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.

On the edge of change

Time Will Change It, by Eloise Govier

I am very pleased to say that I have a poem published in the latest edition of The Lampeter Review – Issue 9, Spring 2014. (You can get the magazine in PDF form from the link at the bottom of this post.)

It feels such a privilege to have a little piece of my work published in an international magazine among so many contemporary writers who I admire –   among them Horatio Clare, Maria Donovan, Maggie Harris, Tyler Keevil, Alan Kellermann and Bethany W Pope,  to name just a few.

The painting that inspired this poem is at the top of the page. ‘Time Will Change It’ is part of a series -  The Lakes -  by the Wales-based artist Eloise Govier.  I have written six poems in response to that series, of which this is one.
 

These apparently bright, cheerful paintings, layered with rich colour, have strangely inspired some of my darkest poetry. Although they look bright and happy, the paintings contain some striking contrasts – and that is where my responses have come from.

On the edge of change

Ripples shine in streaks of silver
as the lake surfaces in twilight,

but below, in blood reds –

                             and further blues -

cruel shadows wait

                             to creep into consciousness.

We sit by the edge,

watching the day sink.

Springy trees are lush,

                     dusky sky is a burst

of intense Brazilian heat -

                  a whore’s breath - as

       sky turns tarty orange

                       around a purple bruise.

And beneath reflection,

                                    what then?

Memories live undisturbed

                 in cold depths.

Are these secret waters our undoing?

Crimson-crushed horizons

                         mark the ruddy sundown.

Look at the beautiful sky, you say,

                          how wonderful to see.

But what I FEEL is

                                    the nearness of the lake bottom.

(after Time Will Change It, a painting in The Lakes series, by Eloise Govier)

http://lampeter-review.com/issue-9/

http://www.eloisegovier.com/