The weather was sunny, and hey, I have thermals. I loved it and came back wondering if I could live in a small community like Westray. As we stood on the deck of the ferry, singing into the wind and hatching plans for self-sufficiency and island life, fulmars coasted alongside just above our heads. Perhaps they knew that island life can’t support a hospital worker and a research scientist with no discernable practical skills, but if they did, they didn’t let on.
across a talk given by Maggi Hambling at new Hall, Cambridge in April. Some of her wonderful ink drawings were exhibited at the Fitzwilliam museum, alongside one of a series of paintings of waves, which are extraordinary. Listening to Maggi Hambling talk about her life and painting was inspiring as the two are completely entwined. She said that two of the most important things she had been told were to be her own critic rather than listen to others, and to make her painting her friend and paint no matter how she felt.
Liz Bassett writes poems about skies and elephants and the occasional ship. In her poems people fall asleep under their duvet and wake up under lines of migrating geese, and in love. Her poems have been placed in the Bridport competition, short listed for the Plough Prize, and been published by The Red Wheelbarrow, Agenda Broadsheet, White Leaf Review, The Guardian Poetry Workshop, and in the anthologies My Mother Threw Knives (Second Light Publications), Solitaire (Templar Poetry)and New Poets from Britain and America (White Leaf Press). She is a reviewer for Sphinx (HappenStance Press). Her pamphlet 'How to Wire a Life for Love' is available from Knucker Press.
