Yesterday I was busy choosing poems to read at an event at the local bookshop, so didn’t get round to updating the blog. I had a reading slot of between 15 and 20 minutes and spent all afternoon trying to create some kind of coherent ‘set’.
Continue reading “memories”
Tag: childhood
no way back
I went to an open mike evening the other day. It was supposed to be in a fairly spartan room above a pub, but the bookings had got mixed up and the SWP were there before us, so at the very last minute the venue was changed.
The new venue was a basement room, although the décor was altogether too decadent to make me feel like an underground poet. The Trotskyists might have liked the wall colour, but I’m sure the spit-and-sawdust pub setting suited them better.
I say “basement”, but I suppose in fact ground level was lower at the back, or there would have been no windows downstairs. 
Not that we could access them.
It seems that the world of discovery that lies “through the arched window” is out of bounds. I wonder if the square and round windows are similarly barred.
Once more, then, I find “you can’t go home again.”
Even little ted looks rather worse for wear.
seasonal nostalgia
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. 
red wellingtons on a grey day
The poem I posted on Thor’s Day last week has never been quite what I wanted it to be.
The original notes are for a bullet-point poem with the things children love about rain contrasted with the things that it means to an adult – leaking window frames, wet washing draped everywhere, rising damp and higher prices at the green grocer’s.
It was intended to end up with the (adult) narrator adding a pair of red wellingtons to her shopping list. (As the photo suggests, I’m a great believer in bright boots and umbrellas for grey days.)
Continue reading “red wellingtons on a grey day”
the bright side
I was at a writing workshop this weekend and one exercise involved writing about our childhood homes. When the first few pieces were read out they involved anecdotes of family arguments and illness etc.
Some of the people involved grew up during the War, so it’s not surprising that there were some bad memories, but the tutor commented that her experience shows the vast majority of people will write something negative. I suppose this ties in with the fact that first memories are often of some traumatic experience.
Continue reading “the bright side”
don't confuse the narrator 