poem – Page 42 – don't confuse the narrator

just for fun

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:
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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.)
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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:
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forbidden favourites

Although most people agree that autumn starts with the equinox, which doesn’t fall for another week, it seems that Christmas is already looming, with cards on sale in the shops, and gift catalogues dropping through the letterbox. I never sign up for printed catalogues, but they arrive unsolicited, and offer temptations in the form of all sorts of trinkets and knick-knacks I never knew I needed.

Of course, once you start to buy gifts, some sort of wrapping is required. The latest catalogue offered this interesting set of gift bags:

Gift bag description: "sprinklied with irredecent glitter"

It’s not a charity I had ever thought of supporting, but if I had more time, I might be tempted to offer my proof-reading skills at a reduced rate.
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on the fly

So, it’s Saturday morning and I haven’t much idea about what to post on the blog.

Hmm… Cue for a song? Another Saturday dawns and I ain’t got no blog post/ I got some photos, but I got no words/ How I wish I had something to write about/ I’m in an awful way… Maybe not.

Still, it’s true that I have some photos. This is what I found when I downloaded the last lot from my camera: