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Aug 2009 - New
Collection: Judy Gahagan left behind academic psychology to write poetry, fiction and essays and to explore the thinking in archetypal psychology and ecological thought, both of which and her own work as poet have informed the courses she has run for the Poetry School London : The Soul In Common; Common Grounds; The Place of Place in Poetry; Claiming the Heartlands. These courses involve both the search after poetry as Keat’s ‘vale of soul-making’ and re-finding the inspiration of the natural world and of place for the poet. These themes inform her work with other poetry groups around London. She also runs seminars and tutorials for the Poetry School. Judy's particular agenda in poetry is that of eco-poetry; this comes from a belief that poetry is the natural home to our connection with the natural world, our own habitats and our longing for both. She runs courses based on these themes: The Soul in Common; Common Grounds; Wellsprings; 2-Way Mirrors; Before We Say Goodbye. She has published extensively in magazines, won many prizes and published two poetry pamphlets: Ghosting The Cities and When The Whole Mood Changed (Artemis) and two full collections: Crossing The No-man’s Land (Flambard) and Night Calling (Enitharmon) as well as a collection of short stories: Did Gustav Mahler Ski? (New Directions, New York). She has also published translations of poetry from German and Italian. Judy lives in London and has also lived and worked in Italy. Tours around the Soul of Ludwig Eine Reise durch Ludwigs Seele: Judy Gahagan’s narrative poem ‘Tours Around The Soul Of Ludwig’ has now been published bi-lingually in English and German, translated by poet Ingeborg Santor by Stutz Verlag Passau. The poem in 6 parts takes as its format the tour guide - through the famous palaces but in each case the tour becomes one of Ludwig’s inner world and how that world brings about the tragedy of his death. That inner world is drawn in contrast to the dominant spirit of contemporary life. ‘Our Louis, Ludwig, was just an evanescent lodger and occupied his own private rooms just once, one year before he died.
His own rooms were to make manifest a principle, that of night, its chimeras, phantasmagoria, solitude which only Ludwig the Moon-King understood
for Ludwig only ever visited by night’ Comment: ‘There is no scarcity of biographies, biographical novels, romances and biopics about Ludwig 11, the Bavarian ‘fairytale……Insofar as such representations do not just shroud him in the halo of romance and folklore, they follow the biographical conventions of solving the riddles of his life, of diagnosing mental aberrations or assessing moral culpability. Judy Gahagan, in contrast, does nothing of this kind….Her ‘tour around his soul’s landscapes’ is a journey of exploration into a foreign country rather exploring ‘those regions of the psyche we’ll acknowledge some day again…a state of mind, fallen from use’ Professor Manfred Pfister
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... "The Secret Frontiers", "Crossing the No-Man's Land", Flambard Press, 1999 long
narrative - pamphlets - "Ghosting the Cities" and "When the Whole Mood Changed", Artemis short stories - "Did Gustav Mahler Ski?", New Directions.
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