Academi - Big News

I am absolutely thrilled to have been invited to be a member of the Welsh Academi. This is truly a great honour for a Welsh writer and I am very proud. Thank you.

Harry Potter 7

At the risk of being childish - ooo it's good - dark, scary and well worth the noisy cinema, although there was rather too much wandering in the wilderness doing an ad for the Forest of Dean tourist office. That aside it had everything you could want from an HP movie. Pity we have to wait so long for the final instalment. I want to see it today...

Henley Literary Festival

A rare day of sunshine and warmth yesterday - a boat on the Thames - a poetry reading. Sounds like a heavenly recipe to me. I read my watery poems inbetween and around Lesley Saunders' 'Waterscape' sequence. It made a great confluence of words. To my right are Lesley and Jane Draycott. Out of shot are the lovely audience and our fellow readers Peter Robinson and A.F. Harrold. Hugely enjoyable readings. Don't miss it next year.

Forthcoming readings

Yesterday - so too late for this blog - at Marlborough Literary Festival with Brickworks. I good chance for us to showcase our Art set, made more enjoyable by selling a book. It's amazing how it pleases me that a total stranger liked what they heard enough to part with hard cash - bring on more total strangers please!

Henley Literary Festival

Wednesday 29 September - Hot Gossip Cafe, Henley on Thames - I am reading with Peter Robinson and Victoria Pugh at 7pm

Thursday 30 September - The Hibernia - I am reading with AF Harrold, Leslie Wilson and Peter Robinson at 1pm on a boat on the Thames

Boomslang Poetry Workshops

The first workshop on the theme of objects and memory was held earlier this month with a small number of attendees. I'm told it went down well.

October's workshop theme is The Road. There are a few places left, so please get in touch if you want one of them.

Boomslang Poetry Workshops

A new programme of poetry workshops in Caversham is being unveiled for the autumn. Get in touch to find out more.

Saatchi Gallery

I'm ashamed to admit that it has taken me until yesterday to visit the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea, now gifted to the nation in an act of great generosity in these cash strapped times and free to all. The current show is new British artists. Lots to love, be indifferent about and even loathe here, but a very worthwhile trip on the rainest day of the summer holiday so far.

I was pleased to see Eugenie Scrase's Truncated Trunk, having followed her exploits on TV earlier in the year in School of Saatchi. Also it was good to see so much painting espcially Hurvi Anderson, Alastair MacKinven, Phoebe Unwin and William Daniels.

The one permanent exhibit is Richard Wilson's 20:50 - a whole lower ground floor gallery filled with sump oil. A stinky optical illusion is created where you are not sure what exactly it is you are looking at. Only blowing on the surface reveals that it is there at all. We speculated on the depth of oil and wondered if this is how the fouled beaches of Louisiana smell just now.