It’s hard to disagree with anything Mackenzie says, particularly as the list is followed by the rider “good poets are always ready to break rules whenever a poem demands it.”
That said, the “rule” that caught my eye was:
15. Consider the poem’s “truth”. Not the literal facts (although those may be important at times) but the emotional resonance. Is the emotion genuine or just received wisdom?
I’ve been to several poetry readings in the last couple of weeks, including an anthology launch where I was among the readers, and one by the elderly New Zealand poet C.K. Stead.
The other events, though, were more formal and I was disconcerted to see people in the audience tapping away at their smart phones and laptop keyboards when I thought they should be listening. (That’s why I chose the photo of the owl, an eminently educated bird, with those marvellously disapproving eyebrows I can never hope to match however much I frown on modern youth.)
Continue reading “modern manners”
In the moonlight
giant moths
gather on my bedroom wall
Actually, it’s the light of a street lamp, and therefore they only gather there until midnight and from 5:30am as the local council switch the lights off during the darkest part of the night to save energy.
And, of course, they aren’t quite moths. But they are near enough to have made me think about the poor creatures trapped in the net of the curtains and want to put the thought down here in case I can use it at some point in the future.
Continue reading “high days and holy days”
The tail end of summer always makes me slightly nostalgic.
Every time I see blackberries growing in the hedgerow, I remember that one of the few good things about going back to school after the long summer holidays was knowing that we would go blackberrying the next weekend. 
don't confuse the narrator 