The Blog Tour

Welcome to my post on The Blog Tour, and please follow the links at the bottom to some great blogs by other writers.

What am I working on?

Oh, so much poetry! I have about half a collection together.  Loss, separation, grief, hope, love, touches of humour, responses to nature and landscape, the visual arts and to music are all in there. The despair of bereavement finds a place beside the joy of creating new work. The power that creativity has to help us not only to survive the worst that life can throw at us, but to make ourselves anew, is what it's all about. The collection loosely charts a personal journey and shares with the reader some of the experience of grief – from the numbness to anger and many other emotions, to re-awakening, to re-invention of self and the emergence of a new voice.
 

I also have a collection of haiku almost ready to go to press. It was a project for my 60^th year and I wrote haiku almost daily throughout that year. I love the form and I am going on a course on haiku writing in May at Ty Newydd, the writers’ centre in Wales --  www.tynewydd.org . After that I aim to complete the work on this collection and move towards publication.

Through 2014 I am also taking part in the 52 poetry project –  http://fiftytwopoetry.wordpress.com/  – which provides a great prompt each week. From this I already have plenty of new work to revise and edit as the year goes on; and it is fantastic to share and discuss work with many other poets in the online workshop.

How does my work differ from others in the genre?

Every poet’s voice is distinct from the next.

Why do I write?
 

I have to. It’s not a choice, it’s essential, I can’t imagine life without it.  

 

How does my process of writing work?

Make no mistake, it is work. I can feel incredibly tired at the end of a day of creative writing.
I am inspired to write by so many things – the emotions we live with daily, art, music, all of the natural world and local, national and world politics.  My background in journalism (that’s how I earned my living for 40 years) will always influence my work and I’ll often research a topic before writing, especially for the social comment/political stuff. See for example: http://jackie-news.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-cull-of-2013_22.html

All the stories in that poem are true.

Once an idea is formed, the process begins – I spend time with the idea, free write, make notes, walk the beach, always walk the beach, if it’s a social commentary piece I do research and I make more notes. Then stop, wait, meditate, do yoga, sit down with the idea, walk the beach again, allow myself to spend time in that magic zone where the creative process happens, then begin to write, just begin. And in that still place inside of us the grey haze of mist that is the creative process turns and swirls and begins to form into something. Each thought, each word leads to the next, just keep going.

Next week The Blog Tour takes us to:

Poet Maggie Harris: http://maggieharrisdotcom.wordpress.com/

Noveslist and children’s fiction writer, Nina Milton: http://kitchentablewriters.blogspot.co.uk/?spref=tw

Thanks to poet Sue Moules for inviting me to join The Blog Tour: http://suemoules.blogspot.co.uk/

 

Flavour of real life

WHEN a poetry workshop prompted me to write about my High Street, I just had to do something about the impetus to ‘Shop Local’.

That is a strong movement around here, where people are leaving the superstores in good numbers. Many now prefer to buy their groceries at local produce markets, farm shops and market gardens – and there is plenty of great food on offer here in west Wales, most of it grown and produced locally.

This is the poem:

 

Fall from Grace

They don’t go there any more,

to those aisles where they fought daily,

elbowed each other aside in the cause

of finding perfect, uniform sprouts

for the Christmas dinner.

In this great hall where they barged

to grab a bogof or a three-for-two,

assaulted by the sickly aroma of spice buns,

the scent of coffee is sour.

This cathedral of retail power

echoes to the squeak of

a single crooked trolley wheel.

They have all abandoned

the banks of bleeping tills,

turned from the altar of

50 per cent extra, to be free.

They no longer value the offer of

double points on a loyalty card.

They have sacrificed the

‘cut price’ flashes to put

fair trade on the table.

They smile at knobbly carrots,

they like their parsnips dirt-dusted,

their leeks sandy, potatoes muddy,

they savour the taste of the earth

of this home-grown land.

Oh yes, they shop local here

for the flavour of real life.

Links:

http://www.4cg.org.uk/LocalProducersMarket.html

http://www.glebelandsmarketgarden.co.uk/

http://www.llwynhelygfarmshop.co.uk/

http://www.thebestof.co.uk/local/cardigan-and-teifi-valley/business-guide/feature/the-best-of-cardigan-and-teifi-valley

Don't look down

‘Lock the door, get naked, stand in front of a mirror and write about Exposing Yourself.’

That is probably the most surprising poetry workshop prompt I ever heard.

It came just three weeks into a project that I am participating in online with more than 500 other poets.

Most of them I don’t know, although we are getting to know each other rather well now - having ‘got naked’ together before we had even met, we had no choice but to become acquainted, at least in our virtual nudity.

And now, in week 11 of the 52 week mission, we are all becoming familiar with each other – and with each other’s work. And there is a wonderful and fantastic range of new poetry coming out of this project.

Those of us who are posting our work – and not everyone does – are doing so at first-draft stage and opening ourselves up to criticism and comments. But it is a really generous writing community and it feels safe to post at this early stage.

So, there we all were, in week three of the 52 project  ...  getting to know each other in our nakedness on the closed Facebook page where we share and comment on our work. 

(It's never too late to join in -- write a poem a week, start now, keep going... check the website --- http://fiftytwopoetry.wordpress.com/

Unless the thought of 500 poets of all ages and body types getting their kit off puts you off, of course.

The ‘get naked’ prompt came in the week I turned 60, so there was a particular resonance for me about being starkers and being honest … in front of 500 'strangers'.

The resulting poem is below (now revised a little from its first 'in the raw' version). I chose the title because I am scared of heights:

Don’t look down 

Down there is danger;

where the heart lives,

where blood pumps and flows,

where the womb couches,

where the life stuff happens.

Up here, around the head,

dark blond hides grey,

and steady blue eyes still sparkle

in a face not quite looking its age;

up here, all is well.

Up here, you still hold the picture

of the size 12 hourglass,

the flat stomach,

the small firm breasts;

pert little arse; the thigh gap.

Down there are the scars of a life lived -

there are wrinkles, flab and … much slippage.

Don’t look down,

and don’t turn around;

don’t even try the rear view.

Just turn off the light

and love me in the dark.