The Beginning / Looking Forward To The Past

The Beginning

Lewes Garret. This is my opening letter to you; the first blog of many. Friday, 2 June 2006 is an important day for me because it marks the launch of the Oliver's Poetry website - a window to my poetry and that of other people.

I plan to publish a new poem every week, illustrated by a photograph. Aspiring - and established - poets may also send in their poetry to reach a wider audience through the site.

So with all this going on, why am I writing a blog? Well, I want the website to be more than a resource for those who love poetry. I would like to put that poetry into context, to paint a word-picture of the world inhabited by this poet and his friends.

This blog is my diary; no more, no less. In its composition I have been particularly influenced and inspired by four people: Samuel Pepys, Auberon Waugh, Alan Clark, and Helen Fielding.

What this quartet have in common is that in their own remarkable ways - truthful, fictional or a blend of the two - they made diarising popular: riveting, enthralling, unputdownable reading. They made it seem real, even when it was not. I do not know if I will be able to match them. Perhaps it is foolhardy to even attempt it. But I will give it my best.

This blog is entitled Oliver's Poetry Garret and is largely written in two garrets - one in Lewes, East Sussex, and the other in Leamington, Warwickshire, UK.

It will differ from most blogs in that it will - simultaneously - go forward and backward in time. I shall explain. Today is ground zero, missive number zero, the alpha of this project, and the entry comprises a blog about the present and the future (which you are currently reading) and a backblog which begins to tell the back-story.

My subsequent posting will be a blog for 3 June 2006 and a backblog for 1 June 2006; the next up will be the blog for 4 June 2006 and backblog for 31 May 2006, and so on. Eventually the blog and backblog, although posted together, will be separated by years and tell very different stories about very different Olivers.

I want it to be honest, thought-provoking and entertaining. That's what Oliver's Poetry Garret is all about.
So let's roll! Enjoy!

Looking Forward To The Past (Friday, 2 June 2006)

Lewes Garret. 1.10pm. Lunchtime - and a break from the Day-Job.

On Fridays I work at home. The Day-Job is most busy - it never stops.

My back is bad today. As you will learn from these backblogs - if you come to follow them day after day - I slipped two discs in my back on Easter Sunday and have been in not inconsiderable pain ever since.

Despite performing many back exercises, visiting a chiropractor for five or six weeks and swallowing a wheelbarrow load of pills, the injury is showing little sign of abating.

I was truly immensely tired last night after my near-400 miles journey and Day-Job and website exertions.

I hope you will enjoy my Blogs and Flashbacks (Backblogs). The concept of Blogs will be something with which you are doubtless familiar. The Flashbacks are trickier because you are effectively reading a story backwards. All the same, I believe this will have its own special reward.