Tag: swans

of words and wild swans

Open mike nights are a chance to discover the words of other poets, writers and musicians and I usually sit with notebook and pen ready to jot down the ideas and phrases that appeal most, that capture my imagination or that challenge me to think more.

Last night I was a reader at a fund-raising event where the theme was homelessness. One of the phrases I wrote down was from local poet John Turner: “How to compare spring flower to crack den?” It’s a question that challenged me as it relates to why I wimped out of writing new and socially relevant poems for the event, instead reaching into my files, which overflow with spring flowers and poetry of place, to create a set based around the ideas of home, belonging and alienation.
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for the birds

Although the afternoon was dull and drear, this morning there was bright sunshine and it felt like spring. So, camera in hand, I went for a walk in the park.

There weren’t many spring flowers, or buds on the trees, but there were lots of dogs and their owners, dozens of gulls on the football pitch, three or four fishermen by the river, and several families feeding the ducks.
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swanning around

Once more, my head seems to be stuffed so full of cotton wool, clouds or feathers that there’s no room for a single useful or original thought.

I do have a set of rather lovely photos of swans I took recently but I think pretty much everything I’ve written that features birds, feathers or flight has already appeared on the blog at some point, so I’m lacking words to accompany the pictures.

I would have thought that swans should be inspirational and make writing easy as the adult female is a pen. These, though, seem to be mute swans.
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hic sunt dracones

scarlet snapdragonI have a soft spot for dragons. Especially red ones. So naturally I stopped to photograph these flowers when I saw them in the park yesterday.

Then I found something even more dragon-like:
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works in progress

construction work barricades
I read a few of my poems at an open-mike event yesterday evening. One of the pieces dates from 2008 and I have around 15 different drafts of it on file. I rather thought that it was finished back in September 2014, when I submitted it as part of a portfolio.

But while waiting for the event to start last night, I found myself tinkering with it again. I wonder if it will ever be finished.
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duck, goose, swan

Most of the photos I post on the blog are of flowers. Indeed, most of the photos I take are of flowers. That’s partly because I like them, but also because plants are helpful enough to keep still when I point a camera at them.

That said, it’s been very windy recently which means that the plants haven’t been such good sitters. So I was looking back over pictures that I’ve taken in the last month to find something to post, and was surprised to find several quite successful ones of birds, who are normally far too flighty to make good subjects for my scant camera skills.

mallard swimming
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notes for a poem

I went for a walk beside a canal the other day and hope eventually to write a poem about the swans I saw there.

swan
Poems can take a long time to actually gel, though, so in the meantime, I’ll leave some preliminary notes here.
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