I’m not really sure if that should be doodling or dawdling.
After all, if I’d been in a hurry, I wouldn’t have been paying attention to the bits and bobs of rubbish strewn across the pavement; it was only because I was dawdling that I noticed these doodles formed by a couple of rubber bands I suspect were dropped by the postman.
Continue reading “just doodling”
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post inspired by the words “poems are hard”, which appeared on a local pub chalkboard. It’s not just the poems themselves that are hard, though: it’s even hard to get people to agree on what poetry is.
Some people think that poetry should deal with the big issues of Life, Love and Death, others that it should be all kittens and flowers, sweetness and light; some think it should make us look at familiar things and occurrences as if they were new; others that it should make the personal universal; some think it should have structure and be carefully crafted, others that it should rhyme, others that it should be written “from the heart” and therefore anything goes.
Continue reading “not nice”
It’s Saturday and, as usual, I’ve spent half the day wondering what on earth I’m going to write on the blog.
Not having had any major new insights or flashes of inspiration, let’s continue from last weekend, when I said that I was trying to choose which poems to read at an evening where the theme was change.
I didn’t find it a very easy task and reckoned that it would be much easier for the writers of fiction: even I know enough about plotting to be aware of the common story structure that sees the protagonist undergo a transformation, but that really can’t be applied to poetry.
Continue reading “no change”
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”
don't confuse the narrator 