📚New Book Announcement
I am delighted to announce that my new book. ‘Immersed In Blue,’ published by Impspired is live today on Amazon.co.uk and signed author copies are now available . If you order from me direct this will include free bookmark postcards and a message of your choice. £5 from each copy sold will be donated to my local hospice, Beaumond House, Newark, where my late husband was so lovingly cared for in his last days. The book is 80 pages in length and has colour photographs
Signed copies are available price £9.50 ( including p&p) and can be ordered via Paypal or by direct bank transfer to my bank account ( please email me for details) or even by posting me a cheque ( please ask for my address etc by emailing me at margaretroyall@icloud.com)l
To use Paypal just click on the link above, using family and friends option please, and remember to give your address for posting! Payment by direct bank transfer or by cheque are also possible, please email me for details. Prices are for UK posting so for Europe, USA, Canada etc please contact me: margaretroyall@icloud.comm
Podcast ‘Word Perfect’ with Steve Cawte & myself talking about my writing life and the book
Link to listen to the interview:
https://sirenradio.podbean.com/e/word-perfect-with-steve-cawte-and-margaret-royall/
🎉New Year Launch Party Evening Sun 9th Jan 19:00-21:00, free and online🎉
I will be joined on the evening by guest readers: Patricia M Osborne & Brian McManus, Kerry Darbishire & Kelly Davis, Damien B Donnelly ( MC for the evening), Steve Cawte, Paul Brookes, Jo Weston and Simon Royall.
Register for a free Eventbrite ticket by clicking on the link.
Follow me on Twitter @RoyallMargaret, Instagram: meggiepoet and on my Facebook author page: Facebook.com/margaretbrowningroyall
Immersed in Blue – the Iona Journals 2012- 2021
This book is part journal, part memoir, part travelogue, illustrated with beautiful colour photographs, comprising material written on retreat on the mystical Inner Hebridean Isle of Iona over the course of nine years. The writing is presented as a series of Haibun, a fusion of poetry and prose with a nod to the traditional Japanese prosimetric form but here updated to give a more contemporary, westernised feel.
Book blurb
In 2012 a miracle occurred. While searching for a painting holiday the author chanced upon a creative writing retreat on the Inner Hebridean Isle of Iona. This mystical, magical place has since become what she describe as her heart-home, a place where she feels totally at ease, happy in her skin. She has returned year on year, each time producing a course project written as a Haibun (a mix of poetry and prose), which seeks to capture the myriad faces of the island and explore its numinous beauty. In this collection extracts from her journals 2012-2021 have been selected with the intention of sharing the many sights and sounds, riches of flora, fauna and landscape that she has been privileged to experience.
Here is the beautiful book cover! i love it! Special thanks go to my friend Moira Brimacombe for permission to use one of her beautiful photographs for this. It is exquisite.
Review of the book by prize-winning poet Kerry Darbishire
Even if you have never visited Iona, after reading Immersed in Blue, you will be very tempted. These poems invite you to journey across ‘the Sound’s deep waters,/transporting the mind to once-familiar haunts.’… ‘churning oyster to aqua.’ Iona is Margaret Royall’s ‘heart-home’ she returns to time and time again to watch ‘dusk descending/on Morpheus’ wings’, ‘fireflies pearlescent glow.’ Through her close observations, knowledge and reverence for this island of ever-changing light, scent, and strong sense of history, she deftly unfolds, ‘drinking in the magic of the moment, noting the changes on land and/sea.’ She lays down words like a painter lays in colour with each changing mood, tells us, ’I immerse myself in deep time.’ And as if time no longer exists, she brings to life the songs, wildlife, the pilgrims who have passed through, ‘Like the ghosts of those souls I pause, overwhelmed.’ This fine collection is magical, uplifting and enlightening, one I will enjoy for many years to come.”
Kerry Darbishire
Twitter @kerrydarbishire
Poetry: A Lift of Wings – Indigo Dreams
Distance Sweet on my Tongue – Indigo Dreams
(Cumbria Life Culture Awards FINALIST 2019)
http://www.indigodreams.co.uk/kerry-darbishire-distance/4594375662
www.dempseyandwindle.com/kerrydarbishire.html
Biography: Kay’s Ark – Handstand Press
http://www.handstandpress.net/product/kays-ark/
www.poetrypf.co.uk/kerrydarbishire.shtml.
And from acclaimed poet and reviewer Paul Brookes, Editor at the Wombwell Rainbow; internationally published poet
“Iona is Margaret’s “heart-home”. This book explores her heart in all its seasonal changes, the lifeblood of tourists, the peaceful quiet and ends in gloriously funny short stories.” ( Full review to follow)
And from poet, reviewer and researcher Brian McManus, these words
Margaret Royall is a well-published and much-loved poet and author. Her previous work has attracted five-star reviews, and this, her new book of poetry and prose is an outstanding addition to her literary canon.
Part journal, part memoir, part travelogue, and illustrated with beautiful colour photographs, it explores and documents the sights and sounds, the riches of flora, fauna and landscape and the numinous spiritual wonders of the magical, mystical Inner Hebridean Isle of Iona over the course of many years.
Royall’s mastery of her craft fused with her innovative and accomplished writing style leads the reader on a joyous journey of discovery which will settle in the subconscious to be drawn from time and again in future years. It truly is a work of art.
Brian McManus,
poet, author, reviewer, researcher.
October 2021
Here is a sample poem from the book.
Being Happy In Your Skin
I could get lost in these rugged hills,
this lunar landscape, ruthlessly battered
by the elements.
Time has hardly moved on here….
The island folk are hardy; their lot a simple one,
slow, habitual, unpretentious.
I envy the absent need for constant change.
Monday is as inevitable as Sunday;
all things pass easily, yet I hear
in the sigh of the breeze through the grass
the promise of deep fulfilment,
in the harp song echoing through the gneiss stone
a melodic chant of deepest love for this ancient place.
If I stayed here forever, maybe I would find the real me?
Margaret Royall 