I reckon I started writing poetry some fifty years ago.
Since then, there have been periods when ideas have flowed thick and fast. There have also been times when I have forgotten about poetry, perhaps for years on end.
And then there have been times when I have not forgotten about poetry, but it seems to have forgotten about me.
Continue reading “not my idea”
No dabbling in the dew this morning – I’d have had to put my wellies on and am not sure how you tell dew that has risen from rain that has fallen.
No Morris dancers with their bells and wooden staves, and no dancing round the Maypole.
No Green Man and no May Queen.
Continue reading “maybe; maybe not”
From Tom’s Midnight Garden – the vast country-house grounds held trapped in the memory of a tiny city backyard – to The Secret Garden, which Mary Lennox discovers with the help of the robin, to The Selfish Giant‘s garden where Spring will not visit while the children are kept out, there’s something magical about walled gardens.
Continue reading “wallflowers and garden walls”
If you ask for advice about writing a presentation, one recommendation is likely to come up time and again:
Tell them what you’re going to tell them.
Tell them.
Tell them what you’ve told them.
This three-part cyclical format is far more likely to get your message through to your audience than a simple linear thread.
I’ve long been an advocate of the idea of poetry as “the art of patterning”, but the more I think about it, the more I see that patterns play a part in effective communication in general, not just poetry.
Continue reading “round in circles”
At first sight, some things are all curvy, soft and dreamy, the sort of soft focus look used for attractive women on the early episodes of Star Trek.
But as you get closer you realise that’s not quite the whole story: you begin to see straight lines, edges and sharper outlines, and it all seems a bit scratchier – more like horse hair than angora.
Continue reading “come closer”
don't confuse the narrator 