Plague Year Season 4 Review

2023 eh? That was the year that was.

I’m not going to share my thoughts or reflections on it because they’re all too heavily fogged up by the lens of the present moment and as I write this, huddled up with a hotwater bottle, watching the rain fall for the 6th day in a row, I am going into this transition of years in several flavours of maudlin, so I’ll keep it brief, with a list of things I celebrate from my 2023, and things I am hopeful for for 2024.

The two bigs things of 2023 in my life are these –

1. Some of Us Just Fall was published in the UK by Sceptre on July 6th.

SOUJF (soo-jiff-er, to rhyme with Calcifer, for those of us who are too tired to say five words when one will do) will be 6 months old on January 6th, and I hope will keep gaining readers as they trundle along.

I am so grateful to all SOUJF’s readers, everyone who has shared and talked about the book, or supported it in any way. You make it all worthwhile.

This is my first mainstream publication, and I have lots of reflections on this especially, but it’s not the time or place for them.

What I will say is that it’s been more helpful than I had anticipated to remember the poetry mantra that kept me going through all the years of rejections and nonpublications: it’s the work that matters, focus on the work. I’m also inordinately thankful for my wonderful agent Caro Clarke, and to be doing this at a point in my life when I have other writers to talk to about what is normal and not normal, what is personal and not personal about the industry.

The US edition is coming out with Unnamed on March 19th 2024, which is really exciting, and I’m especially thankful for all the thought and care Allison and the team at Unnamed have put into it pre-publication. It’s a different look, and I loved seeing how Jaya Nicely, the art director at Unnamed, thought through the cover. I can’t wait to see the two editions hanging out together.

Thanks to every bookshop and library who has had SOUJF on their shelves, everyone who has made events and talks possible, and again, all my readers.

2. We bought a bookshop!

(the business, to be specific, not the premises, which we’re renting off the previous owner)

My partner Will has been a bookseller all of his adult life, and has been working at Sam Read’s in Grasmere for over a decade. On October 23rd, after a long year of negotiations that felt a lot like something out of a nineteenth century novel, we became Sam Read’s new owners – the seventh generation to take the helm.

We’ve massively grateful for everyone’s support, advice and custom both through the sale process and as we move forward into our first year steering this old and venerable ship!

There have been a lot of work-related frustrations in all areas but as the year closes I want to focus on the good things.

I’ve had work in three anthologies I’m really delighted with in different ways.

1. Three poems included in the National Trust book of Nature Poems (edited by Deborah Alma), with beautiful illustrations.

2. My poem ‘Unwalking’ from Much With Body from the 2019 collaboration with Josie Giles and Anthony Capildeo included in Kerri Andrew’s anthology of women’s writing on walking, Way Makers

3. A new essay about rain and chronic illness in the brilliant Moving Mountains anthology, edited by Louise Kenward.

There are lots more things that are still works in progress, that haven’t quite happened as they were intended to, that have been delayed or disrupted, as you might expect. I’m also sorry to everyone I owe an email to who I’ve failed to email.

Going into 2024 I’m hoping to remember to focus on the things I can control, and let go of what I can’t. To not let what I can’t overwhelm me and distract me from what I can do, and need to do.

I’m working on a little book project which I’ll be able to share more about in the next few months once the manuscript is handed in at the end of January.

I also have most of a third poetry collection together, although the schedule suggests it might not see paper for another couple of years. I’d really love all the problems it addresses to be so obsolete by then that it’s a piece of lyric archeology and I have to bury it and start again but somehow I doubt it. Either way, in 2024 I will try and get more of the poems I’ve written so far out into the world before they turn to dust.

On New Year’s Eve last year we joined Cathy Rentzenbrink’s zoom workshop and out of it I wrote this poem I’ll leave you with. Wishing you all all the best for 2024.

Resolving

To turn my face to the sun at every opportunity.
To wash in its gold like the cat does. To choose
light over productivity. Comfort
over productivity. To be kindly with myself.
To break into simpler parts. To loosen.
The moth-holed clouds of the old year blown open
to let the moon shine through. To vanquish
abstemiousness. Against deprivation.

I will weather these months as the deer do, eating
and resting when I will. Putting all of my store
into personal growth, turning the winter
into velvet and bone, and my own survival.

I will practice my big antler energy. Towards
resting red deer face, the furrow in my brow
less of a comment than a natural phenomenon
and when I am threatened I will leap free and vanish
and when I am threatened I will leap free and vanish
and the space I abandon will be less-than without me.

I am filling my pockets with all the sun I can carry
and turning them out in the burrow of the house
at twilight. I am being lavish with my logs
even before dark, if the day is too dark
though there’s so much winter to burn through.

I am taking it one fire at a time
against the daily emergency of this endless
heedless season of gloom. I am cleaning
my bones. I am lighting all my candles.
I have given up giving up.