writing and writers – Page 103 – don't confuse the narrator

the big picture

Looking through my photo files for ideas for a blog post, I find mostly close ups of flowers and insects. Panoramic views are few and far between, and pictures of people are even less frequent. Even if a scene could be a landscape, my focus is usually on details.
Continue reading “the big picture”

the tender-hearted artichoke

artichoke flower beginning to open on the plant

I was so impressed by this glorious artichoke plant with its flowers in all the different stages that I thought about writing a poem.

Then I remembered that Neruda had already written an Ode to the artichoke.
Continue reading

worthless opinions

When I paid for my shopping at the supermarket check-out the other day, the assistant rejected one of the coins, telling me it was foreign.

She was wrong: it wasn’t foreign, it was old. Somehow this had got into in my purse:

I wasn’t wearing my glasses, so I’d handed it over thinking it was a tuppenny piece. It seems my two penn’orth is only worth a ha’penny.

feeling positive

Although I understand that they simplify the process of marking tests and correlating results, I have never been fond of multiple-choice-style questions: all too often there are ambiguities that force you to second guess what the examiners want you to answer.

This shouldn’t be a problem when the question is just asking you to rate how you feel about something, but the following question from a recent YouGov survey had me confused:

Just what is the difference between “very positive” and “strongly positive”? And which is the right choice for those who feel emphatically negative?
Continue reading

the poet’s voice

Sometimes the sky seems solid: there are no thoughts; no words; no voice. Sometimes there seems to be no poet.

Aphonia

I have lost my voice.
The murmur of the traffic is enough
to drown the sound of my ideas. Star grit,
like broken oyster shells, embeds itself
in my soft palate and I choke
on smoky clouds as I aspire
to the feathered tops of pine trees.

The moon dissolves,
a luminescent coughdrop,
liquid on my tongue.