Writing on Retreat.

I've been back a whole week from the SCWBI
( Scooby) Writing Retreat in Penderall College, outside Telford and I'm missing the peace and quiet and the total focus on writing.
Penderall College is a wonderful old manor house set in the middle of sheep grazing land and this is my third year running I've attended out Retreat. We have lovely single study bedrooms ( ensuite) and plenty of quiet places to sit, think, walk and write.

The substantial meals are taken in a beautiful old dining room, sitting round long trestle tables, nattering about the industry, our writing and Dr Who, a particular feature of the Retreat this year.
The wonderful Sue Hyams : in blue: organises the Retreat each year and makes sure we are all comfortable and well fed.

The high point of the meals for most of us is the fried bread at breakfast : our once a year treat!

This is a view of the sheep meadows at seven o'clock on the Saturday morning. This is the first year I've been on Retreat when it hasn't rained and I spent a lot of time outside at all hours, taking photographs and just enjoying the first proper sunshine of the year.
I could feel my brain clearing out the winter snow and cold and settling down to focus on the work in hand.
It must have worked because I wrote three chapters on my novel, STUFFED, the third novel in my Haying Cycle, Meadowside Books, March 2011.

Amazing really that I managed to do any writing because we had a very full programme. On the Friday night we  critiqued each other's work, always a very useful exercise. As a result I have made one character less passive and this really fed into the writing of one of the chapters this weekend.
We also had a full programme of speakers, Lee Weatherly, Pippa Goodhart and Julia Churchill. An enormous input on writing, publishing and various other aspects of the industry, all in one weekend. We also had 1:1 meetings with one of the speakers to review our manuscripts.
This was excellent for me as I am at the first draft stage on my new novel.
Feedback from Lee : great start, just keep going!

But it wasn't all work, work, work.
We did some pretty serious drinking too.
Well everyone else did.
 As I announced on the first evening, I'm a failed alcoholic and struggled to get through a bottle of cider. Still someone's got to do it and there were plenty of willing participants.
We had champagne on the Saturday night too : provided by Jon Mayhew : that's his profile in the pic.

Jon brought the champagne to celebrate the publication of his novel, Mortlock.
Great book, brilliant plotting and lovely to read it over the weekend and discuss it with the author as I went along. I thoroughly recommend it.

This was a great weekend with a lovely bunch of people, creative, generous and tons of fun.

Here I am looking mellow on the last night, struggling with my cider and feeling great after dinner and a lovely weekend writing and retreating.




If you haven't joined SCBWI yet, maybe this blog will be your inspiration.
Roll on next year and all that lovely fried bread!

I'm going to Kerch, The Crimea

What do you pack for a trip to Kerch? I took my Rough Guide to Russian, three pairs of candlesticks and a set of wooden bricks with Hebrew lettering. A strange combination you might think. Read this post and all will be revealed.
So where on earth is Kerch?
It took me ages to find it on a map.
"It's in the Crimea," I told people confidently.
"Korea?" they said and "Kerch, that's a drink isn't it?"
Its in the Ukraine, on the Crimean Peninsula and on the Black Sea. It still didn't help much so I wrote a poem called, Conversations.
When that didn't help I decided to write this blog and maybe when you've read it you'll make this amazing journey for yourself. You won't regret it, I promise you.

I went to Kerch with a group from my synagogue, Alyth Gardens. We are twinned with the emerging Jewish Community in Kerch and over 50 members have visited the community in the last 10 years. We have also hosted some of the Kerch members in London.
Their community building was taken over in the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and used as a labour exchange, but since independence they have been able to claim it back. Its a beautiful building in the centre of town and has good facilities, perfect for reviving the Jewish Community which was completely decimated in WW2.

Members of the community met us on the steps of their building when we arrived. They were so delighted to see us and so pleased that we had made the long journey - two planes and a four hour drive in a minibus. But it was all well worth it. We were treated like royalty, shown absolutely everything that could be crammed into four and a half days and fed so well that we all put on weight.
 Hmm!

The ladies in the kitchen who made us lunch everyday.

There are 700 people in The Kerch Jewish Community and 250 are paid up members of the congregation. Alyth Gardens Synagogue provides a variety of support to help further the religious life of the community. There is also social, welfare and medical support for the community from other sources. The community provides  weekly religious services, bar and bat mizvah, a religion school, a women's group, a warm house for senior citizens, an embroidery group, a local history group and many other groups and services.

We were invited to lunch at the Warm House. This was a one bedroom flat where funds are provided for heating and a meal once a week for the senior citizens of the community. This was a wonderful occasion where we met the people who had experienced some of the most devastating times in the twentieth century. Their stories had us spellbound.

This is Nahum Abramovich, a prize winning author. At the age of 18 he was in the Soviet Army which fought all the way to Berlin. He was ordered to escort 108 German prisoners to a camp with only two other guards. The prisoners guessed that he was Jewish but they were grateful that the Soviet soldiers treated them well.
" Perhaps they were ashamed now at how they had treated the Jews," said Nahum smiling. "That was when I started to re-educate the Germans," He has written many books about the war to educate the next generation.

Alyth funds monthly food parcels for the less well off members of the community. Life in Kerch is not easy for most people but there is extreme poverty here, some of which we were taken to see. I have personally never seen such terrible living conditions and everything that we can do to support people in such awful conditions is gratefully received. Everyone we met told us over and over again how much they appreciated the support of our community and the support of the other agencies also. One woman is provided with insulin by the community. She is diabetic and otherwise she would simply have to go without. There is very limited health care and social services in Kerch for anybody.

This is Anya with her beautiful cat and behind her is her bird who sings like an angel. She lives with her mother, father and babooshka, her grandmother. We were invited to spend Friday night with Anya and her family. Anya lit the candles and said the prayer in Hebrew and her father said the prayers in Hebrew for the wine and bread, challa. However, Anya's mother and grandmother are not Jewish. Her father's grandfather was Jewish. In the Liberal Jewish Communities of the Ukraine the criteria for being Jewish is to have one Jewish grandparent. This was the criteria applied by the Nazis.
Anya's mother baked two beautiful challot for Friday night and the next morning the whole family came to synagogue to see Anya do her Bat Mitzvah. Babookshka came up to me afterwards in tears and hugged me. We did not need to speak each other's language.

This is Anya with her family on the morning of her Bat Mitzvah. She is sitting next to babooshka. Anya chose the Jewish name Esther. The tall boy standing is Mark who had a joint Bar Mitzvah with Anya. He chose the name Rafael. Mark has benefited from considerable emotional, religious and welfare support from the community and is now thriving. His mother attended the Bar Mitzvah morning. The lady standing is Zoya, the administrator and tireless worker for the community.

This is a photo of Esther and Lynn Levy. Esther is on the left and she is the Chair of the Kerch Jewish Community. Lynn is the chair of the Alyth Kerch Committee which raises funds and supports all the activities of the community.

Lynn and her husband Mike have been travelling to Kerch for 10 years and have done enormous work to fund raise and generally support the community. Mike has learnt to speak Russian and has personally made 26 trips to Kerch.They are very much loved by everyone in the Jewish community in Kerch.
On this trip they were made Honorary Members of the Kerch Jewish Community and presented with certificates. It was a very proud moment for us all.

This is Daniel with his mother Tania and Esther. Daniel came to visit London with Julia two years ago and came to Camden Market with me. Tania is the musical director and plays the piano and sings beautifully in all the services.
I asked Esther about growing up Jewish in the FSU. "I didn't know I was Jewish until I was eight," she told me. "And that was only because the kids yelled Jew at me in the street." So I asked her if she then became curious to find out more. "No," she said. "It never struck my head until I saw a tiny advert in the paper, decades later, that a new community was starting up."
It is very hard for a British Jew to imagine the void for Jews living in the Soviet Union, learning nothing about their religion, history and culture. To see the enthusiasm and commitment of the Kerch community made me feel very humble. The Jews of Kerch have worked so hard to revive their devastated community and their achievements are awesome.

On Saturday evening we visited the Youth Club. Anya and Mark were there after doing their Bar/Bat Mitzvah in the morning. They had each received a watch from the community and there had been a special lunch. But no big parties and their school friends did not attend. Anya looks a bit tired after her long day! But they both did brilliantly in the morning service. Well done and Mazeltov!

The Youth Club had a session on Yom Ha Shoah - the Jewish memorial day to the Holocaust.
Twenty year old Julia gave a talk about her visit to Auschwitz.
 It was so moving to hear these young people talk about the Shoah in their home town where 7000 Jews were rounded up and shot during the war. Regina told me in perfect English, "We are proud to be Jewish and we refuse to be scared."
 Julia said," Even after visiting the camps I still don't understand why this happened."
"Nobody understands," I said.

I had offered to run a poetry workshop with the Youth Club so they kindly gave me thirty minutes!! It was in Russian and English  -
kruta / cool.I asked everyone to brainstorm what they think of when they think of London, Kerch and Israel.They came up with some great ideas.We managed to write a group poem before we ran out of time. I was shattered!
I am planning to do a similar workshop with the young people at Alyth so that they can send one back. You can read the poem here, The Queen, Pancakes and the Wailing Wall.

We also managed to fit in some sightseeing and here we are on the beach at the Black Sea. Its absolutely freezing but the next day we had beautiful weather. If you go to the Crimea, make sure you take lots of layers. Mike says he swims in the sea in the summer but I couldn't even bear to take my hat off!

Kerch is an ancient city. It is littered with Ancient Greek remains. It used to be the biggest shipbuilding centre in the Soviet Union. Brezhnev stayed at our hotel. It is also a town with wide streets, beautiful squares and many monuments to its very difficult history during WW2.
Kerch was occupied twice by the Germans and Stalin named it one of only 13 Hero Cities alongside Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev, because of the terrible suffering they had to endure. Here I am standing next to the monument to the Hero City.

In Kiev we found the monument to all the Hero Cities with casks containing earth from each one and we took a picture of the Kerch casket.

When the Nazis invaded Kerch for the first time in November 1941, they rounded up all the Jews, 7,000 people and shot them in an anti-tank ditch outside a village near Kerch. The place is called Bagerov Ravine and this is the monument the Soviets put up after the war. But it only cites Soviet citizens like all Holocaust memorials in the FSU. So the community is putting up its own monument to the Jewish dead in May this year.

I wrote a poem using material I researched in the Jewish Museum in the Community Centre about what happened to the Jews of Kerch Nobody Understands This.

The Youth Club and religion school did a presentation for the Community on the Sunday morning, April 11th, an enormously significant date. It was Erev Yom Ha Shoah, the Jewish memorial to the Holocaust and it was also Liberation Day for Kerch. In the photos below you can see a re-enactment of the shootings at Bagerov Ravine and a presentation from the younger children. Yarhzheit candles, memorial candles for the dead, were also lit and you can see Mark lighting one below. It was so moving to be with this community on such an occasion and many of us were close to tears.

Nowhere in Kerch is quite complete without its cat. This is a photo of Moshe, the synagogue cat. He is quite old and he likes nothing better than sitting under the table during the Shabbat prayers.

And of course, despite our good intentions to learn loads of Russian we couldn't have survived without our wonderful interpreter, Anya ( in the red jumper next to Geoff Short who will take over organising the Kerch trips in the future.)
 Anya's English was so remarkable and she was so conscientious that she studied technical vocabulary so that she could translate 'enrichment of iron ore' on our tour of Kerch!
 I only got as far as harasho which means OK and pyat peeva which means five beers and was not awfully useful!

It was very hard to say goodbye to all our newfound friends. But on Sunday afternoon weset off for two amazing days in Kiev. Here we are on one of the main squares  with the cathedral in the background and in blazing sunshine.We visited a lot of amazing monuments and marvelled at the huge River Dneiper. It makes the Thames look like a stream!

In Kiev we met Rabbi Alex Dukhovny. Here he is with one of our group, Dorothy Sefton-Green.
Alex is the Rabbi of all the Progressive Jewish Congregations in the Ukraine. Quite a job.

He took us on a visit to Babi Yar. It is thought that the Nazis shot 140,000 Jews there and maybe up to 200,000 people were killed there altogether -  a whole different blog and set of poems, yet to be written.

We read Yevtushenko's famous poem -


Over Babi Yar
there are no memorials. 
The steep hillside like a rough inscription.
I am frightened.
Today I am as old as the Jewish race........


Alex told us, "It is not only God who makes miracles. People make miracles too. You are part of the miracle of the re-emergence of Jewish communities in the Ukraine."
It was a very poignant moment and I felt proud to have played a tiny  part in this miracle.

We finally flew back to London on Wednesday morning as the Iceland volcano was filling the skies. At 6.00 am the sun was blood red in the sky, coloured by the dust, a portent of things to come.  That night they closed the airspace over Britain.

If you decide to go to Kerch, pack some candlesticks and your rough guide phrasebook, take a notebook for all the poems you will need to write and be prepared for a trip of a lifetime.

Smallest Indie Bookshop in the UK

The Hayling Island Bookshop is the smallest Independent bookshop in the UK. It was the South of England Independent Bookshop of the Year, 2009.
In 2008 Terry Pratchett's novel, Nation was launched there.
Started 20 years ago the bookshop is currently owned by Marie Telford, with Events managed by her husband Colin. The bookshop has been a marvellous haven for me and resource for the past few years as I have been writing my cycle of three Hayling novels for the Young Adult market. The first title, HIDDEN, will be published by Meadowside Books in 2011 and I am so looking forward to seeing the book at the Hayling Bookshop. It feels like the realisation of a long dream.

On a recent trip to Hayling I met Colin Telford and spoke to him about my forthcoming novels. "We always support local authors," he told me encouragingly. "Visitors to the Island will also be interested in your novels." Which opens up the idea of a whole new market I hadn't even considered. Colin and Marie are also involved in the new Havant Arts Centre, The Spring, as well as the Havant Literary Festival.

Small is beautiful and over the years I have bought so many fascinating books and maps at the Hayling bookshop which have helped me in my research for my novels. My parents lived on Hayling for twenty years and I have been visiting the Island for over three decades. I have so many favourite places to revisit each time I come down. But the books and materials I have gathered over the years have added new dimensions to my writing.

Here is a sample of three of the books I have found useful.

"Two thirds of all birds on the British List can be seen here in the course of a year and ( the Island) is particularly attractive to wild fowl and waders in the winter months." I've personally spotted terns, egrets,oyster catchers, the odd heron, swans, ducks, and of course the Brent geese who winter all along the Solent from the Arctic Circle. In my novel,HIDDEN, the main character, fourteen year old Alix, who lives down at Sandy Point, thinks of the birds as her friends.

This is one of my favourite haunts, the last stop on the mainland before crossing the bridge onto Hayling Island. Sitting outside the Royal Oak pub on a sunny afternoon, drinking a beer and watching the boats float by, must the best way in the world to spend a few hours. Neville Shute wrote one of his novels in the old mill and smugglers buzzed about the Langstone Harbour in the eighteenth century, dodging the customs men.

This is a marvellous collection of memories of the Island from the people born on the Island or who have come to settle there.
"My father worked on a car park and the construction of the New Bridge - during which he fell out of a boat and lost his dentures. There were found three days later washed up by the tide. It was very fortunate." Mrs Audrey Cozens, born 1939.

"We had oyster beds at the bottom of the garden. The men there worked on the oyster-beds, worked on the yachts and raced in America." Noel Pycroft, born 1928

"I remember the bombing of Portsmouth; it was a shocking sight, night after night, and fights in the sky when the planes were being chased. We were so lucky on the Island." Mrs Mary Voller, born 1923.

Once you have been to the bookshop you can cross over the road and get a lovely cup of tea and a bun in Heidi's Swiss Patisserie. A trip to the Island wouldn't be complete for me without one of Heidi's chocolate éclairs.
Supporting our local bookshops as well as other local businesses helps to support our communities and on Hayling Island the bookshop is very much at the heart of the community.
Roll on publication day!

The Chewing Gum Artist.

I have been dying to come across Ben Wilson for years. He's the chewing gum artist. His mission is to paint over the flattened splodges of gum which have been spat out all over our London streets. So I was delighted to almost trip over Ben as he crouched outside the Royal Academy last Monday lunchtime, in the freezing March wind, painting a beautiful scene on a grotty lump of gum.

Ben Wilson started painting over gum five years ago. He lives in Muswell Hill and his aim is to paint on gum all the way from Barnet to the West End. He has very nearly reached his goal. His miniature works of art have been filmed, photgraphed and featured in newspapers. Living in Barnet myself, I first read about him in my local newspaper and then I saw Ben's art featured on the BBC London Today news.

Ben uses acrylic paints and then he showed me how he makes sure the paintings don't get worn away. He got out his lighter and literally heated the painting, ensuring that the paint survived the worst weathering on London's streets. "Gangs stop me and ask me to do their tags," he says. "I'm happy to take any requests."

Ben doesn't really have an agenda, he paints whatever takes his fancy on the day. But he certainly draws attention to the amount of gum squashed on the pavements and how unsightly it is. There are hundreds of thousands of pieces of gum spat onto Oxford Street alone each year and it costs tens of thousand of pounds to clear it up. At least Ben is creating something beautiful and exciting. he's attracted so much attention you can view a lot of examples on the net.

Meeting Ben just after seeing the Van Gogh exhibition I was struck by the fact that here were two artists who would happily sit outside in all weathers in pursuit of their art. Both had found extraordinary ways of mark making which surprise and delight the eye.

Finding Ben and watching him paint on London's paved streets was pure gold, like a found poem. For Ben, his art is completely portable, carried about like part of his life.
For me as a writer, this has always been one of the wonderful things about writing. All I need is a pen and a piece of paper and I can create.
All Ben needs is the pavement and his paints and brushes. And of course a piece of gum.
No shortage of that on the road from Barnet to the Royal Academy.

Can it be about me?

What a great title for this engaging and inspiring new book of poems for children, by Cheryl Moskowitz illustrated by Ros Asquith. This collection of 48 brand new original poems cover every aspect of the ordinary lives of children. The poems focus on the experiences of primary school kids and there is a special thanks to the children and teachers of Rhodes Avenue Primary School on the dedication page.

But personally I think the poems are suitable for any age!

Here is one of my favourites.

Cheryl Moskowitz writes poetry, plays and fiction for adults and children. She works regularly as a writer in schools. Her poetry for children has featured on BBC TV's 'A Bear Behind' and CBeebies' Poetry Pie Series. Her novel, WYOMING TRAIL is published by Granta and her stories and poems feature in several anthologies.

Cheryl's inspirations for many of these poems come straight from the horse's mouth.
"I asked the local school if I could come in and be a 'fly on the wall' to gather some ideas," she writes in the introduction. But she soon found how difficult it is to be invisible in the classroom. One boy called John was especially curious. "John asked me why I was sitting in the corner making notes. I told him that I was trying to get ideas for some poems. He suggested that the first poem be about him."

Can it be about me?
Are you writing a poem
will it be long
can it be about me?
My name is John.
I don't have any
trousers on.
I just wear shorts
for all the year
but don't write that
because it doesn't rhyme.

This collection brims with humour, inventiveness and the nitty gritty of being a kid in the modern primary school. But its real secret is how universal and timeless many of the experiences and ideas are in these poems.
How many of you recognise this from your schooldays? Today we'd call it 'throwing a sickie.'

The collection deals with all sort of issues, problems and experiences which will be so familiar to primary age kids - such as tests, wet play, the class hamster -

Our Class Hamster
Our class hamster was an onomatopoeia.
We called him
Cuddles.

There are also poetic forms which are a gift to the busy teacher looking for fresh inspirations such as - villanelle, cinquain, sestina - Sestina for primary school kids!!
Definitely!!
There are squabbles and friendships, lunchboxes and clapping games, the class genius - 'Harry is a genius/ he does algebra for fun' -
It was also great to see the good old 'my teacher's a witch' syndrome.
Cheryl writes wonderful little pieces to introduce each poem.
For the 'witch' poem she asks, "What do teachers get up to when we're not watching them? Where do they go at the end of the school day? Why are they so good at spelling? Some of us think we know...."
I taught for twenty-five years and its like an MI5 interrogation some days with kids trying to prise personal stuff from you. Hard to stick to just name, rank and serial number!

And of course, no respectable poetry book for kids is complete without an elephant.

The book is beautifully produced by Circle Time Press with fantastic illustrations by Ros Asquith. Ros is well-known to her Guardian readers for her strip cartoon, Doris, which ran for over ten years and her LINES cartoon. She is also a successful author and illustrator of children's books, notably the Letty Chubb Teenage Worrier series for teenagers published by Piccadilly and Transworld.


This is a book which will be loved by teachers, kids, parents, grandparents and anyone who loves good poetry. I thoroughly recommend it.
You can get your copy from Amazon.
Just click here Can in Be About Me?
Or direct from the press : Circle Time Press

Mightier than the sword.

English PEN, 'mightier than the sword' promotes literature and human rights, defending the rights of persecuted writers around the world, as well as working with different groups in the UK. Recently PEN has focused some of its energies and funds towards working with refugees and asylum seekers, to support their development as writers. As a writer I can think of nothing more frustrating than being forced into exile, losing my language and my ability to communicate through my pen.

PEN has been running a series of creative writing workshops in the past year for refugees and asylum seekers, as well as migrant workers and I have had the privilege of tutoring some of the groups. Writing in English and not one's mother tongue presents linguistic, practical and emotional issues to the writers. Many of the participants in these workshops and those I have been involved with in other settings, are already published and recognised novelists, poets, journalists and playwrights in their own countries, in their mother-tongue. But now they must start all over again, not only mastering a new language, but trying to engage with the tricky UK publishing industry.

Some of the participants have been persecuted as writers in their own countries and have been forced to flee. This is the background to one particular writer, Stephanie Ndoungo. Stephanie is from Cameroon and her mother-tongue is French. As a law student in her home country she took on journalism to fund her studies. Unfortunately she fell foul of the authorities and was forced to flee. She arrived in England in 2003 and sought asylum. Little did she know it would take almsot 7 years and many weary applications to the Home Office before she would be given refugee status and indefinite leave to remain. Stephanie has not seen her family since she fled Cameroon and only has telephone contact.

I met Stephanie on the Write to Life programme at the Medical Foundation. Stephanie was keen to work on poetry with me. Some of Stephanie's poems have been published in the anthologies of the Write to Life programme, such as the example below. Stephanie has also read her work at book festivals around the country.

In January 2010 Stephanie was invited to attend a training day run by English PEN to develop their work with refugee and asylum seekers attending PEN workshops. I was asked to interview Stephanie and open up her story to the group. Stephanie gave us an extraordinary insight into the experiences of being an asylum seeker in England, arriving with no resources, no support and almost no English. Initially Stephanie could not find a Cameroon community and was supported by a Congolese charity. This meant she could at least use her French but she still felt cut off from her own community. It was very difficult to find others from the Cameroon in London.
Stephanie told us how in those early years her life felt like " a waiting game." Waiting for the post, waiting for her court dates, waiting for another interview. She was expected to tell her story over and over again and had to make sure the details did not change. Time passed, another year in her life and another request for new evidence to corroborate her story. But how could she constantly nag friends and family back home for more and more documents?

Stephanie wrote the poem, MY SOIL, ( see above) when she was feeling homesick for her country, her family and her friends. She had brought so little with her.
Except for these dried seed pods.

Writing poetry opened a door for Stephanie and gave her a chance to express herself in a different way. "Writing poetry about yourself," she says, "is more difficult than journalism. You are not always aware before you write, what is actually on your mind. It is difficult to open your life to others in this way." Writing poetry, attending workshops and sharing writing with others for Stephanie has been " part of the healing process."

Being an asylum seeker is to live a life of very restricted choices. You can't work or even volunteer, you can't do an ESOL course to improve your English, you can't shop where you want. For Stephanie and so many others like her, you move from being an independent professional person to complete dependence on the system. "Being an asylum seeker can become an excuse not do things. Its very difficult to meet people and that's where the workshops were so good, " says Stephanie. "I met my first friend from Cameroon in a workshop."

And then the great day comes when finally you are awarded refugee status. There is no warning. A letter suddenly arrives from the Home Office and your life is turned upside down.

We had a special cake on the Write to Life programme to celebrate and there were many mixed feelings around the room, from those who had already achieved the same status and those still waiting, sometimes for years. But once the initial joy subsides, then a whole new set of problems start. "You have no preparation for getting refugee status," Stephanie says."There is no support system, no funding for education. Now you are faced with a whole new set of choices and its scary."

But Stephanie is a very determined person. She has committed herself to the country which took her in and gave a new chance at life, the country which introduced her to 'Only Fools and Horses, 'Yes Minister' and all the different accents and dialects in the English language which she loves. She has enrolled on a Social Work course and is determined to become a professional worker in London, looking forward to the day when she can buy her own flat and make a home for herself and her four year old son, Trevor.

"What I love about poetry," says Stephanie, " is that you can say so much in so few words."
Our experience of listening to Stephanie's story on our training day has given us new insight into life as an asylum seeker and the deep needs of writers trying to express themselves in their adopted language, dislocated from their home and their country.

The work of English PEN in providing this group the opportunity to develop their writing is an essential part of their work in our time.

Saving Anne Frank and Saving Me.

On January 12th 2010, Miep Gies died aged 100. She was the last survivor of those brave people who hid Anne Frank and her group in The Secret Annexe in Amsterdam from the Nazis. Anne wrote, "We are never far from Miep's thoughts." It was Miep who brought Anne the news she craved from the outside world, along with her first high heels.

I feel as though I have lost my big sister. As a Jewish girl growing up in London after the Holocaust, Miep's devotion and bravery was an important light onto the darkness we were all finding out about. " I am not a hero," wrote Miep decades later in her memoirs, but she was to Anne Frank and her group. And she certainly was to me. I feel as though Miep has been there as a guiding light all my life and now that she has gone a special spark has left us. We were blessed she had such a long life.

Miep Gies was a young woman when she helped to hide the group from the Nazis. When they were betrayed by an anonymous tip off her life was spared. It was Miep who found Anne's diary after the Nazis had left and hid it at great personal risk to herself. After the war she was reunited with Otto Frank, the only survivor of the Annexe and she gave him the diary.

The Diary in the Anne Frank Museum

In 1971 I went on a biking holiday in Holland and in Amsterdam I visited the Anne Frank House and Museum. It was amazing to see how true to the diary the Annexe was, especially Anne's narrow room with the film star photos still on the wall. My copy of the diary had fallen apart years before, so I took a new copy with me. As you can see, it was rather battered in my rucksack.

Miep writes in her memoirs, "I stand at the end of the long long line of good Dutch people who did what I did and more - much more- during those dark and terrible times years ago, but always like yesterday in the heart of those of us who bear witness."
A typically modest woman, in fact Miep went to Gestapo headquarters the next day to try and bribe the SS for the freedom of the group. She even stumbled upon some of the SS listening to the BBC and was lucky to escape with her life.

Anne Frank's diary was a beacon to me from childhood. Her honesty gave me permission to take risks very early on in my own writing. I remember gasping when I read, "Today I had my period." From my upbringing, I would never have mentioned such a thing!!I was already recording my thoughts in those wonderful little diaries we all had, with silver keys and have written diaries all my life. But Anne's diary lead the way forward. When Anne fell in love with Peter, I fell in love with him too and I was completely convinced by her picture of the awful dentist. All the more poignant when I saw a meeting only a few years ago between Miep and the dentist's son and learnt from the son what a lovely man he really was.

Anne Frank has inspired young writers all around the world for decades with her elegant prose, her courage and her integrity. And now Miep has gone from us too, our big sister, our protector, our witness. On the anniversary each year of the arrest by the Nazis, Miep sat at home in silence as a memorial to the group from the Annexe. "Not a day goes by that I do not grieve for them, " she wrote. And now we must grieve for Miep.