KATHRYN SIMMONDS

A STUDENT GUIDE TO CHARLES CAUSLEY TRUST POET IN RESIDENCE KATHRYN SIMMONDS

Poet in Residence
The Charles Causley Residency is a tribute to the late poet, Charles Causley. Writers in residence are given the opportunity to live and work in Charles Causleys House in Launceston, Cornwall, and to share their skills and experiences with the literature community. The residency is led by The Charles Causley Trust with help from Arts Council England, Cornwall Council, Literature Works and Launceston Town Council. The Charles Causley Trust exists to keep alive the memory of the late Charles Causley and to promote writing in the community and region in which he lived. A central focus of the work of Charles Causley Trust is the continued development of Charles Causleys House in Launceston, Cornwall, and its preservation and interpretation for future generations.

About Kathryn
Kathryn Simmonds was born in Hertfordshire and worked in children's publishing before taking a creative writing MA at the University of East Anglia in 2002. She received an Eric Gregory Award in the same year and her pamphlet, Snug, a winner in the Smith/Doorstop pamphlet competition, was published in 2004. Her collection Sunday at the Skin Launderette won the Forward Prize for best rst collection in 2008 and was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.! Her short stories have been published in a number of magazines and broadcast on Radio 4. Her second poetry collection The Visitations is published by Seren, who will also publish her rst novel Love and Fallout in 2014.

TED HUGHES ON CAUSLEY

Among the English poetry of the last half century, Charles Causleys could well turn out to be the best loved and!most needed . . . the only one who could be called a man of the people, in the old, best sense.

KATHRYNS FIRST COLLECTION was called Sunday at The Skin Laundrette. It came out in 2008, published by Seren.

KATHRYNS NEW COLLECTION is called The Visitations, published by Seren. Kathryn launched it in 2013.

CHARLES CAUSLEY was born in 1917 and is acknowledged as one of the very nest Twentieth Century English poets.

KATHRYNS

Writing a book of poetry: a behind the scenes look.

LIKES
Poet: George Herbert Poems: The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear or The Love song of J.!Alfred!Prufrock by T.S.Eliot. Novel The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark Play: Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov. Film: Tokyo Story. I also like a good lm with The Muppets! Music: I listen to quite a lot of choral music. And Stevie Wonder. And Bob Dylan. Place to write: Anywhere warm and quiet. At the kitchen table is good. Time to write: If the day hasnt been too exhausting, I work quite well at night.

KATHRYNS LATEST BOOK IS CALLED THE VISITATIONS

Your second poetry collection, The Visitations, is now published; can you tell us a bit about how it came together?!! Slowly! After my rst book was published I didnt write poems for quite a few months and wanted to have a complete break from thinking about them.! But after a while they started to creep up on me again until a little pile began to accumulate.! Before long I was back to old habits, redrafting, submitting to magazines, until by the time I had a collection of about twenty-ve I could see another book was taking shape.! I wondered for a while if I should be looking for a single unifying theme for the book, but nothing emerged, or at least nothing I was conscious of at the time. Its only when Im at the very last stages of writing that I can get any perspective on the poems and see how they relate to each other.! Do you have any advice on starting out? Read a lot, and read critically if you enjoy a poem or a paragraph of prose, ask yourself what the writer is doing.! Find some like-minded friends to share your writing with. Id also say write the sort of thing youd want to read.! Dont become too obsessed by how other writers write! Writers, I think, are naturally curious about the alchemy: should they be listening to white noise through headphones? Should they sketch out everything or dive straight in? All this becomes another way to waste time and dodge the problem of sitting down and doing it. And doing it is the only answer!!!

Kathryn by NUMBERS
Number of Kathryns books so far

3
The age Kathryn had her rst poem published

Themes
What are the key th emes in Kathryns Work? Motherhood! Faith & Sustaining Memories! Love & Relationships ! Life & Living ! Society! Faith!

16
When does Kathryns novel come out?

2014

Learning to look: studying the world closely when you write poetry.
by Kathryn Simmonds
Poet in Residence

LEARNING TO LOOK
Charles Causley loved paintings.Why not nd a painting in a book in the library or at home and write a poem about what you see in the picture?

When I recently visited the Town Hall in Launceston to see the archiving of Charles Causleys belongings, I was struck by the great number of paintings he owned, and realised the walls of his home must have been crowded with pictures. But perhaps Causleys love of art is only to be expected in a poet who wrote so visually and was so attentive to his surroundings. Some years ago when I took a class in still life drawing, our teacher told us that most of our time would be spent looking and not making marks on the paper. This seemed counterintuitive; werent we there to draw? And yet I realised he was right, if we didnt look carefully enough, our drawings easily became lopsided, or fuzzy, or lacked the right detail to bring them to life. Poets and painters have this in common, they need to look. Walking around Causleys home town, its interesting to nd details which later made their way into poems: the stone eagles decorating

Here is one of Charles Causleys typewriters.Why not choose a familiar object in your house or classroom and write a poem about it?

the Eagle House Hotel, or the carving of Mary Magdalene in the wall of Mary Magdalene Church, for instance. Causley was open to the possibilities of poems because he had his eyes open. Poems that dont leave much impression are usually poems where the writer hasnt really bothered to look closely, but has instead fallen back on second-hand language and familiar assumptions. What good poems do is give us a fresh

experience and the great thrill and compulsion of writing is to make the world new. To do this you need to look closely. In his handbook Poetry in the Making, Causleys friend Ted Hughes describes the importance of learning to be still, to look both with the physical eye and the eye of the imagination. Id recommend Hughess book to anyone with an interest in writing poetry.

LITERARY DEVICES: KATHRYNS FAVOURITES

Metaphor! Onomatopoeia! Simile! Assonance !

The sh lie around all day washed-up movie stars stunned on their beds of crushed ice
From Kathryns poem The Boys in the Fish Shop' From Kathryns poem 'Self-Portrait with Washing-up Glove'

the giant weed plant waves to me like fallen royalty

Alliteration! Repetition!
!

Writing a poem: some starter ideas

Some Titles
If you dont know what to write about, sometimes a title will get your imagination working:

! An Unexpected Announcement
Sometimes it can be hard to think up an idea for a poem. Other times the idea is so strong that the poem writes itself - maybe its a poem about something youve seen, or a place youve been, or a person you know. But its not always that easy, so weve come up with some suggestions to get your poetry going. Remember what John Keats had to say though ... We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into ones soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject.

Some Themes
Some poetry themes to think about ... Nature! Love! Memories! Loss ! Science ! Journeys Landscape People Places !

! A Terrible Tattoo ! Late Again ! The Sea On A Snowy Morning ! Finding A Rusty Key ! How to Win At Cards ! The Wedding Guests ! My Favourite Shoes ! View From My Bedroom Window "

Some Exercises
! write a poem about your rst school teacher ! write a poem about a place you love ! write a poem from the point of view of an animal ! write a poem about something you have lost ! write a poem about a difcult journey ! write a poem set fty years in the future ! write a poem about somewhere you will go one day ! ! write a poem about your favourite musical instrument THE CHARLES CAUSLEY TRUST
The Charles Causley Trust exists to keep alive the memory of the late Charles Causley and to promote writing in the community and region in which he lived. A central focus of the work of Charles Causley Trust is the continued development of Charles Causleys House in Launceston, Cornwall, and its preservation and interpretation for future generations.

ite.! That doesn't mean!the poem !has to be about you, but you ha ve to care about it, and when yo u care enough you'll want to make it your absolute best. Wr iting can be hard work, but it's also!fun so write what you enjoy .

what only you can wr

MY BEST ADVICE is

ADVICE FROM KATHRY N

to write

Kathryn Simmonds

CORNWALL COUNCIL & LAUNCESTON TOWN COUNCIL

The Charles Causley Residency Project is supported by Cornwall Council and Launceston Town Council

ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND

The Charles Causley Trust is very grateful to Arts Council England for funding Kathryns residency and her work in Cornwall.

LITERATURE WORKS
Kathryns residency is supported by Literature Works, the regional literature development charity for South West England.

www.thecharlescausleytrust.org