Category: poetry

wings and things

I’ve said before that I’m not fond of birds, but they are a recurring theme of my poetry. I don’t, however, have many photos of birds as they so seldom stay still long enough to capture on film. (Hmm… I don’t suppose we capture anything on film anymore if we use digital cameras, so maybe that phrase must be considered an inelegant variation.)

I do a little better with photos of bugs and insects as they often seem less bothered by the approach of a camera lens and will sometimes sit still for hours on the same flower head.
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summery

There’s a big difference between the weather summary and summery weather, but today they seem to coincide, with quite a bit of sunshine expected and temperatures predicted to reach nearly 20º.

Hourly weather forecastThis isn’t at all the sort of weather I was used to when I lived in Spain, where summer was a dull aching red that lasted from March through to October: here in England, even the hottest days start off blue and fresh and daisy clean.
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high days and holidays

Good Friday, Easter Monday, Early May Bank Holiday and now the Spring Bank Holiday… we seem to have had a lot of holidays in the UK recently.

Surprisingly, the Early May Bank Holiday actually coincided with May Day this year, and today, too, has its own traditional associations:

The 29th of May is Royal Oak Day:
if you don’t give us a holiday, we’ll all run away !

Sadly, I didn’t pass even a single oak tree on my brief walk to the shop this morning, so have settled for pulling a few dead leaves from the archives.
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multicultural

When I was a child, one of the household chores that fell to me was cleaning the silver and brass.

Back then, we had horse brasses hung round the fireplace, candlesticks, a brass bugle, assorted epns cutlery, a silver rose-bowl, a self-pouring (pump action) teapot and a couple of bon bon dishes.
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know your onions

I said yesterday that when I lack inspiration I can always go back to old pieces and re-write them. There are, after all, hundreds of poems in my files, and I don’t suppose any of them is quite as good as it might be if I worked on it again now time has passed and I can be more objective.

Sometimes it’s a question of taking the same subject and looking at it from a new perspective; sometimes it’s changing the form – maybe seeing what happens if I remove all the line and stanza breaks and rejig, or maybe taking a free verse piece and putting it into a formal structure such as a sonnet.
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