I've written my first ballad sequence based on Scots ballad 'Clyde's Water' also known as 'Mother's Malison'. You can read the original ballad and variants here.
It was collected by Henry James Child in his anthology of traditional ballads from Scotland and England published in the late 19th century, and is indexed as Child ballad 216.

It was challenging to write - bringing together the narrative aspect, incorporating ballad tropes and yet making it thoroughly my own poem.
The basic narrative is -  

Willie wishes to visit his lover. His mother bids him stay, and curses him to drown in Clyde if he goes. Willie, trusting in his horse, goes anyway, but his lover's mother bids him away. Returning, he drowns in Clyde; his lover drowns as she seeks him." 

I wrote it as a sequence of three poems in the voices of the three woman involved - the first is in the voice of William's mother, the second the voice of William's lover (May Margaret), and lastly in the voice of May Margaret's mother.

I used Lorca's Gypsy Ballads as inspiration,  and also especially his long sequence 'Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias' which is a stunning poem. I used some repetition and some stand-alone rhyming quatrains, and incorporated some lines from a traditional Scots folk / childrens song.
So at the moment it's around 140 lines long and needs to be put away for a while so I can gain perspective on it.

I've just finished reading A Lucid Dreamer: The Life of Peter Redgrove. I started reading it a few years back but didn't get too far, this time I thoroughly enjoyed it. The biography was pretty thorough regarding the details of Redgrove's life, but I'd like to see another biography written better with more analysis and insight. I'm a good bit of the way through Redgrove's collected poems and thoroughly enjoying them. It's funny how you can approach different poets at different times in your life - I couldn't make head nor tail of Redgrove a few years ago.
Sometimes it feels like there's no end to feeding the poem-monster - if I'm working on a poem I'm trying to finish it, if I'm not working on a poem I'm trying to write one and so on it goes.

I like to read a decent biography over the Christmas holidays. It's become a bit of a tradition, a midwinter escape into someone else's life. This Christmas I read A Lucid Dreamer: the Life of Peter Redgrove by Neil Roberts and Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness, a Biography by Edward Butscher.

I'd been drawn to the Redgrove biography for a while. His reputation for strange visionary poetry and his background in analytic psychology sounded irresistible. I hoped it would help me approach his poetry which I've yet to get a great deal out of. Interesting though it is there is sadly very little in the way of poetry analysis or the relation of individual poems to his life. It certainly doesn't hold back on the many personal details about his life and while I applaud the openness, I feel I probably know more about him than I really want to!
I thought it was about time I got around to reading Edward Butscher's biography of Sylvia Plath. His book was the very first full-length biography written about Plath - published in 1976, thirteen years after her death. I wasn't expecting a great deal from the book having read many more recent biographies of her but was greatly surprised and pleased at the attention given to her poems and her creative progress in the book. In fact I think it's an excellent analysis of her life and writing and his tackling of her poems is insightful and stands up as well as any of the later studies written with the benefit of historical distance.

I daresay any fan of Redgrove would be delighted to read the Neil Robert's biography, if and when I get into his poems I'll probably go back and re-read it and enjoy it more. I'd thoroughly recommend the Butscher biography for those actually interested in Plath's work, rather than just the tragic mythic tale.