In with the new

I shall remember 2014 with great fondness and not a little amazement and on a personal level I am sorry to let go of this year.

In a broader sense, across the world, 2014 was been a time of turmoil, torment and torture for many people. Sometimes I think we should just blow it all up and start again, but of course we have to do what we can with what we have.

Highlights of my year in poetry include the following, and a whole lot more besides.

It started like this:

New Year 2014

Stars fizz all over this still night;

while down here, on the dark road,

silence hangs chill;

broken only by our laughter

and the light in our hearts;

and the resolute crack-crack,

left-right left-right tick tack

of your boots on tarmac,
as we march into this new year.

That was written from the first 52 prompt of 2014.  52, set up by the fabulous Jo Bell, offered us a new and rather excellent poetry prompt every week and the project has helped to give some shape to my writing life.

They are still there on the website, those prompts, each a little gift in itself to poetry fans, both writers and readers  - https://fiftytwopoetry.wordpress.com/

I certainly did march into 2014, and just kept on going.

Just briefly, since I dislike overlong blogs (and this could go on and on and on…) my poems have been published in various journals, online and print; and I have read them all over the place too. I was Honno Poet of the Month in June, I read at the Dinefwr Literature Festival that month and I was honoured to be invited by Samantha Wynne Rhydderch to read my work at the Dylan Thomas Boathouse in Laugharne during the centenary year.

This one was in the Lampeter Review: http://jackie-news.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/on-edge-of-change.html

Several appeared in Innovate magazine: http://jackie-news.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/still-life.html

And I have had a couple published by Poetry24: http://jackie-news.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/8000-hands.html

Some of us joined the worldwide Poets for Change event: http://jackie-news.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/poets-for-change-cellar-bards.html

I joined some other writer friends on the Blog Tour too: http://jackie-news.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/the-blog-tour.html

I have been away on two weekend writing workshops this year. One on haiku with Lynne Rees ( http://www.lynnerees.com/ ) at the lovely Welsh Writers Centre, Ty Newydd; the other with Marcus Moore and Sarah-Jane Arbury, at Ceridwen, in Carmarthenshire. Both really worthwhile, more please!

I plan to continue on the same road in 2015, whether I march or meander remains to be seen, but there is still determination in my step and the light of inspiration is in my heart.

I’ll still be writing to weekly prompts when I can, revising some of the 2014 work. There will be more weekliy prompts here, from January 1^st:
http://challenge.wordbohemia.co.uk/2015-slant/ And there is a closed Facebook group to workshop them.

And, I have saved the best until last, I will be putting a collection of my work together. Yes, yes, this year I will, I really will  –  I plan to publish a book of poetry at the end of the summer. Work is starting on that right now, really, right now.

May 2015 bring you all you wish for and may it also bring some peace to this world in turmoil.

And so it was

This is one of the poems I was prompted to write by events being held around the Dylan Thomas Centenary, which was celebrated to the full in south and west Wales through 2014.

I had the chance to read this at a spoken word event at the Dylan Thomas Boathouse in Laugharne, which was organised by poet in residence Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch.

This was the place where Dylan and Caitlin spent several years of their marriage, and while the celebrations of Dylan’s life were shouting loud, I decided to look sideways and take a look at Caitlin’s story. 

*Warning: contains strong language.

And so it was

We boozed and we fucked our way

through the sixteen years

we called our marriage.

Fuelled by alcohol,

with oaths and curses and infidelity;

            we’d have fallen down

            without the drink,

so we would.

We fell into bed that first day.

Always lovin and fightin,

drinkin and fuckin

            our lives were raw, red

            bleeding meat;

with booze, words,

poems, stories, and  sex - and kids.

            What’ll the neighbours say, you wrote,

            what’ll the neighbours say.

            What he’ll do for drink,

            falling in the gutter.

That’s what they said.

You were a hopeless bloody father,

you drank all the money.

            No Good Boyo,

so you were.

And you fucked all the shameless women.

I could’ve killed you,

I wanted to kill you.

I banged your head on the floor,

again and again.

            It was all our own hopeless war.

I wanted to be worse than you.

I loved the wine and the men,

the wantonness, and more and more.

I had my revenge,

so I did.

And when you died, my struggle was over.

It was a relief, at first,

so it was.

Then I found my leftover life

and I had that to kill.

            The sky is torn across, you wrote,

            Now our love lies a loss,

and so it does.

*With words from Under Milk Wood and On a Wedding Anniversary, by Dylan Thomas and words of Caitlin Thomas from an interview with Vincent Kane, ‘The Leftover Wife’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQzcQ1KVFaM

LINKS
http://www.dylanthomasboathouse.com/
http://dylanthomas100.org/