PlaySpace Publications (PSP) Solstice Letter

What have been your happiest times since the Summer Solstice? Any regrets you’d like to leave behind in 2015, bury or burn? What will make your heart sing in the next six months? And looking back at the end of 2016 – what if you found yourself saying: “That was the best year of my life!!” – What will have happened? What will you have done? These were the sort of question we will be asking at the last meeting of the Poet’s Way while celebrating the Winter solstice.

The Poet’s Way awakens the power of poems to compliment & enhance our spiritual practice. Sundays from 5pm (for a 5:30 start) to 9pm
17Jan, 14 Feb, 13 Mar, 10 Apr, 8th May, 12 June, 11 Sept, 9 Oct, 13 Nov, 11 Dec 2016 at the Glasgow Buddhist Centre: 329 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G2 3HW

Since the last newsletter, I regret that seven people I know have died.  I knew them well as fellow poets and artists: Tessa Ransford, Elizabeth Butns, Christopher Leith, Alexander (Sandy) Hutchison, Jack Withers, Cate Sweeny McGee, and Robert Farquhar (Bob the Brush).  Bob was a prison artist; Cate an old friend and artist with whom I collaborated on several project with her fomer husband Gerry Loose; Christopher Leith, a master puppeteer for whom I wrote a script of Beowulf for the Naitonal Theatre; Jack worked with me in Survivors’ Poetry Scotland, Elizabeth Burn, a fine sensitive poet; Tessa, the founder of the Scottish Poetry Library. Four died from cancer.  I’ve tributes to three of them: Tessa, Sandy, and Jack.

Last week PSP launched Bundles of Bog Cotton at the Maggies’ Centre Christmas party raising over £200 for the charity. “The book is a mind-opener as well as a locus of solidarity for the cancer affected. ” Tom Leonard. Now available from PSP.

Still in stock:
Lost Words by Dorothy Stafford
HeartWork by Linda France
13 Ways of Making Poetry a Spiritual Practice by Maitreyabandhu
Earth Says by Ratnadevi & Larry Butler
Wee Dods of Kismet by Margaret Donaldson

Out of Print:
Requiem by David Donnison
Today Today Today by Alec Finlay

Writing Prompt:
After watching the film Seven Songs for a Long Life, the film-maker Amy Hardie led a workshop asking five questions. We worked in pairs with one person scribing their partner’s answers. We only had 3 or 4 minutes to answer each question.

1. What’s a good day for you?
2. If you had a terminal diagnosis with not long to live – but you didn’t know exactly how long – and your only symptom is that you get tired easily; what would be a good day then?
3. What qualities that you’ve expressed in your life do you want to be remembered by?
4. What actions do you take at the moment that express these qualities?
5. After a life-limiting diagnosis, can you still express these qualities in your daily life, or are there other things you might do?

When a patient is first interviewed at Strathcarron Hospice – these are the sort questions they are asked. One of my answers to question 2 was: “I’d have more time!”

HappySolstice,                                                                                                                                             Larry