Inspiration

Our camellia started to bloom in February this year, earlier than normal, fooled by the unseasonably mild weather at the time, probably. The ferociously cold winds and rain that followed killed every bloom. And the leaves. There was nothing we could do. It now looks like an antler stand - the decorative type they make to hang jewellery on.

It is still beautiful in its own, sculptural way, but as it was by far the biggest plant we had, and now lacking its own natural jewellery, our tiny garden looks strangely empty, exposed. There's a poem in there, possibly, I thought. And then, out of the blue, it made me think : 'too many times I've seen the rose die on the vine...' (from the song: 'I'd rather leave while I'm in love')

Maybe it's because I've been listening to, and writing new poems about songs and the memories and feelings they evoke in me. This particular song I found slightly odd at the time - I was young and believed in everlasting love, possibly - but it's always fascinating to hear and think about songs from that time now that I'm much older and... whatever I am now. 

I've also gone back to my vast archive of photos for inspiration (even before I found the ekphrastic poetry challenges on Twitter). I post a photo most days - mainly just with a few words that come to mind, but I have a number of old photo-inspired short poems/haiku, which I might post more of online (I've tried a couple). As well as responding to the challenges. But in writing/responding now, I'm finding that my poems are taking a new turn - less direct, more tangential.

So many different forms of inspiration. So many ways to interpret an image.

I'm also still thinking of more ways to make all my poems - old and new - available free, and not just online - more on this to come. Feeling positive. And some days strong. I'm still working on that.

The old poems

While I spend some time thinking about the new poems I'm writing and want to write, I thought I'd share some of the old ones that didn't make it into print - though some got shortlisted. This week, one I wrote about my mother, who was a primary school teacher for a short period of her life, before serious ill health stopped her working.

Teacher

Look at their little faces

as they sit there waiting

for me to tell a story.

There was some chatter

but I silenced it

and now they all look to me.

I shall tell them

of a princess

locked in a tower.

I shall tell them

of the life

she dreamed she'd have.

I shall watch

their little faces waiting

for the rescue, the escape.

I'll let them wait

and then I'll say

The End.

The road to happiness

On X/Twitter this week, lots of people have been reporting the number of rejections they've received for submissions to poetry magazines.

I am pleased to report that I have had 0 rejections this week. That is because I do not currently have any submissions in.

And it would appear that even if you get a poetry collection published, the chances are you won't sell many copies (30-60, but definitely under 100).

I am therefore also feeling pretty pleased because my self-published genre-defying poetry/words/photograph book sold 87 copies, back in 2019/20. (I gave away the rest of the 100 print run to friends and family.)

So, while not submitting or getting published, I have, as I said I would, spent my time recently exploring the many online poetry resources. There are so many, I could spend my entire life doing just that, if inconvenient chores like shopping, cooking, cleaning, repairing my collapsing home, etc didn't get in the way.

This exploration has left me both inspired and overwhelmed. My mind keeps darting off in different directions and won't settle on any one. I have, however, drafted quite a few new poems, and even tweeted one or two. They have received a positive response. And I'm pretty chuffed about that too. 

The road to happiness is clear.

Writing and connecting

There is a whole world of writing out there. If you write alone, for yourself, then maybe you can stay outside it. But even then, you read, and what you read will affect you, consciously or unconsciously. 

And if you want your writing to be out in the world, then you can't ignore that world, and that world seems to have 'rules' and 'shoulds' about how to write and what. You may react to it in different ways at different times - accept it/reject it, but you can't escape the fact it exists.

But there's still the 'you' that is 'you' alone and the 'you' that has to find your way in that world, and that can mean judging yourself and what you write from that point of view, even when you don't want to. And finding yourself judged by it. Or even excluded by it. Just like life generally, I guess.

And what you write may not be read by others in the way you intended, or may not 'fit'.

Fundamentally, for me, writing is about storytelling. It's about expressing myself and wanting to communicate, connect. Writing has helped me see things differently, to see connections...

This week there has been a lot of new sharing and connecting on Twitter/X, much of which has been inspired by Matthew M C Smith and TopTweetTuesday and I've been really happy to be included and to share.

It's easy to feel that you're not part of the wider world - of writing - or in general. And to cut yourself off, or feel cut off. Some of the things that were shared this week were blogs and websites - and these are ways I can connect - and through Twitter/X.

I've talked about ways forward for me before, but I think now that these points of free access are the way for me. I, like many people, don't have the money to buy all the books and magazines available - much as I would love to, and I'm lucky that I have many in my home that I've acquired in the past, including from friends, and they are still wonderful to go back to.

But, for the future, I can connect via the huge variety of online resources, and likewise contribute and express myself in the same way. 

 

Not there

There's a place, I think - 

a path, an avenue of trees,

and a church at the end

and a graveyard

and behind

there are fields that lead down to the sea

and the light is glowing on the water

and a boat moving slowly

and there are birds

so tiny on the shore

and the distant call of gulls

and I'm walking

and I'm still

and I hear it

and I feel it

and it's where I want to be

and am not.

First published in Seaborne magazine

Normality will return

And those who were undervalued before

will be undervalued again.

And those who were vulnerable before

will be vulnerable again.

And the things we vowed to remember

we will forget.

And the things we vowed to change

will be unchanged.

Normality will return

with all its inadequacies.

And more people will lose the fight.

I've posted this before, but it seems right to post again this week, nationally and globally.

Too early, too late

It was only March

but already bees were on the blossom,

blue tits were nesting,

too many things were happening too soon.

He said he'd heard it on the radio,

The Last Spring - by Grieg,

and I, thinking it a good thing to do,

bought him the CD.

We sat and listened to it together

and he said nothing.

Not thinking, I said it was beautiful

and he said nothing.

The days grew longer

and the time shorter,

the blossom faded

and the blue tits left.

When he died in May

then I knew what it was he didn't say.

First published by Indigo Dreams Publishing

Different versions of me

I've been thinking about, and reading, poetry, rather than writing it, lately. I've been looking back at lots of my old poetry and wondering how I manage to have such an inconsistent style of writing. I didn't come up with an answer. Nor to the question why so many different types of my poetry have been published - and so many haven't. Right poem, right place, wrong poem, wrong place, rubbish poem, etc... 

The following poem, which is unusual even for me, got accepted for publication, but I withdrew it after about 18 months of waiting for it to be published, because I was having a bit of a breakdown at the time and just got cross, which was unfair on the publisher (maybe?), but I couldn't deal with it then. I could resubmit it somewhere else, but I think it stands as good a chance of getting read here as it would anywhere else, so...

The end of the world happened

in a hotel bar on the edge of somewhere

where a man of a certain age

had just been told, without a hint of irony,

that he could check out any time he liked,

and having polished off the nuts

and another double, decided

to say yes to the woman in the lipstick

the same shade his wife had worn before

and knew for once he wouldn't have to pay

and

in a carpark outside a pub in Dungeness

where a woman of a certain age

had just been told, without a hint of irony,

that she could check him out any time she liked,

and having had her cod and chips

and Sex on the Beach, decided

to say no to the man who looked like

all the others and the shag on the shingles

and settled for a fag on the edge of nowhere.

In the beginning (a child's puzzle)

Dad: Look at this poem - what do you think?

Me: I think it's about love.

Mum: Poet emerges from fish?

Me: Keats.

Brother: What shape was Keats' DNA?

Me: A troubled Felix.

Frustration

I wasn't going to write a post this week. 

It's been another week of frustration. Trying to fix the gas boiler - the hassle, the expense, the lack of resolution - 'a new one is a better option' - yes, if I happened to have that kind of money, which I don't. And then seeing what not having it working has done to the electricity bill which has just come in. 

And then trying to get a doctor's appointment, and a hospital appointment, and medicines, and any kind of comprehension of the stress that's causing.

But then, I thought, as I'm already fuming, I'd write something about how annoying some tweets and posts are when it comes to poetry. Don't get me wrong - there are some open discussions about poetry - where people are genuinely asking for ideas, and discussions about a poem or a pamphlet which accept their subjectivity, and/or are descriptive rather than judgmental. And there are really supportive people out there too.

But the ones that make me angry are the ones where people don't just say what they think. They say, or imply very strongly, that they're right, and therefore everyone else is wrong. You don't like something - fine. Don't tell me I shouldn't like it. And vice versa. You don't think the form of the poem is right - fine. That's your opinion. It doesn't make it a fact. And so on.

It's hard enough for people to put their work out into the world, or to try to connect, without being told that what they've said or done is wrong, when what is really the case is that one person's opinion differs from another's. Some things are facts. Some are just opinions. I wish people would remember that. And be kinder.

Little things that matter

There are two worlds, it would seem. There is the bigger world where all the news is bad, on a scale that we struggle to comprehend, let alone know what to do about, except protest. And there is the smaller world which is our individual life and the lives of those closest to us. And we struggle to deal with that too. And poetry takes on those struggles.

The struggles themselves are evoked, but always too, it seems, the clutching at something that could give hope. And those straws that are clutched at seem to be the little things - the touch of a hand, the texture of a rock, the sound of a bell, the smell and taste of food, the colours of a flower... so many possibilities.

But even these are ambivalent - because it can be the last touch of a hand, a rock that cuts, the bell that tolls, the food from a homeland long lost, a flower that is dying...

The daily rituals that provide some comfort can at the same time remind us of someone who is no longer with us to share those rituals. And nature, which everyone seems to turn to (or are, at least, encouraged to turn to), likewise holds sorrow as well as joy - the sea we used to walk to together, the erosion and destruction...

But so rarely does a poem seem to hold no hope. Despite the struggle, the feeling of powerlessness to change things, the losses, the poet seems to need something to hold onto - the moments, the little things that matter.

And when I'm trying to find something to hold onto:

blackbird's song at dawn

nature's continuity

blackbird's song at dusk

But even then...

in chill morning sun

grass sparkles; banks of purple

lift above the sea;

oystercatcher's distant call:

remember this was the dream

First published by Indigo Dreams Publishing

Later

You worry about what you've said to them,

then you wonder if they worry about what you've said to them,

then you worry about what they've said to you,

then you wonder if they worry about what they've said to you.

Then, years later, out of the blue,

they tell you they forgive you

for something you don't remember

you'd said to them.

Then, later still, you realise

you didn't tell them that you don't forgive them

for the things they don't remember

they'd said to you.

Sea star mass mortality event

The sunflower

tore off its petals,

the rainbow

slumped,

the pink and purple 

cut to white,

the morning sun

melted

and when night came

the stars

had lost their reflections.

 

First published by Fly on the Wall Press

Do you think this poem stands on its own (with title), or does it need a footnote with background info? Is there enough in the poem itself, or should there be more? I often wonder. It was published as is.