Welcome all to the BardWindow Podcast
Ama Bolton is a poet and bookbinder living in Somerset. All her life she made up songs and verses. For years she read and listened to poetry and wrote almost in isolation. She knew Adrian Henri but never dared show him her writing. When she moved to Wells from Liverpool in the early 1980s she joined a group of poets who critiqued one another’s work, and from that time she began to call herself a poet. Around 20 years ago Jane Williams and Ama started the Wells Fountain Poets, who met monthly until the lockdown and will, I hope, eventually be able to meet again.
An established poet once told her, “You don’t write prizewinning poems!” This was surprisingly helpful. I’ll show her, she thought, and the next year Ama came 3rd in the Bridport Prize.
Rejections, of course, far outnumber acceptances.However Ama has had about 100 poems published in magazines and anthologies and online and had some success in competitions. In 2014 she worked with schoolchildren on a community art project in Exeter. This sample poem that she wrote for the children was later published in Mslexia.
We talk of when poetry became important to her as well as her thoughts on how it is perceived today.
Ama’s work is on BardWindow now for subscribers to enjoy and, I’m sure, will be added to over time. I’m just really pleased that she is the first guest poet on the podcast.
She reads 5 poems — Meantime, After the Comet, Chambered Cairn Quoyness,Dreams in upper Silesia and Hartlake.
Thanks , as always, to http://www.albadigitalmedia.com for technical support on this podcast.
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