I win a weighty prize!

Yesterday I had coffee (and a rather nice cookie) with Elise Valmorbida and we talked translation, writing in another language and the joys of taking yourself away to write. And that was good enough for me, but the reason why we met yesterday was even more wonderful:

I won a prize!

The trophy is an amazing object in itself - the real piece of letterpress from which my certificate was printed. It weighs a ton, and I can't quite move my fingers yet from carrying it home yesterday. It's sitting on my desk right now, making my day feel extremely splendid.

Winning this award was pretty much a complete surprise. Over a year ago I wrote a poem about the matron's mallet at the Foundling Museum. (I blogged about it here.) I read my poem there last autumn, and it was a pleasure.

I didn't really think about the poem again until a couple of weeks ago when an email pinged into my inbox telling me I'd been shortlisted by 26 for their award for the best piece of writing on a 26 project. Could I come to the annual 26 shindig, Wordstock, in case I won?

Sadly I couldn't as I already had plans. A few days later, sworn to secrecy, another email arrived. Could I possibly make a short acceptance video?

Good lord - I'd won!

Now winning an award is wonderful - even if you've read your work aloud to a polite audience and your mum says it's jolly good, it's hard to believe it really is worth anything (or at least I found it hard to believe it) until a team of judges picks it out and says, yes, we really like this!

So thank you, 26, I'm thrilled.

And thank you Elise, for that other huge positive of winning an award - getting to meet a wonderful writer and spend a seriously civilised morning together over coffee.

The ghost of a writer faces her fear

Photo by @robselfpierson 

That's me, reading my poem, 'Unknown Matron's Mallet' in the Foundling Museum last Sunday as part of a special torchlit evening with the writers' group 26.

Poets were dotted all through the museum, each of us reading a work inspired by an object there. I was almost last on the tour so I spent a while waiting in the semi-dark, surrounded by the names of long-dead foundling children and the tiny tokens their mothers left with them.

It wasn't spooky, though if there are ghosts in this world there must surely be many in Joseph Coram's hospital. I used to be terrified of ghosts - I wouldn't go into churchyards, lay awake dreading the arrival of the owner of the hand I could clearly see creeping over my windowsill, and knew, absolutely that the gatehouse of the house where I lodged in my early 20s was haunted by someone or something deeply unfriendly.

But my fear of ghosts seems to have faded. Have I become more rational? I'm not sure I have. Perhaps I'm naming my fears these days, facing them in my writing? I know that writing without fear doesn't work for me. If I'm comfortable with the people or themes I'm writing about, I'm bored and the story dies on its feet. I need not to understand, to want to know more, and to be just a bit afraid.

A foundling: pulling a poem from almost nothing

I've been quiet here on the blog for a while, not because I've had nothing to say but because I've been saying it in different places.

And one such place is the Foundling Museum in London, where I have a poem.

Yes, a poem! I don't write poems, or at least I do but I've no confidence in them so they stay hidden in my notebook.

This time, though, I gave myself no choice. I joined a project called 26 Pairs of Eyes (I'm a member of the 26, an organisation for professional writers of all types), and committed to writing 62 words about an object I'd be allocated from the collection at the Founding Museum.

My poem, 'Unknown Matron's Mallet' went on display at the museum last week at a splendid VIP launch where the most splendid thing by far was Jacob Sam-La Rose and Toni Stuart's utterly beautiful and moving live performance of their own long poem about the museum.

And today my poem went live online and you can read it and the blog post I wrote for the 26 Pairs of Eyes site here.

Ahem. It has been drawn to my attention that some people can't see the green embedded links above. For you, here is the link:

LINK TO SARAH'S POEM.