original poem – Page 60 – don't confuse the narrator

pallette of greys*

silver
ripple and pause
squirrel

squirrel
nibble and paws
silver

*(Alternatively: “palate of greys”)

It doesn’t matter how good your writing is if no one reads it, so one of the skills of journalism must be composing attention-catching headlines. Whoever realised they were in a position to use the phrase Most dangerous alien species in a story title today must have been sure they were on to a winner.

The words certainly caught my attention and I clicked through to an article in the Independent about Quagga mussels.

Not only did I read the story, but I clicked on the gallery of Alien attacks: The invasive species damaging the UK, past the grey squirrels, through the Japanese knotweed and the Giant hogweed, all the way to the end, where I found this innocuous-looking creature:

Of course appearances are deceptive and the accompanying text tells us it is a killer shrimp:
Continue reading

from the archives

Over the years, I’ve done a lot of poetry workshopping online; I’ve learned a lot from the experience and have crossed paths with all sorts of people. One young poet whose work I pulled apart fairly ruthlessly around a dozen years ago has just won the Forward Prize for poetry. (There were plenty of other people who took an interest in his work, so I claim no special credit.)
Continue reading

where are the words?

Although I’ve never made much of an effort to publicise this blog, over the years it has slowly acquired several hundred followers. Knowing that there are people who read it makes me feel more of a responsibility about weekly updates, and if I haven’t any ideas or haven’t got time to write anything, I’ll try at least to find a bright flower photo or something, just to reassure people that I am still around.

I feel guilty, then, when I fail to post anything at all, which is what happened last week.

I’ve been going back and trying to collate old poems and I’ve come across several I scarcely even remembered; this one seems particularly appropriate given the lack of recent words on the blog. So, here’s a poem for National Poetry Day:
Continue reading “where are the words?”

serial poetry

Currently, my mind seems as empty of poetry as the teasel head is of flowers. But I am used to the emptiness, and the idea of “writer’s block” is not something that particularly bothers me.

Recently, a friend said she would sometimes take “as long as eleven hours” to write a poem. She is a skilled writer, with many small prizes and multiple publications to her credit, so this clearly works for her. But her writing seems to be more methodical than mine, and I gather that she works on each piece diligently until it is complete before starting the next one.

This is not at all the way I work.
Continue reading “serial poetry”