Category: Poetry
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A joy of wonder . . .
In one of my writing groups, the monthly task has been to do a piece on the deep significance of something very small. The writing should embody the meaning, rather than telling us. I decided to write something about my discovery of an iconic piece of LEGO. I was pleased (I confess that I am […]
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Invention delight
As I mentioned the other day, I’ve taken on a challenge to re-create a myth in poetic form. This in honour of the centenary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses, itself an homage to Homer’s Iliad in which the Odyssey is recounted. My chosen myth over the past weeks has been the Inuit tale […]
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Sharing a shortlist is fun . . .
Although my effort did not reach the vaunted heights of an actual cash prize (£50 for each of the chosen top four!), it was a delight this morning to see my little poem shortlisted among the top twenty submissions for this month’s Visual Verse challenge. As I mentioned in a previous joyful entry, I had […]
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Golden dawn . . .
Dawn is something that I rarely experienced in my youth, but as winter draws near it’s an increasingly frequent delight. This morning’s golden hues evoke a sense of optimism that is frankly at odds with the prevailing climate, economic and political situation here. Often, when showing visitors around the place, I point over to the […]
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The gleaming in the gloaming
My beloved tells me that ‘gloaming’ is dusk, to those of a Scottish persuasion, but the Oxford English dictionary suggests that twilight is also gloaming, and astronomical twilight is either just before dawn or just after sundown. So I hope today’s joyful title makes reasonable etymological sense, anyway. There are so many metaphors for that […]
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Tranquility
Twice we heard a splash in the still water; whether a rising fish or a diving frog we couldn’t say. We’d walked through the wood and onward, specifically to find this little loch. Fortunately, though we’d had ample directions earlier, we met, twice, a kind friend who pointed out the correct path. When we arrived […]
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Gasps of the past inform the present . . .
So I wasn’t sure I got much out of the writing workshop on Bank Holiday Monday — it felt rather more useful for beginning writers, and of course I fancy myself a bit with three years of writing group under my belt these days. But I was chatting about the day with our beloved neighbour, […]
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A summer break . . .
After three years participating in Writers Groups, one learns that the craft of writing is an end in itself. That’s meant, in my case, that I was not prepared, emotionally, to have a submission of my poetic efforts accepted by an editorial team in Cheltenham. At Wildfire Words, my three pieces, text and audio, joined […]
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The joy of the resolved query . . .
Without that little stimulating itch, that urge to identify what’s behind the unknown, and indeed, that resolved query, we’d be so much poorer. It’s an urge that must be hard-wired into our mental capacity, the need to know more about something. Engrossed, I have sat through the video recording of this song on YouTube several […]
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The lovely names
The lovely names I tell myself my mother would have loved to hear the names of the wild flowers we’ve met: stichwort; snowberry; loosestrife; sea thrift and speedwell; woundwort; red campion meadowsweet; big trefoil; celandine; kippernut; angelica; bugle I really don’t know if she would, if she would have enjoyed the new names rolling around […]
Roads to Joy 