A Review of My 2023 in Posts and Books

So much seemed ‘stuck’ at the beginning of 2023. I read a lot of books in 2022 but was struggling in early 2023 to read much and with nothing happening for months, awful coughs and trying to keep positive the house would sell by packing more and more boxes. The initial uplift at the end of 2022 with my first short story published drifted away. I had fun reviewing the year in books but nothing was moving for my novel.

A Year in Books and Festive Greetings

My main focus on trying to sell the family house was well thwarted by a sudden Truss led Conservative attempt to challenge economic good sense and the banks interest rates, The banks won. I lost. And many other ordinary people have too.

For 2023 I seem to have been wading through long novels but I would certainly recommend ’The Overstory’ by Richard Powers. I tried a shorter novel by him by borrowing ’Bewilderment ‘from our local library. This too had an environmental theme but was mainly focused on the relationship between father and an autistic son. The son wanted to draw and record animals that were extinct or on the brink of extinction. The novel begins with spending time in the wilderness together.

https://www.waterstones.com/book/bewilderment/richard-powers/9781529115253

I will certainly say The Overstory is the War and Peace of environmental writing and worthy of the Pullitzer Prize. It begins with what appears to be a collection of short stories about different characters and the trees that have influenced their lives in some ways. There is a chestnut tree which had not succumbed to the great blight in the States. And of course we have chestnut trees galore at Navasola. Also, the mulberry tree which helps links the migration story of Chinese Americans. All of these characters finally come together through the old forests they wish to protect. I love trees and the forests too but this did deepen my perspective of the consciousness of trees and the challenges of environmental activism.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/23/the-overstory-by-richard-powers-review

Although my novel seemed ‘stuck’ on the publisher’s list I had my short story about a Christmas tree published in the Bridge House Evergreen anthology.

The Evergreen trees of Navasola and the Evergreen short story anthology.

Maybe it was going to Mexico for the wedding of Joe and Ana Gabriella but afterwards all began to flow again. Or meeting up with likeminded people at Woodbrooke for a Quaker Universalist Conference.

Mexican Flora and Fauna with my Lumix

On returning the publishers were ready to publish my novel but first we try some blog posts of Part 1. This refocused my brain too and I did create some audio versions. I found this useful in a last attempt to get the story flowing well.

I enjoyed Denzil’s Nature challenges but could not keep up as much as I would have liked and had to link ideas. The butterfly challenge fitted into the Navaselva blog posts and the character pf Pasha, the two tailed Pasha.

Navaselva meets Navasola – Butterflies – Denzil’s Nature Challenge

And finally in August we sold the house. And then became emotional about this and our dearly loved apple tree. I was losing the ‘nest’ /home I had created over 30 years ago.

Apple Trees and Loss

For another key book of my year I really enjoyed Eli Shafak’s Island of the Missing Trees. The story of love across a difficult divide in Cyprus and the beautiful and wise perspective of the fig tree that is born again in the UK but has to be buried each winter.

Then there was more sorting and some final author proof reads and yes there it was a book in the hand. My own book in my hand.

Finally, a book in the hand! Or a bee- eater or two in a wild rose bush.

Let’s hope 2024 will bring some peace for us all and very much so for those suffering from the terror of conflict. Meanwhile we drift on with the nature crisis, continuing carbon emissions and hope that we will elect the kind of people into government who will have the wisdom to put into practice the measures needed at every level and help us all to understand the changes needed. We have the solutions and just need the political will and co-operation.

I would say the main theme of my novel is finding new ways to co-operate and coexist. We all are interdependent and need each other and each and every species

For 2024 my novel will need to get a lot of reviews too. So please if you can read Navaselva do try a review which can be short on Amazon but also on W H Smiths, Waterstones, Barnes and Noble. Amazon do well by creating the images and links as shown in this post. Oh well…

Thank you Opher for kick starting a review on Amazon even while moving house . My favourite book of Opher’s is Ebola in the Garden of Eden, written well before the pandemic and very contemporary future vision.

A very Happy 2024 to everyone in the blogging world and friends and family. Thanks for all the support. For us 2024 needs to be a year of consolidation now and then hopefully the sequel to Navaselva. It is ready as I had to make a decision, add in a human narrator and then divide almost in two for a each novel to be about 80.000 words.

Poetry Challenge. PoeM 24 : The Black Kite

Milvana by Ruth Konigsberger

As many of you will know I am trying to finish this 26 poetry challenge I started during our Spanish lockdown experience. We are currently entering back into that phase here in the North of the UK and I still have three poems to go. However, we have managed to spend time with Jessica Rose, our new arrival and focus of my last post. All is going well.

This poem is forDverse poets open link night, always a source of inspiration and able to kick start me. http://www.dversepoets.com

This poem is about the very successful and world wide species of black kites. The drawing is by Ruth Konisgsberger and is part of the portrait of the character of the black kite in my novel. I will do a post on this as soon as I finish these poems! Black kites do visit the Sierra on their migration, some breed here. However, nowadays the red kites seem more common.

The Migrating Kites ( Milvus migrans or Milano negro in Spanish)

Our Milvana migrates from here,

Here to somewhere over there,

Over the deserts to Afri Ka.

All kinds of kites have flown

All around the world wide web,

Connected by genes from ancient

Almost Jurassic dinosaur times.

Archaeopteryx, the mother bird

First flew the world.

Black kites, by many other names

Milano, Milhafre

Live long lives of 20 years or so

With brains that may adapt

To many different climes.

Some flew over wide waters                                                                                                     

To islands in the vast Atlantic

To the Azores.

Some flew to Gondawa

And learnt how

To use burning branches

To flush out scared prey.

Before wild fires spread so fast

To destroy whole forests,

In changing times

With wildlife crimes.

Others in the East

Fly around the temples

Of the many headed Gods

Brahmin souls in flight

Pariahs picking the bones

Of the dead.

Here in the Sierra

Not many black kites

Now fly.

Does anyone care

Why?

Wishing everyone a safe and purposeful time in such a difficult era.

For anyone wishing to sponsor the poems I will put up some new links for the charity Birdlife International who coordinate the conservation of birds across our human borders.

A poem for Peony: The Wild Peony Forest; cycle of change from March to May, paeonia broterii,

Dverse poets have suggested a prompt based on ecopoetry. Do check out this inspirational poetry group at  Dverse  . The poetry bar is open and serving up so many different ideas most of the week. Ecopoetry seems to be a different term being introduced by groups such as Green Spirit and Resurgence. Alice Oswald is also mentioned and I find her a fascinating poet who has such an observant style that also brings out deep emotions. I’m not sure I want my own writing to be put into a category and I had never come across this term before but I certainly seem to be focused on my own and others relationship with the natural world at this point in time.

Trevor organised a nature course here some years ago and it was led by the botanist Teresa Farino. This started my inquiry into the plant kingdom. I was also given a mother’s day present of the Alice Oswald anthology, Weeds and Wild Flowers.  I loved the Snowdrop one ,’ A pale and pining girl,head bowed, heart gnawed’ ……. ‘ her wildflower sense of wounded gentleness’

I wrote this poem early on in blogging inspired by the wild peonies here at Navasola and in the Sierra Aracena. It is January 2016 now but on our return from our special birthday trip to the Azores within 10 days there have been changes. The invasive mimosa is out in its bright yellow headdress, the almond blossom is delicately feeling for the early bees, and the peonies are beginning to thrust through the cold ground. Some are near paths so I stick sticks around them so we don’t forget and tread on these wild sisters of the many cultivated ones.

 

A Poem for Peony and all those wild loving sisters

Ms Peony Broterii

Wild genes live dangerously

Not cultivated carefully

Like your gardened sisters.

But your barb is in your poisonous roots,

Anchored, aching deep in chestnut groves,

In the shade of veteran friends, long standing,

Bringing you your strength, uprightness, roots rooted.

Unlike the myriads of visitors ready to be satiated

In your open sensuous bloom.

Bringing a light touch on velvet petal,

A rubbing of stamens, a staining of pollen,

Buzzing bodies beating,

Intoxicated with your nectar.

They stay only for their own satisfaction.

You may have some regrets, a sense of loss

As petals fall and breezes betray your beauty.

But your thrill is in your seed pod,

Ready to ripen, always ready,

To begin again, always hopeful

To survive into another Spring.

Only the danger of the human mind
Can threaten you.

Georgina Wright

 

 

Mid May, seed pod, ripening and hopefully fully fertilised by an amazing range of insects that have loved being inside this peony!

Part of peony forest in full bloom – April to May

Early May

Pollination, fully open to the sun and all insects!

The first Peony bloom in Navasola East, by an old chestnut, attracting insects. April.

Wild peony forest –  Early March.

Peony Plot in Kew gardens.
Over 30 different types of peonies and now reclassified!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Link to Dverse   For the ecopoetry prompt  January 2016

With thanks to the poems by
Alice Oswald, Weeds and Wild Flowers ( Faber and Faber ) and to the peonies and photos taken at Navasola among the ancient chestnut trees.

Originally written in 2013 and posted then.