Peter Kenny
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Minotaur
I don’t dwell much on past projects. I’m always focused on the next thing. On Friday I had a few beers with Glen Capra, and this reminded me of Glen and I recording my poem Minotaur, which had been set to music by Matthew Pollard, in one take back in 2011. I made this video…
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Versatile, unflinching and soulful. Richard Fleming’s tour de force
Stone Witness by Richard Fleming, published by Blue Ormer Publishing Richard Fleming’s new collection is a tour de force, harvesting poems which include some of his strongest work to date. The best of Richard Fleming’s work is possessed by soul; that unmistakable sense that the poem you are reading is inhabited by something other than…
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‘A Glass of Nothing’ theSpace@Surgeons’ Hall, Edinburgh 4-5 & 7-10 August
Tickets available here I’ve always liked collaborations. Brighton Blonde Productions, the theatre production company I put together with my stepdaughter Beth Symons has been a particularly excellent one. Our Edinburgh trip will be our third run as Brighton Blonde Productions. It is good to write with an actor in mind, instead of starting with a…
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Is this the year of The Shakespeare Heptet?
I love the The Shakespeare Heptet. I have previously called them the greatest unknown band in the UK. So I was pleased to catch them in one of their Brighton Fringe performances at St Mary The Virgin in Kemptown on Saturday 13th May. The Heptet is designed to have a revolving cast. But on Saturday 13th May,…
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Is John Keats a natural poet?
‘If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all.’ John Keats, Hampstead Feb 27th 1818, Letter to John Taylor. Keats wrote this ‘axiom’ in a letter to his friend John Taylor when he was 22. Are we to read this as a notion of genius — that great…
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Is your writing true to yourself?
Reading A Man in Love, volume two of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle, I’m struck by how his fidelity to describing life’s minutiae lends credibility to his descriptions of more important things. If he can be so reliable in his description of doing the washing up, then we instinctively trust his truth telling about more important events. Knausgaard’s candour is magnificent. He…
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Guernsey is my Touchstone
Hideously busy lately but there’s always time for a quick toot on the self promotion trumpet. Another one of my endless love letters to Guernsey cropped up in the ever-interesting The Frogmore Papers last week. I am very grateful to its editor Jeremy Page. Other love letters to the island were collected in A Guernsey Double a…
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A mixed bag
I have been working hard on my children’s story The Second Kind of Darkness in the last two months. The end is in sight. Putting the story aside for a few years has really helped. Time is a great editor. I’ve also been filling in gaps in my reading of good children’s books, including Noughts & Crosses…
Peter Kenny: a writer's notebook 