Well, it’s Mothering Sunday and we altered the clocks last night, doing the old dear out of an hour in bed.
I’m not sure that these two dates always coincide, but my mother first drew my attention to it when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, saying that she thought a woman PM could have organised things a bit better. Of course Thatcher was supposed to only need four hours’ sleep a night, so I don’t suppose it mattered much to her.
Continue reading “more mothers”
Having taken the photo of this rather splendid chimpanzee, I was wondering what on earth I could post in the way of text to go alongside it. I’m pretty sure I don’t have any poetry featuring primates other than humans.
But despite having watched Planet of the Apes and knowing that chimpanzees are not monkeys, I post enough tenuous connections and bad puns on the blog to feel that I can get away with making a link via the verb to monkey when used with the meaning to mimic.
Continue reading “monkey see, monkey do”
Yesterday I was talking about writing with a non-writer friend. He asked why I don’t write fiction (which, after all, is a lot more saleable than poetry), wondered whether I actually enjoy the process of writing poetry, and suggested that I should use the voice memo option on my phone to help with my writing.
I’m not sure I managed to give suitable responses to his various points, but it did get me thinking about how and why I write.
And having thought, I’ve decided that there’s an element of oyster to my writing.
Continue reading “the how, the why, and the big picture”
I’ve been thinking about the presidential inauguration and wondering if I might be able to work a neat pun into this post. Something based on the prefix in being combined with the root augur – that the inaugural can’t augur well.
But that seems a little contrived, so let’s move swiftly on and talk about poetry.
The last two inauguration ceremonies – and, frankly, the only two I’ve really paid much attention to, presumably because of the live reporting via the internet – have both included poets reading their work; but it turns out poems have featured in only five presidential inaugurations.
Continue reading “auguries”
It’s Christmas Eve and I really would rather be elsewhere – probably not in the local pub where there’s a karaoke evening in full swing, but perhaps in the kitchen where there’s a bottle of something suitably cheap and fizzy, half full or half empty depending on your point of view.
But I have a blog to write.
Continue reading “under duress”
don't confuse the narrator 