Reconnecting with Writer Friends

Clem Cecil and Kristen Phillips at Binham book exchange in Norfolk.
Photo credit: Mia Farlane

In February, Kristen and I caught up with dear friends and family in Europe — people we hadn’t seen in person since lockdown London 2020.

Our timetable, outside of London, included a stay in Gloucester and Norfolk, and Wicklow, in Ireland.

Here are a few of our reading/writing-related events.

In London:

• we caught up with Chris McCabe and Lorraine Mariner at the National Poetry Library

• we were part of an informal literary salon, organised by Reuben Lane

• we attended the online book launch of Mark Blackburn’s memoir / travelogue Final Approach: My Father and Other Turbulence (Claret Press)

• we went to Fleur Adcock’s book launch for her new Collected Poems (Bloodaxe / Te Herenga Waka University Press) at the London Review Bookshop — and celebrated her ninetieth birthday. Here are a few photos taken by Julian Stannard and by me.

• Kristen was a guest author at the London-based NZ Book Circle, and read from her memoir / creative nonfiction Dad, You’ve Got Dementia (The Cuba Press)

• I went, first time in person since 2020, to my London-based writing group (now hybrid)

• and I went, with a couple of friends, to the launch of Joelle Taylor’s The Night Alphabet (Riverrun) at the Queen Elizabeth Hall at London’s Southbank Centre.

In Norfolk (aside from a much-needed reading retreat with friends in Cromer):

• Kristen and I went with our friend Liz Day to the anchorhold of the anchorite Julian of Norwich

• we discovered the Binham Book Exchange, thanks to Clem Cecil. (Photo above)

• and we visited Stevie Smith’s ‘Not Waving but Drowning’ beach at Cley-next-the Sea.

  Well, this is not an exhaustive list. And it doesn’t include those more quiet moments, talking with writer friends — in London, Norfolk, Gloucester, and Wicklow (and, for me, in Lille, in March) — about writing, changing titles, and sending work out. More on that next time perhaps.

March so far has included:

• visiting friends in France and a wonderful guided tour around Lille’s central library, La Médiathèque Jean Lévy. I wrote a short piece re Proust for this library in 2022 and will be writing another short piece, on another subject, in June this year,

• going on a (very long) train journey with my aunt to St Andrews for Stanza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, and chatting with a few poets and the BSL signer, Lisa Li.