As icicles weep,
virgin snow turning to slush -
grieves human folly.

I've been struck this week by the beauty of the trees - when are trees ever not beautiful - and the snow. The dark branches making puzzles against the grey sky and clotted with icy blossoms.

Photo by Mark Vesey, Jan 2013

So we're into the second week of January and I'm slowly re-finding my rhythm of the every-day. I'm feeling excited about my book coming out and also about the other writing I hope to do.

I found this quote in the Writer's Almanac today: "Human nature seems to me like the Alps. The depths are profound, black as night, and terrifying, but the heights are equally real, uplifted in the sunshine." It came from Emily Greene Balch. Not a woman I had ever heard of, but someone I feel I ought to have known about. Working in the late 19th century and into the 20th, she wrote a number of books which helped bring about social reform. She co-founded the Women's International League of Peace and Freedom and in 1946 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

I was struck by her quote, firstly because I think it true and secondly because I will be headed to the Alps later this year for a holiday. Switzerland being my birth place, rightly or wrongly, I do feel an affinity for them. I am very interested in the depths of human nature, but would equally like my head in the sunshine at times this year.

So 2013 begins and I look forward to getting on with more of my creative and writing projects. Increasingly these seem to be having a greater presence in my life and this is rewarding to me.

Before the yuletide festivities I did something I'd never done before: I threw away a book (or, at least, put it in the recycling bin). I read Ann Tracy's "Winter Hunger" and was absolutely chilled by it, especially the ending. I can't decide whether it was the woman eating her baby or her husband, or the neighbours doing nothing to intervene, which got to me the most. I didn't want it on my shelf, in my house. Usually when I don't want a book anymore, I pass it on to someone else or take it to a charity shop. This time, though, I couldn't even bring myself to do that. So it was into the recycling it went.

I was amazed at the strength of my reaction - I still am - which is, no doubt, a testament to Tracy's writing. Though I still wonder at using this skill to present such an unrelentingly bleak view of human nature (and no I don't agree with the blurb which suggests Tracy makes the case for it being the landscape that "abhors the human presence" and puts in train the catastrophic events). Wouldn't it have been better to use her talent to another end? But perhaps there is no "better", no responsibility of that kind, in writing?

With warmest wishes for the winter solstice and for peace, joy and creative nourishment in 2013.

Well big occasion this week: I handed my book over to the proof reader. It feels like the right time to be doing this. At some point I have to put the final full stop, even knowing that there is more to say. I have done the best job I could given where I am at, and that is the most any writer can say, I would imagine.

So what to do next? Of course, once the book is here, there will be the promotion of it. And I have a very long list of creative projects I want to get on with. And yet, at the moment, I am content to do very little. Perhaps I am in that "fertile void" part of my creative process (see Evans, K. "Pathways through Writing Blocks in the Academic Environment" Sense Publications, forthcoming) when I can hopefully feel my achievement and rest. Both of which are essential for any writer. Or maybe it is my natural inclination for this time of year to hibernate somewhat!

On the 9th of December 1964, the innovative and inspiring poet and writer, Edith Sitwell, died. Then all was over, "bar the shouting and the worms" as she said in her autobiography. She was 77 years old. Amazingly earlier that same year she had been to Australia creating a huge stir. She was still a force to be reckoned with. However, in more recent times her brilliance has all but lost its lustre.

I do believe now is the time for her renaissance and for her to take her rightful place in the canon of literature. Richard's Greene fabulously complete biography, "Edith Sitwell, Avant Garde Poet, English Genius" was a good start. But Edith Sitwell - fascinating woman, great writer and generous editor - should be trumpeted more. For those of you who are good at maths, you will have realised that 2014 is fifty years since her death, perhaps we can all make this the Edith Sitwell year, just as we have had the celebrations around Dickens in 2012. I do hope especially that Scarborough, North Yorkshire, the town of her birth, and where I now live, will take the lead.

Meanwhile, here is my modest tribute:

After Edith

Once we moved through hazes,
warm and golden,
Dagobert and I;
caught in a tapestry of silken threaded creatures -
birds with custard tails,
unicorns and lions with torn faces
parrots with stuffing for a soul,
dead but riveted
to our progress in rose gardens by the sea.

And silly girls laughed
to have their hats picked by the wind
and rescued by men twice their age.
Colonel Fantock and Peregrine
are gone now,
Replaced by over-done trippers
dreaming of Spain,
and I am the lost ghost
I always imagined myself to be.