all online. But, after the whole of Part One  is up – which will be after next week – I will continue to post extracts from time to time from Part Two.

Finally, if you follow the link to Map of Marvels extract in the blogroll on the right of the page, you’ll be able to read…an extract from my latest novel, The Map of Marvels, which was published recently in the excellent online literary magazine, Danse Macabre.

And now readers – do read on.

The Hunt for the Great Bear Part 4

This is the latest instalment of my work-in-progress novel, which you can read here The Hunt for the Great Bear 4. The work so far has generated some very helpful, and sometimes very enthusiastic comments, and I do look forward to receiving more after this new posting.  I do respond to all posts and comments, whether they’re put here, or sent directly to my email, and all ideas and suggestions will be taken very seriously when I’ve finished the book, and come to work on the next draft. And, once again, I really do appreciate all the interest you’re showing in this new work.

Thanks.

The Hunt for the Great Bear Part Three

It’s Thursday 26th August, and from today you can read the 3rd instalment of my work-in-progress The Hunt for the Great Bear. 

What I’ll be posting here in these weekly instalments will eventually be the whole of Part One of the book, which has been through a first and second draft.  At the moment I’m working on the first draft of Part Two. Once that’s done, I’ll write a second draft, and then most likely do a third draft of the whole book. And my aim is to take into consideration any comments posted here when writing that draft.

For the time being, you can read the third instalment here The Hunt for the Great Bear 3

Also, follow the link below to read an article about a creature that was one of the sources of inspiration for the book.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8321000/8321102.stm

The Hunt for the Great Bear 2

Here is the second instalment  of my new “work-in-progress”. You can read it here The Hunt for the Great Bear 2

I’d like to thank those who have posted comments about the first instalment, and to say how much I’ve enjoyed reading and answering them. If you take a look you’ll see there’s already been some lively and interesting discussion. As I may have said elsewhere, my hope is that posting a new work in instalments like this will encourage readers, and other writers, to engage in discussion about a new work as it’s created and shaped, and maybe to have some input into its final form. So do please read on, and send in your comments, questions and thoughts.

Roots and Influences

There’s something of  a mystery about how any work of art gets started, what scraps and odds and ends of experience come together to give it eventual form and shape.  As often as not it’s a mystery to the creator of that art as well. In the case of The Hunt for the Great Bear I am aware of some of the random roots and influences of the work, so I thought I might put them down here.

First and foremost there’s my interest in myth and epic literature, and my long-held desire to write something that had that epic, mythic quality, but that could still speak with some urgency to a contemporary audience. And speak about something of urgent concern – human beings’ relationship with the natural world. One of the Greek epic myths that has always struck a deep note with me is that of the “Calydonian Boar Hunt”, and it was when I read, years ago now, Lawrence Norfolk’s excellent novel that dealt with that narrative “In The Shape of a Boar” that I thought I might one day attempt something like that myself.

More recently, there were three experience that pointed me in the direction of setting a story in some world of extreme temperatures, a world where humans, or the remnant of the human race, were in engaged in a real struggle for survival against impending extinction: I read Steven Mithen’s “After the Ice” which dealt with human development from 20,000 to 5.000 BC; I was asked to write a children’s version of the Inuit myth of Sedna, the sea-goddess; and I heard a radio programme (an episode of Melvyn Bragg’s “In Our Time” on Radio 4) in which one the subjects of discussion was the eventual fate of the earth, an animal and human life. So the idea of creating a future world of ice and snow in which evolution was going into reverse, so to speak, began to take hold and form itself into a story.

At about the same time, I attended a poetry workshop in which we were given photographs to use as a starting point for writing poem. Mine was of the arctic and the resulting poem in a way became the catalyst for starting the novel, and gave me its theme. If you wish, you can read that poem here. She is trying to get back

But it was on the train to Oxford in November 2009 when I was reading Ted Hughes’ story collection “Difficulties of a Bridgeroom” that the opening scene of the story first came to me, and I noted it down, and wrote it up later in my hotel room. Some months later I went back to it and began to write the book.

The Hunt for the Great Bear

This site is dedicated to publishing extracts from a new novel I’m working on called The Hunt for the Great Bear. Each week I’ll be posting a chapter or section from the novel, so you’ll be able to read it in serial form. I will welcome any comments you might have about what you read, and will be happy to answer any questions, and discuss with you your thoughts about the book. You can read the first instalment here The Hunt for the Great Bear 1