At last, another chance to try my hand at an Englyn – a short sharp tricky little form with more rules than lines!
Thank you to dVerse for their evening of short verse – the perfect prompt to action for a procrastinating poet.
twigscribble – cold, foreign code
on opalescent sky – hallowed
message beyond normal eye
ours to scry, pry, find the road.
This was written for the dVerse poetics challenge this weekend…brilliant visual prompts and a timely reminder that we don’t just see or hear but also sense in so many ways our relationship with the world…thank you Kelvin.
from Kelvin’s website
http://papersandcrayons.blogspot.co.uk/
This is ‘quick and dirty’ for now but I think may be worth working on in the future:
3 Amphora c BC100
Dug from earthy keeping
numbered, tagged re-hid,
guarding simple secrets.
Sandy hued plainness
unadorned and bare,
guarding spare truths.
Scratchy and uneven,
pitted, pocked, oddly warm,
guarding poor man’s wealth.
Hollow, mellow echo
sounds absorbed, not lost,
guarding empty spaces.
Scents alive in echoes,
smelled with mouth, throat, nose,
caustic, fruited, slick,
revealing far-off lifestyle.
First and only time in Surrey, this workshop is essential for anyone who wants their business to get off to a flying start:
Come along and join us for this one-off opportunity to attend this workshop in Surrey – email or book direct here.
Cold earth, crouched ¦¦ bides, marks time.
Crystal on spiked crystal, ¦¦ hoar takes hold,
blasts, grips, burns ¦¦ turns twisted twig to strigil.
Iced dawn scours ¦¦ as hungry buzzard cries,
hidden hedge pig stirs ¦¦ in debris nest turned brittle,
roe deer wakes, lashes ¦¦ quilled and needled ~
tine-whiskered buck ¦¦ stamps metallic clod,
vixen prowls, gimlet-eyed ¦¦ tawny, replete, hunches, sleeps.
This poem was written as an exercise for my series of workshops ‘A Poetry Year’. The first session in January began by exploring OldNorse/Old English /Anglo Saxon verse.
Previous to the Norman invasion in 1066, English verse followed Germanic patterns which made little use of end-line rhyme, but relied upon alliterative stressed half-lines to give a poetic effect. The verse is ideal for relating battle tales and verbal histories around a blazing fire. It is melodic and descriptive and often made clever use of Kenning – a device akin to riddle, where an object is not named but is described vividly – we still use similar expressions today – the camel is the ship of the desert for example.
Icelandic verse is still written this way today so the form is still alive and vibrant.
The exercise was to use the devices mentioned above to compose a poem inspired by January. Mine is set in the fields behind my Surrey home on a day when we had a heavy hoar frost and the landscape was transformed by the invading, frozen crystals.
The ‘Poetry Year’ course is a series of workshops held on the last Saturday of the month throughout 2013. It is an exciting project where poets explore form and poetry of varying types and from many eras so that each person can extend their poetic vocabulary and compile a portfolio of poetry for 2013.
There are still spaces on the on-line course for any poets who would like to join us. Enrolment details can be found at http://behindthehighstreet.co.uk/the-study/courses/
Hoar Frost
When I am designing a set of writing workshops, my first hurdle is always…where to start.
The clue is in the title – ‘A Poetry Year’ – so January, being our first meeting, is the obvious starting point in terms of time, but what about the poetic content?
A day of perfect hoar frost put me in mind of short, sudden. sharp phrases; the crunch of my feet across the heath told of sound and image working together; walking in to a centrally heated house, tucking on warm slippers and switching on the kettle for almost instant boiling water reminded me how lucky I am to live in such comfort.
As I toasted my toes and slurped hot chocolate I began to think of the way it had been. Further back than the Victorians, the Tudors, the Norman Conquest…I ranged back in time to an era of dragons and tribes and invaders and spoken histories… of kenning and battle-song, of victory feasts and swords with names.
We would start with Old English/Old Norse/Anglo Saxon verse form. We would explore alliterative stress and riddle. We would have a go at writing the Germanic form of poetry of our furthest ancestors, a form still used in Icelandic verse today. I had found our beginning.
If you are interested in joining us on our poetic journey through the year details of the series of workshops can be seen here. There are still a few places available on the ‘e’course. Come and join us. There is a closed facebook group where all the course poets can meet up to chat.
At last I have a moment to respond to the dVerse prompt once more.
Letting go for me is tough the battle with my tendency to be in control has left its mark on my health. As Claudia says in her introduction, taking on a task means that it must be seen through to completion…but sometimes self preservation has to kick in and say
‘good enough is good enough’. It has taken me a long time to actually put this into practice and even now, after 8 years battling with my health, I find it so very hard to do.
Being a completionist as well as an idealist led to overwork and under-play ( if there is such a thing!) and I eventually succumbed to ME ( often better known as CFS). This spelled the end of my career and a long time of heart searching about what it had all been for in the first place. It was a while before I found the silver lining, which was the time to develop as a poet and writer. Hopefully I have learned my lesson…
The following poem sums up the misery of waste and expresses some of my anger and frustration…it was written 7 years ago and I have moved on since, but after the mining memory exercise earlier this week on dVerse I came upon it and now it seems to tie in to today’s prompt.
Invasion
You miserable worm, you wriggled in,
shrouded, cloaked by a simple virus.
A sly, insatiable, masked assassin,
writhing, twisting, feeding with a callous
indifference, violating my words, thoughts,
energy, intellect, desires. You make me
a ramshackle woman, distraught,
grieving for a self too lost to retrieve.
But you, worm, beware. I have your measure.
For each joy you consume, each hurt you heap
I’ll fill the void with calm, find new life, new pleasure
I’ll learn to write, listen paint, sing. Somehow,
Somehow worm, I’ll win. This rape stops now.
Why are writing groups important? After all writing is generally thought to be a solitary occupation.
There are many reasons for getting together – if only for the company of peers. Feedback and editing are one of the most powerful tools a writer can employ, and seeing one’s own work through other, trusted eyes is gold dust. Similarly lobbing thoughts between group members can throw up some amazing and previously unimagined ideas and developments in plot, style and subject matter. Hearing that an idea which needed to be dragged kicking all the way to the page has worked and seeing its effect on an audience is another reason to cultivate some good writing buddies. Support, empathy, critique, advice, companionship…all very strong reasons for searching out a group of writers to share the journey.
In our village, rich as it is in clubs and societies and associations, we have not had an active writing group for several years. Last Friday evening we set that right and had the first meeting of The New Chobham Writers.
With the aim of sharing, learning, supporting but most importantly of improving our writing, seven of us inaugurated the group and set out the when (Monday evenings) and how often (fortnightly).
We talked about our own writing journey and found we have experience ranging from report writing, through fiction (short and long) and children’s adventure stories, to poetry. Some are more experienced than others but we all have a passion for the written word.
A plan of action was drawn up and our first few meetings will centre around characterisation, story arcs and narrative points of view (how to choose the best voice for our story). These principles lend themselves to writing in general, whether short story form, novella or novel, even article writing and this seemed a place to start that will be relevant to everyone in the group.
We even managed to find time to respond to a few prompts and set the scene for pieces of flash fiction to be worked on before the next meeting…as well as a glass or two of mulled wine. A great way to spend a chilly January evening.
Enthusiasm is high and we have room for more writers. Being in at the beginning is especially exciting, so we are hoping to attract many other writers to our number
Any regular readers of this blog may remember that just over a year ago, together with Jill, a friend who is also a writer and painter, I embarked on a career as a crafter at the local Country Market with the aim of selling some of my books and poetry. As a way of enticing customers to our stall we put together a small collection of watercolour cards and other small paper items – blank notebooks, bookmarks and the like.
Our paintings and much of the content of our books was centred around our home village in Surrey. We are so lucky to be surrounded by beautiful heathland, the village High Street is picture postcard pretty and the rivers that surround, and sometimes flood the village, are beautiful.
We found that our customers, mostly local of course, loved the fact that we were highlighting the locality in paint and words and so, slowly, our products began to sell steadily.
We could have stopped here, but, being a type A, restless personality I wasn’t satisfied and so went on to set up Paragram (www.para-gram.com) to find ways to offer publishing and performing opportunities to local writers. Alongside that, as achieving publication, especially of poetry and short fiction, is so difficult in the current climate, I set up Four Point Press to help anyone I knew who wanted to self-publish their writing. I also began to run poetry workshops at home and online.
By the end of 2012, with all these mini ventures ( I was also an official Olympic Storyteller – quite a different tale) scattered in various places on the web and in real space, my life began to feel rather cluttered. However, people love what we are selling, our books (I published 9 in 21012 by various writers including myself) still need an outlet and following some success in covering local community events, our coverage of these in words and pictures is much in demand. The only answer was to rationalise the whole lot into one place. And so, 1st January 2013 saw the launch of Behind the High Street.
Jill and I envisaged a small haven, just off the High Street for a select few, unique shops. The kind of place that is found by accident but never forgotten. A place to browse and think and perhaps to treat yourself.
There is a book shop, specialising in small press publications ( if you have a book and are looking for somewhere to sell it, drop me an email) and specialist designer books; ‘Cards and More’, selling our painted designs as cards, postcards, notebooks and also some other delightful paper crafted gifts; the Gallery will showcase local photographers’ and artists’ work; Four Point Press has been relocated to premises above The Study, which offers workshops, speakers, mentoring, close reading and all manner of support for writers.
The website is brand new and we have yet to make it a perfect fit, but we are there and ready to trade so come along and pay us a visit Behind the High Street…
…some pictures of the frost in the fields, the garden and on the heath Dan, just to remind you of a wintry December morning in England – sadly not today, Christmas day, when it is, yet again, raining stair-rods!
and a sunset for good measure.
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