Biography

David Redfield is a poet, writer, mentor, performer and workshop leader. After graduating in English and Drama from King Alfred's College, Winchester, David worked in the public sector for a number of years, including a career in Special Educational Needs. His published work includes Stretching Horizons (2002), Utter (2010) - both Hawthorn Press - and Sulla's Cauldron, with Diane Griffiths, (Cratageus Press, 2014). His poetry has also appeared in various magazines & anthologies incl. The Interpreter's House, Ink Sweat & Tears, Iota, and still, and he has contributed articles and reviews to a number of publications. He was longlisted in the 2014 RSPB/Rialto Nature Competition. He spent three years as Deputy Chair of Poetry-next-the-Sea, an annual literature festival held in Wells, under the everyday guise of David Radley. He performed the title role in Meeting Mister Pepys (a performance piece devised by Caroline Gilfillan) at a number of literary festivals in 2013-14. A second, expanded edition of Utter (The Ennor Press) was launched at the Isles of Scilly Festival in May 2016. David is a member of East Anglian Writers (affiliated to the Society of Authors), and is currently busy constructing his own blog (on all things writing-related and beyond) to be launched later this year. He is co-founder of the Fakenham-based Chalk River Poets group: their first publication, "Binding the Stones" was published in May 2024. David is also a digital-image maker whose work has been exhibited. David has run writing workshops across the north Norfolk area, and leads a regular, free, monthly writing group in Fakenham library, covering genres as diverse as short fiction, poetry, life writing, and travel literature. From April - June 2020 I organized and ran two online community writing projects in order to reflect the experience of living under lockdown in the Covid-19 crisis: in Fakenham (north Norfolk, where I live) & The Isles of Scilly - both entitled "The Lockdown Spring Renga Project". The poems were subsequently published in two strictly-limited editions as "Every Line Tells". Video settings of both complete poems can be viewed through YouTube: The Lockdown Spring Renga Project - in Fakenham, ed. by David Redfield www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTZ7rMWY0Kw The Lockdown Spring Renga Project - in Scilly, ed. by David Redfield www.youtube.com/watch?v=REz08Y2Qa-g ___________________ I've given readings from my poetry at literary festivals, in pubs, private gardens, libraries (in London, Norfolk, and Cornwall), churches, village chapels, a Quaker meeting house, schools, a nature reserve, and an up-market hotel bar (in front of the optics and next to the coffee machine!), among other venues. ____________________ Workshops Whether I'm conducting a standalone day session (tasters, for example) or leading a linked series of workshops, my aim is always the same: to help participants find the most authentic voice for their work. The discovery of "voice" seems to me to be a crucial moment in the development of any writer. This is more than just style (although style is a crucial part of the mix); it involves all the quirks of diction, inflection, rhythm, syntax, but above all feel that make up the unique, individual personality of a writer. My job, as I see it in this context, is to be a facilitator: to help students navigate their way through the flotsam and jetsam towards a vision of what they can achieve, through what they already do well. This is my starting point, and it's an optimistic one; people are generally already exercising components of their individual voice, so you begin from a position of strength. __________________ Selected workshops include: • First Steps in Writing Poetry/Next Steps Words Across the Wensum – Fakenham, summer 2015 • Steps Into Poetry: five week linked series – Hillside Lodge Art Studio, Toftrees, autumn 2015 & from home, spring 2016 • Open the Door to Creative Writing (with Patricia Mullin, fiction) – Wells Sackhouse, September 2016 • Words on the wing (with Patricia Mullin, fiction) – Pensthorpe Natural Park, June 2017 • Making A Mark – St. Mary’s, Isles of Scilly, June 2019 • Ink & Image (with printmaker Diane Griffiths) – Pensthorpe Natural Park, May 2022 • Finding Your Voice – Write Around the Corner, Hunstanton, July 2024 __________________ ‘We were made most welcome and given lots of personal encouragement. For anyone who hopes to find a supportive and quiet environment Pensthorpe and the facilitators were able to offer an uplifting and educative experience.’ MGE - feedback from "Words on the wing", June 2017 "[we benefitted from] sharing ideas with other writers" J - feedback from "Finding Your Voice", July 2024

Samples

from "Utter" (second ed, 2016) Epona The Nag's Head, St. Agnes A skittish piebald backs herself into the sudden fissure that the iron earth has vented for her stabling; knuckling under hoof and haunch, fetlock, then croup, submit to loveless taming and the granite will of possession. But the covetous sky outmanoeuvring, yanks at her halter, flexing to keep the fleetness and shimmer forever corralled in that stony paddock. The heather bleeds, muscled boulders sweat, while the elements strain at their equipoise: time's heartbeat falters, judders on the brink of resolution, and begot from the air the itch of lichen on her startled pelt commences a work of the ages. Epona - a Celtic horse goddess, predominantly found in West Country, Cornish and Welsh myth and folklore ____________ Gotcha the common pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) Colonel Double-Barrel DSO (Retired), struts his crossing point in trimmed dress uniform of burnished copper, braids; then empire-resplendent he gives us his best staccato, throaty broadside. Veteran of skirmishes reliefs, and close-run-things, he’s made it through the no-man’s land of fairway and foxhole, but as we draw level, eyes-right he’s off: maybe, in time, he’ll have a rendezvous to keep: well-dressed, on the sauce, up at the exclusive clubhouse. ___________ Hitting the Wrong Note Rooted next to his upright piano, close in the tiny room, I couldn't breathe. He held one hand to the small of my back, the other across my taut diaphragm: (I can believe he loved the music, but he craved only angels, expected them - and, by God, he was going to have them, even if he clipped their wings along the way). Here, understand? From here! A scrawny fledgling, I could not rise - not that time, the next, not ever. The news wouldn't tell who was among the chosen, but when I think of the shame in hitting the wrong notes, I understand how crooked my flight could have been if I'd ever hit all the right ones. ___________ Change of Weather The glass begins to plummet. And when the needle slides Cornwall is further than merely twenty-eight miles. Storms bristle, scratch their manic scribble on the broken-edged slate of sky, and the surf surge conducts a pent-up energy from somewhere beyond the eyes, leaving dates, promises, appointments, certainties, every fact on the calendar stranded. Something easeful and temperate gets smashed with a change of weather: the wreck of what can be foretold on that which is still unseen; the knowable and familiar lost through indeterminate sea-sky or sky-sea smithereens. ____________ Winter Tree Waking Because blossom pure air, because blow birds rise in the naked day. If cloud the skin quiet and breath turned cold, if sleep awake in gratitude. Pray for this tender month because your slow kiss ____________ From "Dawnings" almost spring: I learn to risk, believe more, watching green truth beneath the rain’s whisper. ____________ her morning face: after sleep memory is long, dried stars. I watch the sky until a sun burns through. ____________ a chilli on the window-sill edges towards the idea of neon. ____________ the last medlar in Shakespeare’s orchard: stubborn, almost rotten, and not yet ready. Stratford-upon-Avon ____________ Deposition for Caroline Gilfillan The flow sifts grit through fences and groynes that will always fail, which stream the Norfolk grains around Anglia's smooth cranium to shingle-levelling Suffolk. The wave feeds on gravity's engendering, and at the point of falling we are permitted to witness this consequence: a slow, unfurling quiver, the quicksilver gleam at its back.

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.

Blog entries by David Redfield

Having exhausted most troubleshooting options (11/11/2024)

A Private View (27/07/2024)

Losing It (01/06/2024)

All Day Breakfast (06/08/2022)

A Whole New Perspective (11/09/2021)

Green Man (01/02/2021)

The Lockdown Spring Renga Project (09/07/2020)

Spring Will Be Delayed (25/03/2020)

Shaman (28/08/2019)

DR reading "Epona" on Linda Thomas's Book Show - Radio Scilly 17 June 2019 (22/07/2019)

Read more entries by David Redfield…

Blog link: https://www.writeoutloud.net/blogs/davidredfield

Audio entries by David Redfield

DR reading "Epona" on Linda Thomas's Book Show - Radio Scilly 17 June 2019 (22/07/2019)

Favourite Profiles

Paul Waring

Louise Clarke

Stuart Buck

Suzanne Iuppa