Menopause Cake

Back when we first started asking people to submit to Menopause: The Anthology, we said

This anthology will be published on Menopause Day, 18th October 2023. When, we have decided, all (post)menopausal women should celebrate their last period, since we never actually know when it happened. Memorial or celebration, you choose, but we will be having cake.

And now with the launches approaching, I’m starting to think about what kind of cake Menopause cake would be.

My go-to-cake for launches (partly because it travels, and cuts thin slices that hold together, well) is a chocolate/almond/brandy affair which comes with serious health warnings. Everything a person might be alllergic to is in it. It is also glorious.

This seems like a good starting point for a menopause cake to me. I’m thinking it should also have coffee in it, to up the ante. (Something I can’t cope with – I can’t drink it, but I can, sometimes, eat things flavoured with it.) But also something cooling – but what? Yoghurt?

I’ve made variations before – the one above is Solstice Cake, where one half is the main recipe and the other half is ginger/orange/almond, which through complex cutting and splicing creates the four seasons, or day/night/dusk/dawn depending on how you want to think about it.

What variations should be included in Menopause Cake?

Let me know what you think!

 

 

Arctic Diaries online launch- Poems part 2

Here are the final poems from the online launch for The Arctic Diaries by Melissa Davies from back in April. Explore Fleinvær, off the north coast of Norway in poems.

The Arctic Diaries

Melissa is taking part in Edinburgh BookFringe, reading and talking about The Arctic Diaries, at Typewronger bookshop on Monday 28th August at 6pm get your tickets!

They Call Him the Salmon King of Norway

Seaweed

Treasures from the first boat

Bird Wife

Lookout Men

Værøy

Bird wife

 

Arctic Diaries online launch- Q&A part 2

Here’s the second half of the Q&A from the online launch for The Arctic Diaries by Melissa Davies from back in April. Explore Fleinvær off the north coast of Norway in poems. Melissa, a Cumbrian native, talks about the impact that Fleinvær has had on her writing and her life, complete with map and live feed to the island! The poems read at the launch will follow…

The Arctic Diaries

Melissa is taking part in Edinburgh BookFringe, reading and talking about The Arctic Diaries, at Typewronger bookshop on Monday 28th August at 6pm get your tickets!

 

Arctic Diaries online launch- Poems part 1

Here are the first poems from the online launch for The Arctic Diaries by Melissa Davies from back in April. Explore Fleinvær, off the north coast of Norway in poems.

The Arctic Diaries

Melissa is taking part in Edinburgh BookFringe, reading and talking about The Arctic Diaries, at Typewronger bookshop on Monday 28th August at 6pm get your tickets!

Collectors

Coffee

The Fisherman remembers a Boy Disappeared

Halibut

 

Guardians

Fleinvaer is Made up of 365 Islands

Vanishing Act

Arctic Diaries online launch- Intro and Q&A

Another slow start on my part – here’s the first half of the Q&A from the online launch for The Arctic Diaries by Melissa Davies from back in April. Explore Fleinvaer of the north coast of Norway in poems. Melissa, a Cumbrian native, talks about the place, people and stories that inspired the book. The rest will follow, when it’s been captioned!

The Arctic Diaries

Melissa is taking part in Edinburgh BookFringe, reading and talking about The Arctic Diaries, at Typewronger bookshop on Monday 28th August at 6pm get your tickets!

 

Saved to Cloud launch video part 2

I’ve been woefully slow to get the videos up for all the launches this year, but captioning takes an age, and there’s been a LOT happening, I still have miles of footage to work through!

So here, at last, is the second half of the videos for Kate Foley’s launch of Saved to Cloud at Keats House (to whom thanks, for their continued support)

A marvellous mix of observation of human frailty, and anger at what we are doing to the planet.

Thanks to Anne Stewart for taking over videoing when my phone decided to play up!

 

There is no Planet B

 

Tree Speak

 

Toolbox

 

Slow Water

 

Rosebay Willowherb

 

Lines

 

Limping

 

Learning a Language

 

Politics

 

Saved to Cloud launch video

I’ve been woefully slow to get the videos up for all the launches this year, but captioning takes an age, and there’s been a LOT happening, I still have miles of footage to work through!

So here, at last, is the first half of the videos for Kate Foley’s launch of Saved to Cloud at Keats House (to whom thanks, for their continued support)

A marvellous mix of observation of human frailty, and anger at what we are doing to the planet.

Thanks to Anne Stewart for taking over videoing when my phone decided to play up!

Education of the Heart

 

At Cafe Welling

 

Repeated Patterns

 

Our Old Lady

 

on being 80 plus

In the Cave at Niaux

 

Apocalypse

 

Edinburgh explored in poetry part 2

Jane Aldous‘s latest poetry collection, More Patina than Gleam, is a strange book – it tells interlinking love stories set in Jane’s home town of Edinburgh, and was inspired by Jane’s 70th birthday, and something her mother said when Jane was a child.

The 70th birthday link was to write 70 poems – sonnets, but Jane’s mother’s input was to say that she often thought she should have run away from her marriage when she was young, and take Jane with her.

From this Jane creates the story of Linda, a runaway, and her daughter, Ange, arriving in Edinburgh from England in the early 60’s to become Lady’s Companion to Elsie,

an elderly, refined woman in a house that is held together by will-power and love – more patina than gleam.

When Jane talks about the book, one of the loves she never mentions is her own – for Edinburgh. Her love of the place shines out from every page, and I suspect she’s never noticed it, so ingrained it is.

Some of the places she talks about in the poems are long gone, or wilt behind hoardings, but on the afternoon of Thursday 10th August, Jane is taking people on a poetry walk around some of the locations that feature in the poems, the Royal Observatory, Blackford Hill and Pond, Observatory Road, finishing with tea at West Mains Allotments…

A novel way to experience a book!

Tickets (free, or you can pre-order a book to pick up on the day, or have it sent to you) via eventbrite

 

 

In Conversation with A.J Akoto: Poems about the Body

Have you got a copy of Unmothered? Some of the poems in the collection consider  the body, and particularly a woman’s relationship to her physicality. Poet A.J Akoto spoke to us about why she wanted to explore the shrinking that women so often go through:

Delicacy

You do not have to be a delicacy.
You do not have to be tasty.
You do not have to submit
your body into feminine frailty.
You do not have to ruin your digestion
in an attempt to be digestible.

Your mind can be full
of ice-white rage;
you do not have to be kind.
You do not have to yield
to the pressure to forgive.
Forgiveness does not make you good
and goodness does not require it.

You do not have to exhibit grace,
not in anything.
You do not have to make yourself
a morsel,
not for anyone.

Buy Unmothered direct from Arachne Press

or come to the next event: Thursday 20th July 7.30 at Afrori Books in Brighton. Tickets via Afrori

Edinburgh explored in poetry

Jane Aldous‘s latest poetry collection, More Patina than Gleam, is a strange book – it tells interlinking love stories set in Jane’s home town of Edinburgh, and was inspired by Jane’s 70th birthday, and something her mother said when Jane was a child.

The 70th birthday link was to write 70 poems – sonnets, but Jane’s mother’s input was to say that she often thought she should have run away from her marriage when she was young, and take Jane with her.

From this Jane creates the story of Linda, a runaway, and her daughter, Ange, arriving in Edinburgh from England in the early 60’s to become Lady’s Companion to Elsie,

an elderly, refined woman in a house that is held together by willpower and love – more patina than gleam.

When Jane talks about the book, one of the loves she never mentions is her own – for Edinburgh. Her love of the place shines out from every page, and I suspect she’s never noticed it, so ingrained it is.

Some of the places she talks about in the poems are long gone, or wilt behind hoardings, but over the next few weeks Jane is taking people on poetry walks around some of the locations that feature in the poems, the Royal Observatory, Blackford Hill and Pond, Observatory Road, finishing with tea at West Mains Allotments…

A novel way to experience a book!

Tickets (free, or you can pre-order a book to pick up on the day, or have it sent to you) via eventbrite