Tag: poem

Love Letter to Myself (ok, poem then)

Featured ~ JacciGoodingAuthor 
A little ditty to myself to encourage that WIP to take flight. (But note, I've never won a prize for poetry...)

Will you be my Valentine?
I'd like it very much
I simply love the things you write
You've such a clever touch.

Your prose is just incredible
Your characters so true
Your confidence across the page
So quickly comes in view

With synonyms and grammar good
Your plot is thick and strong
No chance of getting quite unstuck
Or the storyline undone

Oh you’re such a clever writer
No more should be said
Just get the damned thing written though
And don’t procrastinate instead!

Back. Patted.

The Old Allotments – a poem

~ JacciGoodingAuthor ~ 2 Comments

Following on from Sue Cook’s @popsytops blog about landscape which I reblogged last week, I too have been on a walk, recently passing the 120 year old St Mary’s Allotments in Leamington Spa. It’s hard to convey the gentle energy in spaces like this, but here goes..

Nourishment, earth fed, where

robins, blackbirds, crows reside,

grows plentiful and rich

beside the banks and riverside

Where working man has striven

long, his brow a sweat of toil

as hands, like spades with aching back

worked hard the heavy soil

To feed, to grow his many

crops, returning home triumphant

as empty mouths and stomachs waited

for succour and for comfort.

Grass, long and green and succulent,

home too for mouse and insect

caresses now the empty pots

as blackbirds, thrush, with perfect

eye, lunge quick and sharp and

faultlessly, each jab around the hedging

another search for sustenance

to feed the growing fledgling.

Autumn apples drop to feed the

dormant springtime flowers,

the earth and all its worms and creatures,

made damp with summer showers.

Make way for compost, de-generation

as winter rests the ground

and sure as night will follow day

the earth will echo with the sound

of working men – and women now

who find a moment’s peace

within the lanes and grassy tracks

where troubles fail,

then

            cease.

A Landscape with Birds by Beth Brooke

~ JacciGoodingAuthor

This wonderful collection of short verse from author Beth Brooke is poignant, clever, and expressive. Beth brings the landscape to us, presses us to acknowledge we are linked to it, part of it, draws out of us our unacknowledged place in the world today. Simple lines can hit the mark and make us think of places we would rather be. In Ploughing, April 2020, we are on the sidelines watching a farmer plough a field, seagulls diving toward the turned earth. Yet in an instant we leave the rich winter field, those seagulls transporting us from the bucolic to the ocean in six simple words. We are there, we can feel the salt on our skin and the tang in the air because we know what it’s like to miss the sea, somehow we understand that intangible desire the sea arouses in us to be near it. And it is the much maligned seagull that takes us there.

Beautiful imagery, like a classic film or an assortment of incredible art, plays throughout this collection, pushing to the forefront birds and their landscape, from the opening poem Jackdaws (and you know it’s true!) to the feathery, flitting, daring nonchalance of sparrows and the oh so sad kauai o’o bird. Every poem demands a second read – sometimes a third – and returning to the book a month or so later, you’ll find yourself wanting to read them all again at once.

We Take Our Son to University is a lovely lovely poem, so neat, so gentle, touching. And you can see that red kite, skimming across the page as you read the words. In Betrayal, the flight of ravens articulates the words that cannot be said; they speak for anyone wounded by duplicity.

            If you like birds, nature, the landscape all tied together in beautiful poetry, then I would recommend a read of this book. It’s not a big book, coming in at only 31 pages, but each poem is patiently observed and crafted. An absolute gem.

A Landscape with Birds is published by Hedgehog Poetry Press, Bristol.

http://www.hedgehogpress.co.uk

Poetry Prose and Other Things

~ JacciGoodingAuthor

As part of the on-going preparations for next year’s South Warwickshire Literary Festival, this Saturday I’m very much looking forward to hopping over to Rugby library to see and hear the contestants for next year’s Warwickshire Young Poet Laureate. It’s been a while since I attended the event due to you-know-what, so it’ll be good to get back in the audience and hear these excellent poets read their work. The event is being hosted by poet Steve Pottinger and it’ll be good to hear his work too.

On the subject of words, poets and writery things, in an email I received from from the Evesham Festival of Words Director Sue Abblet today, she shared this about the festival and how such events can be an inspiration:

“When the Festival first started we used to run a Junior Short Story Competition.  A regular winner was Iona Mandal who said that our Festival was a huge source of inspiration.  Huge congratulations to Iona who was recently selected as Birmingham Young Poet Laureate (2022 – 2024).” Isn’t that just fantastic? So keep those short story and poetry competitions going – they’re so important.

And not only but also, the Young Poets Network is an online platform for poets under the age of 25 and is packed full of contacts and ideas, and is a great confidence builder for those young poets just starting out. Does the world need more poets I hear you rhyme? Yeah, all the time. Hey – I’m not 24 any more, ok?! 

Going back to short story comps, the marvellous Banbury Writers’ Cafe are hosting a free to enter picture prompt comp which closes at the end of this month. If you zip over to their website you’ll find the four photos to stir your inspiration and all you have to do is tiptappitytip away on your keyboard and get an entry in. Poetry is also accepted. Yeah! I know! 1500 words or less. Guidelines are all on the website. Apparently they’re happy to chuck fifty quid at the winner, thirty at second place and a flat unbendy twenty for third place.  They’re a generous bunch.

SPELLISM

~ JacciGoodingAuthor ~ 1 Comment

Today it gives me great pleasure to host this poem by writer and adult literacy expert  Hugo Kerr. Hugo has published several books on the subject and is a wonderful exponent of just write it – it’ll be right!

He says on his website I love to debate with like-minds of like-enthusiasms. It has been my experience that great fruitfulness often results. Sometimes heat is generated, but so is light. If you want to discuss literacy with me you are very welcome to write to me via hkerr@aol.com
Over to you, Hugo…

Spellism

Some people find it hard to spell
While others do it very well.
The latter can be very quick
To criticise; they get a kick
From knowing how to spell a word
Of which most people haven’t heard.

They like to think this proves they’re clever,
Although they practically never
Stop to think if this is true
Or not. I recommend that you
And I should give some thought
To what it means to spell; we ought
To look at history – this will tell
That William Shakespeare couldn’t spell
For peanuts, and his royal queen
(H.R.H. Liz one, I mean)
Was twice as bad. One can tell at a
Glance, though, that it didn’t matter!

Dr Johnson hadn’t yet
Thrown his stiff, pedantic net
Over the language; he had not
Invented standard spelling – what
You wrote was what you thought looked best;
You simply wrote and left the rest.

You left the reading to the reader
Who, at this time, didn’t need a
Massive dictionary. (Which was
As well, you understand, because
There wasn’t one as yet.) You see
A writer, way back then, was free
To spell exactly how he liked.
His writing had not yet been spiked
By the debilitating fear
That folk might giggle, sniff or sneer
At what he’d written – for no better
Reason than they thought his letter
Patterns were a little odd
Compared to those laid down by God
(Or was it Dr Johnson) for
A standard spelling, evermore.
A “spellist” age we live in now,
Where you are often judged by how
You spell liaise or guarantee,
People or Arachnidae.

It’s very easy to admit
You have more than a little bit
Of problem with your maths, and yet
There is no way that you would let
The knowledge that your spelling’s bad
Get out at any price.

It’s sad
To say this, but we know
That spelling well just doesn’t show
Intelligence, for any fool
Can learn to spell in infant school –
Given the chance

For reasons why
Some don’t achieve this we should try
Examining the wider picture,
Which would make our theory richer.

As well as this, though, we should learn
How negative it is to spurn
A person (just as though he smells)
Simply because of how he spells.

Spelling is spelling, nothing more.
It isn’t “authorship” and nor
Does it equate to writing; it
Isn’t wisdom, truth or wit.

It is an unimportant skill,
A simple, boring memory drill;
Nothing to do, as you can see,
With art, or creativity.

Writing that’s beautiful, or true,
Has its influence on you
Not, for heaven’s sake, because
Of how the bloody spelling was!

Get Out and Network!

~ JacciGoodingAuthor ~ 1 Comment

Work out or work shop? Depends what you intend to exercise – in the case of a recent visit to Delapre Abbey Northants, it was my brain. It all started with one of those websites I sign up to – ie all of them – this particular one being Literary Festivals UK. Well, LFUK popped into my inbox way back one snowy day in February and under the title ‘new festivals’ I found a note about a half-day spring poetry workshop being run at Delapré Abbey by author Kevan Manwaring. The session included a wander around the newly refurbished Abbey gardens where hopefully we would discover inspiration flourishing in its many forms.

And what an inspiring afternoon it turned out to be. 12 of us – including a real live poet – (he was very good) embraced the three hour session with gusto and we all, tentatively, wrote and read out some poetry. Now, I have never alluded to any ability to write a jaw-dropping poem, or even – let’s face it – A Poem – due to the poets’ part of my mind often redirecting itself to limerick-land for far longer than is healthy, but this time we were kept on track by Kevan’s light yet inspiring touch and his wonderful choice of Spring poems. If we didn’t find anything to kick-start our creative motors then we didn’t have the right to refer to ourselves as writers. 

Some of the writers at the workshop were too shy to share their work, others did but felt dissatisfied with their effort. The same could be said for a lot of people to whom writing poetry doesn’t come easily. But don’t be put off – imagine a poem as a cross between a winding stream and a work of art: unique to the artist (that’s you) but free, unhampered and creating its own path (the evolution of the work, just like a stream) and just go with it. The more you paint, the better the picture…

There once was a woman from Surrey
Who married a man up near Bury
But the cold northern weather
Couldn’t keep them together
And she moved back down south in a hurry

Pathetic.

An overweight old man from Dover
Dropped dead in a large field of clover
The farmer that found him
Had to harvest around him
Concerned about over-exposure

Think I’ll stick to short stories…

The first ever Festival of Books at Delapré Abbey will run over the second May Bank Holiday weekend. There’ll be Author talks in the Victorian library, Bookstagram talks, Book signings and meet the author, Workshops, Storytelling, Career talks, Magazine presentations and more. And most importantly, a Children’s writing competition… Here Here!!