I have been a little slow in getting into the on-line social (and professional) networking and I have certainly never quite understood the attraction of 'tweeting'. However, I do seem to have ended up on Twitter by default:

www.twitter.com/_creativecoast

I wonder if this will open up a whole new phase for me?

I'm so excited. This morning we recorded my poems for the Edith Sitwell installation, Words in My Head (www.coastival.com) in a real studio. My collaborator, composer Matt Barnard, was sound engineer and was very calming and competent. I had two friends from the Scarborough Poetry Workshop, Felix Hodcroft and Rosie Larner, reading the poems and they did an excellent job. Even when Matt wanted to record them breathing in different ways!

It felt like I was in one of those docu-films of all night-ers putting down an album with the ba-i-and. Every now and again I would go over and press the intercom with the studio and "direct" with a little suggestion on a word being emphasised or not.

I also get a huge buzz from hearing my poetry performed well. I quite enjoy doing it myself, but when I do that I can't hear them properly as the nerves appear to make me slightly deaf. So it's an enormous treat to have them gifted to me as Felix and Rosie did this morning.

I'm still more than a little carried away by the moment.

I went to see the film Made in Dagenham last night. A surprisingly upbeat tale about strikes! Namely, the industrial action taken by women machinists at Fords in the late 1960s which eventually led to (along with other pressures) the Equal Pay Act of 1970.

It made me think that we can engage with any story as long as it is well told and there is the human interest; in this case, in particular, the relationship between Eddie and Rita and the shell shocked (a reference to unrecognised dementia?) veteran and his wife.

For a relatively feel-good movie, it did try to present some of the complexities in the situation and in people's motivations. I did enjoy the the 'old style' union leader characters, I remember them from the university Labour club. Quote Marx but still expect the "girls" to make the tea.

Some free writing I did in the therapeutic creative writing workshop I facilitate:

Write a poem,
she says,
like it's
a stroll in the park.

Write a poem,
she says,
yet the way is undefined, weedy,
clogged with soggy leaves.

Write a poem, she says,
put a powerful image about the way you feel on paper
and don't
blow yourself away.

Write a poem,
she says,
as if breathing
were that easy.

Unfortunately, I believe we have ended up with the wrong first woman Poet Laureate. Much as I admire some of Carol Ann Duffy's poetry, though listing geographical regions now seems to have become her trade mark, her erstwhile partner, Jackie Kay, would have been a much better choice. Her writing is superb, and, in addition, she brings her audience along with her.

I saw Jackie Kay at the Beverley Literature Festival last week. This is the third time I have seen her in the flesh (I have also heard her on the radio) and on each occasion she engages; entertains; makes me think and question; and drags her listeners through all manner of emotions. Have you heard CAD recite her poetry? It always sounds like a funeral dirge.

Jackie Kay, mixed race, adopted into a white family from Glasgow, speaks from not only being a lesbian woman, but also from a sense of being between cultures. Now she would have made an inspiring, powerful and exciting Laureate for our modern Britain.

Words in My Head, the poetry-soundscape installation in celebration of Edith Sitwell's poetry which I am creating for Coastival next year (www.coastival.com), is really beginning to take shape, at least in my own head! I am moving from poet to project management mode and feeling the excitement of seeing something which was a spark of an idea come to fruition.

Here is a sneak preview of the poetry:

Sipping Tea with Ms E.
Tall as a post,
gaunt as a ghost,
be-ringed fingers drumming, drumming,
waiting for me to say something,
anything, worthy of a poet.

I have a little sonnet,
I offer up tentatively.
A little nothing I dashed off.
I sip my tea. It has turned cold.

Sonnets, her eyes glare,
are all the same size.
And a poet never dashes anywhere.
She brushes crumbs from the table.

The word, the word.
She softens,
Trust the word, the beat,
the waves pound, the sun creaks, the lion roars,
the poet lays herself open,
she listens and then
she spins.

We appear to have jumped straight from an Indian Summer into Winter. Where did Autumn go? The colouring of the leaves and the crunch of them underfoot. The mellow mists, the fruitfulness, the hint of woodsmoke. OK, maybe I am turning into a lolling romantic with the last.

One of my favourite Autumn poems is 'Late October' by Maya Angelou, which finishes:

Only lovers
see the fall
a signal end to endings
a gruffish gesture alerting
those who will not be alarmed
that we begin to stop
in order simply
to begin
again.

I love the idea that I may not be alarmed when we have a stop and that, in any case, we will "simply" "begin again". It feels so easy, so comforting. And, of course, I am a great believer in making up words, "gruffish", how wonderful.