writing and writers – Page 135 – don't confuse the narrator

pedantry & poetry

"James Anderson becomes only the fourth England player to take 300 Test wickets during the first Test against New Zealand."

Cricket Tests are renowned for how long they last, but the BBC news to the right seems to imply they might go on for weeks: if Anderson was the fourth to take 300 wickets in the first Test, then three others had done so before him.

Just how long does it take for 1200+ wickets to be taken?

Elsewhere on the BBC last week I read their College of Journalism blog post: We all love lists, but are they all journalism?
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there’s a bug

When I walked across the neighbour’s field the other day, it was almost waist-deep in spring flowers: poppies, wild lupins, hawkweed, oxeye daisies, little purple vetches… The brightest of all were these golden blooms which were glorious from a distance, but not so nice up close as nearly every one harboured some kind of bug-eyed monster.

(Incidentally, I’m beginning to think I should change the blog tag-line to “Mostly first person poetry, prose, pedantry and plant pictures.”)

spa’ku

We laze in jasmine-scented waters
while stainless steel appliances
fart us into relaxation.

As usual, it’s a fragment rather than a hai’ku. You can read more such pieces here on the blog, or check out my multimedia collection Poems from the Pueblo: haiku and assorted fragments. (The link takes you to the publisher’s video on Vimeo).

writing it slow

Years ago, I wrote a long and rambling free verse poem that started “My mother makes sloe gin”. It was a runner up in a poetry competition, but despite the minor success, I was aware that it was rather flabby; I think I’ve been trying to force it into some kind of form for near on a decade.

That said, I had completely forgotten this version, which I think must have been written some time last year for a sonnet competition and abandoned when it wouldn’t conform to the formal constraints. Since the sloe trees are in full bloom this weekend, it seems a good time to post it:
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clearing away the clouds

First kiss

It’s there in the air between them.

As hands sketch fragmented curves,
fingertips graze its surface.

They worry it with words,
map points along the borders.

Their tongues taste the edges
of possibility until they find its shape

in the space where their lips meet.

I came across an earlier draft of the above in a stack of papers I was about to throw away, but I can’t find any trace of it on my computer. I don’t think I’d deliberately discarded it, but it definitely needed work.

There’s still a way to go, but it’s given me something to think – and write – about.
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