Tag Archives: Maya Pieris

From West Coast to West Country by Maya Pieris

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From West Coast to West Country by Maya Pieris1Antonia Squire is building up a loyal clientele for the Bridport Bookshop including dogs- they love the classy doggy biltong available and not just with a book buy. Brought up in Surrey and educated in Harrogate, Antonia upped sticks aged 20 for California, married an American and was happily living in the world of independent bookshops in San Francisco- first Kepler’s and then The Reading Bug- where she was the children’s book buyer amongst other roles.

 

Until a holiday in the UK in 2014 when they did a progress from Yorkshire to Cornwall and became one of many smitten with the idea of the south-west and Cornwall.  She came across the sale details for the Bridport Bookshop, voted one of the Guardian’s top 50 indie bookshops, took a detour on the way back to Heathrow and discovered the delights of the town and the potential of the shop, one of several book emporiums including two excellent second hand/antiquarian shops, a Waterstones and a wonderful Oxfam which has a brilliant range of “loved” Penguins.

From West Coast to West Country by Maya PierisThe result was changing coast and country but still keeping the west bit and, with husband and dogs in tow, becoming a bookshop owner. And discovering the challenges involved in running a business in a new country! Small but vital changes were made to the shop’s geography, not quite Hogwarts, but involving moving the counter to the back of the shop so the customer can see in and the staff can see out and increasing the size and range of the stock. “I’m a bookseller. The stock is the most important element of the shop and  knowing what people are going to want to read and not just what a publisher wants to see displayed is more art than science”.

 

She sees no problems with co-existing with the variety of other booksellers, her goal is to be the place people come to find the things they don’t know they want. Almost a year on, she is well on the way to establishing that indie bookshops are an invaluable resource to a town. So many people want the individual experience that can only be achieved by a true “shopkeeper” and, she has observed, people are very loyal, although she has had to tone down the “hi my name is kelly how are you today?” customer service style – less touch feely than she’s been used to but she still says hello!

From West Coast to West Country by Maya Pieris3And she is aware of the potential of the indie bookshop as a grassroots support for the community, working more closely with schools in supporting their curriculum needs as well as providing a venue for local authors to promote their works and judging local poetry and fiction slams. In particular she has developed links with the Open Book festival, a festival for and by the local community about literacy rather than literature which is more the remit of the more formal Bridport Literary Festival (which she is also working with to help develop the Children’s Programming). The shop will be supporting the Bridport Big Read as well as a pop up drama production. So over halfway through her first year she is restoring an independent bookshop into the literary and literate heart of the town. And she giftwraps the books too!
* Frost would love to hear about other Independent Bookshops – contact: frost@margaret-graham.com

 

 

Greta Stoddart and White Space by Maya Pieris

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Greta Stoddart makes very good chocolate biscuits. She is also an award-winning poet, been a performer, teaches creative writing and lives with her family, including Juno the “liquorice allsorts” dog, in Devon, down a steep track with a huge view across the Axe Valley.

Greta Stoddart and White Space by Maya Pieris2Over tea and biscuits we talked about words and silence, 2 big elements in her creative life. Words, she said, were an early love, her first “self-published” poetry anthology written aged 9 and illustrated by her sister but not she said like Jane Austen or the Brontes.

 

The collection, which included  “Master Crash It All” about a particularly clumsy boy,   “ was a bit tumpty, tumpty” – her description – but lines would arrive in her head as she awoke and wanted to be written down. The book happened just before a major riding accident which saw her spend 3 months in hospital and then several more on the sofa reading or looking out the window, in retrospect an excellent nursery for a fledgling poet who turned from a “an outgoing child into a more reflective one”.

 

Her road to physical recovery turned out, however, to be through ballet, almost on doctor’s orders, this leading to the other passion-dance and then theatre. Eventually after reading drama at Manchester Greta went to study with the Jacques Lecoq school of physical theatre in Paris specialising in clown skills. 2 years on found her and 2 female friends  touring  Europe with Brouhaha, their mime theatre company, which lasted for 5 busy years.

 

Greta Stoddart and White Space by Maya Pieris1

 

She says the experience “taught me to respect silence- which poetry also values in the white space around the text”, a “pressured silence, to not speak unless you really need to”. Space in both words and performance is certainly central to her writing and her teaching- her workshops are always measured, calm situations where listening is of the essence. It was while on tour in Belfast that the writing bug began to go viral in the form of “lines in my head” which insisted on being written down, as in childhood.

 

She took a year out of acting and never went back. Her timing was stage perfect- she booked onto an Arvon writing course led by Simon Armitage in the company of other then aspiring poets such as Kate Clanchy and moved on to be tutored by Michael Donaghy. She took to poetry like a duck to water and found an audience in sympathy with her work resulting in her first collection, At Home in the Dark, which received the 2001 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. She claims  “it was a bit of luck” but was actually the result of 7 years work.

Greta Stoddart and White Space by Maya Pieris3She has since written 2 further collections appearing in a fairy tale way around every 7 years. Her latest, Alive, Alive O, published last year deals with death, a subject which has interested her since childhood and which came about after a series of personal bereavements. It is, however, not a depressing collection- sad, thoughtful, painful and also positive as she attempts to cover the complexities of this subject.

 

So with 3 books completed she is in quiet contemplation of her next writing challenge so we await with interest What Greta Did Next.

 

Books available at all independent and chain book stores.

 

 

Peace and Plenty and Annie Freud by Maya Pieris

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Annie Freud– teacher, embroiderer, painter, poet and brilliant party giver- is the daughter of Lucian Freud, great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud and grand-daughter of sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein. She is also the proud owner of a new studio at her home, Peace and Plenty, in the heart of Dorset. Here from a window seat, which I would describe as more window bed, she has a view of fields, her husband Dave’s sheep and the slow train to Bath.

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The studio “is a first” and, along with a dedicated space for Dave means their interests which involve “paint, mud and dirt” aren’t a problem. And she’ll have the occasional sheep for a neighbour in the adjoining animal pens. It is now also home to her father Lucian’s easel which she inherited following his death in 2011 and on which currently she has just painted a “portrait” of The Fox and Hounds Pub, her local and home to the Cattistock Poets.

I’ve got to know Annie over the last 5 years through the Cattistock Poets which she started and leads, encouraging writers to find and listen to their own poetic voices, “to make it better..and to take it seriously”. She has also been responsible for organising some fabulous poetry readings to which she has invited a variety of other published poets.

Peace and Plenty and Annie Freud by Maya Pieris2

Her latest collection, The Remains, published this summer, contains 2 of my favourite poems – Aubergines and Abbotsbury, the latter which I heard Annie read in a beautiful, small, ancient Dorset chapel as part of a Christmas carol service. The Remains is her fourth collection and has established Annie as one of an exciting new group of poets – and a performer firmly committed to poems being heard.

The Remains is , however, proving an artistic turning point- another first- combining 2 loves, the visual and literary, the book illustrated by Annie with original paintings, some inspired by the Dorset landscape. When “I started writing poetry..I thought I would embroider in the mornings and write in the afternoon” but she found that this wasn’t working so put the visual to one side though found this “painful” needing this element to produce “something I would try to make more solid. I’ve painted all my life with pleasure but without enough self-belief but The Remains changed all that.” I asked her if her renewed need to paint was a rearrangement of two loves but she said that “was too easy, that one should not have self-limiting views of who you are or what you can do” and that painting fulfilled a physical need.

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But whatever the medium Annie is committed to work that will “move, disturb or delight”  the point being “what it is doing to other people”. She has also had another first this December with the setting of her poem The Sun Looks Forward to Winter to music by Benjamin Tassie for three female voice and hopes this time next year to see her first London painting exhibition happen.

As for Peace and Plenty- not her own invention but the name of the 2 cottages which form her very peaceful and plentiful home.

 

 

Spotlight interview with Maya Pieris

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Spotlight interview with Maya Pieris1

 

Pinning down this writer was easy as it’s me, trying out the Spotlight idea: 

 

In this new series, conversations with writers, I aim to shine a brief spotlight onto what makes someone begin that uncertain path from brain to book, and to consider what makes us write.

 

Have I always written? Yes and no- I thought about it, had periods of trying but too often gave up. For a few years I attended various workshops but it’s since being in Bridport, Dorset, that writing has become almost a reflex reaction. There’s something in the air here that really encourages people to write to be read. And to be published.

 

And now ideas run about like kids in a playground. I keep pens and paper around the place though on occasions thoughts have been scrawled on the back of my left hand. This affliction does affect others as the need to make notes comes at any time, and from any and everywhere. Writers are like grave robbers: plundering anything- ourselves, others. My response after the recent French tragedy was to write 2 poems though it’s not always a comfortable thought that creativity and inspiration come from such events.  Seeing a dead mole led me to write a poem about an Islamist group whilst another idea came from seeing thousands of whitebait washed up on the shore near Bridport.

 

Spotlight interview with Maya Pieris2

 

And what do I write? Poems, short stories, magazine articles and plays. The last time I tried writing one I was aged 10 and the play was a “who dunnit” written in turquoise ink.

 

The writing challenge is to focus. It really is important not to get seduced by too many possibilities. And validation from peers is also invaluable, though I write firstly for myself- to try and fix a feeling or thought in words. I’m not sure why but I seem to have to. But I do have people I trust to edit and critique work.  It is, however, necessary to let your work go. In a way once it’s written it’s on its way to becoming public though it was a year before I could look at my first published book without wanting to change it.
Future plans are to write more regularly and finish work- too many unfinished “jumpers”.  Writing is a private process.  You have to enjoy the jigsaw of arranging your thoughts and ideas. There are lots of excellent courses to join and so many other writers to read but in the end it’s you, your pen or computer. And for me it’s an entry to a large uncharted world.

 

Spotlight interview with Maya Pieris3