I had the good fortune some months ago to visit the forest at Cong, in County Mayo, Ireland. It truly seems a magical place, with giant redwoods, hanging moss, and a deep atmosphere of peace.

As I walked, I saw in one tree a myriad of spiderwebs. Because it had just rained that morning, there were drops of moisture caught on the strands. Now, with the rain over, the shafts of sunlight pierced gaps in the leaf canopy to light up the glistening webs, showing the delicate beauty of each strong strand. At the centre of each was a small motionless spider, legs curled in, as if it were a small bead in the webbing. One web in particular was a perfect circle, and reminded me of a Native American dreamcatcher with its bead in the middle. I gazed at it for a while, then turned to look again at the moss-festooned forest.

A few minutes later I turned back … and there were no spider webs. The angle of the sun had changed ever so slightly, but just enough that its light no longer touched the webs. No matter how hard I looked, and knowing where I had seen them, it was as if they had never been there at all.

I walked away, thankful that I had been there in the few blessed moments when the transient light of dreams could be seen in a few delicate strands.

Oh my, the rain! I dashed from the ferry terminal to my car through lashing rain which, against the laws of physics, seemed to be beating against me from all directions at once. I was grateful for my waterproof jacket, but in just a short distance my shoes and trousers were soaked and were now steaming thanks to the car’s heater which I’d turned up full blast. I was feeling a bit grumpy about this turn in the weather and my general state of dampness. Then I saw a family hurrying along the pavement towards their own car, the parents with pinched looks on their faces as water streamed down their cheeks and eyelashes. All they could think about, like me a few moments earlier, was getting into the shelter of the vehicle as quickly as possible. Except for the child – a little one about 3 years old, I suppose. Sporting a wee pair of wellies, he was deliberately splashing each footstep into puddles, and raising his face to the wild rain with a look of sheer unalloyed joy. For us adults, the weather was simply a cause for annoyance and stress, but for this child it was a great chance to have an elemental experience of something beyond ordinary life, to find happiness in the wildness of it all.

How is it, as adults, we so often attach how we feel to trying to make things more comfortable and not at all inconvenient in any way? So often we attempt to insulate ourselves from anything wild or elemental. Of course, children like comfort as well, and heaven knows kids have opinions about how things should be! But so often you won’t find them worrying much about getting wet, or dirty, or a little scuffed up – in fact, they often find that these things are where all the fun is. Would I have dropped a feeling of stress from my body and spirit if I had, instead, laughed during my passage through the rain and lifted my face to this precious life-giving water? After all, I would be dry again in a bit – but perhaps I had neglected to allow a few moments of real joy into my life.

It’s raining again right now. I think I might just go for a walk.

On a recent trip to Northumberland, I saw a great many castles. A lot of these castles are now, of course, beautiful historic ruins with wonderful, and somewhat mysterious atmospheres (at least, more mysterious if you eschew English Heritage’s audioguides!). While we know a lot about the use of these castles, it is also fun to let your creativity run free and imagine what these castles were like when all the walls and interiors were intact and people lived their daily lives within them.

But I also saw other castles of the imagination – some splendid sand castles on the beach at Alnmouth. Perhaps the architect of these formidable structures had just been to see one of the castles up the coast – Warkworth or Dunstanburgh – and was inspired to create their own version. This just goes to show that, where imagination is concerned, you can start great or small, and there are endless possibilities.

Puts me in mind of Anne of Green Gables (that feisty heroine of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s novels) who said, ‘Isn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive – it’s such an interesting world. It wouldn’t be half so interesting if we know all about everything, would it?’

So whether you visit castles of stone, construct them of sand, or build castles in the air through your writing – just keep on imagining!

I’ve discovered that hawks, and many other birds, have 4 different receptor-sensitivities in their eyes, unlike humans who only have 3: red, green and blue. That means we can see these 3 colours, as well as combinations of them: yellow, orange, and purple. But hawks can see more colours than we can, including the ultraviolet spectrum. So it seems that there exist more colours than we can perceive. Yet we go through life thinking that there are only a certain number of colours, because that’s all we can see, that’s all we have experienced.

That’s a bit of a metaphor for how we often live our lives. We think we perceive the world as it really is, but we are actually bounded by what we already know and by habitual thoughts which tell us that things are a certain way and no other. Yet hawks show us that this is not true – when we look at anything, we are only seeing a part of it. We’re missing colours which we have no way of even imagining. And so it is with any experience – if we insist on translating everything through our knowledge of past events and holding to the same thought patterns we’ve always had, we miss out on so much.

While there is be no way we can see our world as a hawk sees it, there are surely other ways in which we can broaden our perception. Could we not look at our life with fresh eyes, and see things a bit differently? A new year is coming, and I’m setting it as my goal to go do something absolutely new in 2019 which is quite outside of my usual experience. Something that will generate new thoughts and ideas, and challenge me in ways I’ve not done before. Effectively, I’m determined to bring new and amazing colour into my life.

I have lovely news! I’ve just been appointed ‘Writer in Wellbeing in Residence’ at Dilston Physic Garden near Corbridge. I’ve been leading Writing for Wellbeing workshops there for some years, and it is wonderful to have a closer association with this wonderful place and the dedicated people who make it happen. The Physic Garden is truly a magical spot which gives inspiration to our writing in the workshops, and leaves visitors with feelings of calm and peace. It is a place filled with medicinal herbs, gorgeous flowers, beautiful trees, astoundingly creative sculptures, and the charming Herbology House where we do our workshops. They have a full program of amazing workshops about plants and all types of wellbeing – including Writing for Wellbeing. Do take time to visit the Garden if you can – or come to one of my workshops there!

You can read more about my appointment as Writer in Residence here, including one of my poems inspired by the beautiful colours in the Garden: http://dilstonphysicgarden.com/writer-in-residence/

And here’s where to find lots more info about the Garden: http://dilstonphysicgarden.com/

When I was a child, I had an uncle who wasn’t all that good at talking a lot, but he was just what I needed – because he listened to me. He listened to me tell him about the books I was reading, my young dreams, and whatever else was on my mind. He used to respond with a drawn-out ‘Oh, yes’, which made me feel like I was a terribly important person.

I don’t think he had had much of a chance to read many ‘children’s books’ when he was a child, educated in a one-room schoolhouse in rural Saskatchewan in Canada. But he gave me two of my most treasured books I had as a child.

One was Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot, the beautiful old hardcover version (not that inadequate little paperback they peddle now). It had the most vibrant illustrations (with the charming attribution on the cover ‘Nicholas Bentley drew the pictures’). I read those poems over and over with great joy and deep satisfaction that a topic as important as cats was getting its due. The other volume was The Big Green Book by Robert Graves, quite a naughty tale about a child getting magical powers. The illustrations this time were by the great Maurice Sendak.

I had no idea at the time that T.S. Eliot and Robert Graves were two giants of modern literature, and when I grew older I encountered their adult books with surprise – ‘Oh, did they write something else?’. I realized later that it was my uncle’s way of introducing me to the masters, and he had given me more than just the gift of a couple of children’s books. T.S. Eliot’s poems, particularly, have since become guideposts on my journey through life.

I still have both copies of those books he gave me, with his inscription to me in the front. He died nearly 20 years ago, but I still feel my love for him every time I open them. And I remember my uncle who gave me the greatest gift of all – his attention.

[Written on International Children’s Book Day 2018]

When my Mom was in her 70s, she had a stroke which affected the speech centre of her brain. Not only did she have difficulty in speaking and in finding the right words, she also found herself completely unable to read. The words were just black marks on a white page with no meaning. The doctors said there was nothing to be done about it. But while she was in hospital, we were chatting with the woman in the next bed, who quoted a few lines of poetry applying to what we were talking about. My Mom perked up immediately and said, ‘I know that poem’. This gave me an idea.

The next day I came in to the hospital with an anthology of poems – old poems, the kind my mother would have read and learned when she was in school. I opened the volume to Wordsworth’s poem ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’. Mom looked at the page and said she couldn’t read it. ‘But you know this one’, I said, and as I started reading it aloud, I pointed my finger to each of the words. My mother started to speak the lines with me, reciting from her memory. It seems that the area of the brain which stored her memory of poems was different than the speech centre which had been damaged by her stroke. And then the magic happened. Suddenly she began to be able to relate the words she was speaking to the words my finger pointed at on the page. The incomprehensible black marks started to make sense again, and formed into written words in her mind. She could read the poem.

That moment was a breakthrough. After practicing by reading more poems, in time she was able to read the newspaper, other books, and do her favorite crossword puzzles again. She could even beat me playing Scrabble. Her speech also improved to the point that most people didn’t know she had any issues with it.

This memory came back to me today on World Poetry Day. That’s why I use poetry in some of my Writing for Wellbeing workshops – because poetry really can heal us in all sorts of ways.