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Showing posts from April, 2019

Anxiety

Anxiety Day 30: I'm having to go off prompt today with a pre-prepared poem, because my surgery is early this morning and there wouldn't be time to write something new.  It's weird because l don't know if I'll be having a joint fusion (requiring a plaster cast) or a simpler procedure until I wake up after the operation.  So I can't prepare myself like you normally would going into surgery. By the time you read this My foot will be invaded, Its fate will be decided. I'll not dissemble, I'm more than anxious - Not of the surgeon's knife Nor what they'll find inside The choice that will be made - But of immobility Dependence on crutches, Painkillers, Other people. I should be ready I've practiced using one leg For the things I've taken for granted: Getting in and out of bed Trips to the toilet Sliding up and down stairs on my behind. I've prepared the house With a thorough spring clean Cleared space for clumsy

Meditation

Meditation Day 29: write a    poem that meditates, from a position of tranquility, on an emotion you have felt powerfully. Here's a poem about a typical meditation at the end of each yoga session.   The  room stills The rustle of tired limbs settling, Relaxing into the mat Seeking savassana. Clearing the mind  Putting away creeping thoughts Concentrating on the breath Passing through each nostril In,  out,  in,  out, In, Out. Impossible to clear the mind! Thoughts keep creeping, Drowning out the breath. Listening to the piano below The melody running wild, Stopping,  repeating the misplayed notes. What are we having for dinner? Did I empty the bins? I must lose weight before next term Easier to do the forward folds I'm so weak willed. Bring yourself back to the breath Look at the inside of the eyelids Focus on the breath The cold rush of the inhale The warm sigh of the exhale In, out,  in,  out Breath and heart beat slow In out,  in out The b

Writing poetry

Writing poetry Day 28: write a metapoem,  a poem about poetry. What a gift! When I wrote the poem about drawing a portrait (on day 22) I was struck by how similar  the process is to writing poetry, and wanted to come back to that idea once this challenge is over to explore it further.   Turns out,  the time is now!  I've decided to use certain phrases from that poem as the basis of this one. I sit in my usual chair by the window Light and inspiration close, My tools laid out around me Large lined notepad,  gel ink pen, Thesaurus to aid my failing memory Coffee ready for when I need to stop and think. Open the book,  pick up the pen, Start with the easy part - Write down what I want to express. Then take the plunge, Note down a word,  a phrase If I'm lucky an opening line, See where it leads me. One line follows another until The hint of a shape emerges, Ideas sticking and stalling the flow On their way from brain to page. Sit back,  screw up my eyes Foc

Not exactly Shakespeare

Not exactly Shakespeare Day 27:  “remix” a Shakespearean sonnet.  You can pick a line you like and use it as the genesis for a new poem. Or make a “word bank” out of a sonnet, and try to build a new poem using the same words (or mostly the same words) as are in the poem. Or you could try to write a new poem that expresses the same idea as one of Shakespeare’s sonnets.  No p ressure then! As it happens, my husband Phil has been away most of this week, and coincidentally the weather had turned from gorgeously sunny to cold, wet and windy. Sonnet 98 seemed perfect and I took the first line for my starting point.  From you I have been absent in the spring And days feel empty,  without their spark When we should be enjoying every thing The light has dulled, the days become dark.  Birds in the lilac tree still visit your seeds, Flowers still tempt with their sweet smell and hue But all I can see are encroaching weeds  There's no beauty in a garden not shared with you.  Eve

Round and round

Round and round Day 26: Today’s prompt is to write a poem that uses repetition. You can repeat a word, or phrase. You can even repeat an image, perhaps slightly changing or enlarging it from stanza to stanza, to alter its meaning.  I've chosen to use the pantoum form, where the 2nd and 4th lines of each 4 line stanza become the 1st and 3rd of the next, and the poem ends with its 1st line.  This circular format reflects the way thoughts are constantly going round and round my brain at the moment, as I worry about,  and plan for, the aftermath of an upcoming operation on my foot.  Like an infernal,  demonic kind of jazz Thoughts are swirling through my head I long for peace,  some acceptance,  as Each night I lay fretting in my bed.  Thoughts swirl in spirals through my head My body keeping time,  tossing and turning,  Through the long night,  fretting in my bed Going over and over things,  stomach churning.  My body keeps time,  tossing and turning With each repeat

Spring

Spring Day 25:  write a poem that: Is specific to a season Uses imagery that relates to all five senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell) Includes a rhetorical question, (like Keats’ “where are the songs of spring?”) This month has seen such a mixture of weather, it has been difficult to know what to wear.  Ever the optimist, I've dug out my summer clothes and packed away warm jumpers until the autumn.  Today,  standing on the station platform We huddle,  in too-thin summer clothes Against the spring chill.  Caught out By days of sunshine, of sitting outside With a cool drink in a long glass Sunglasses and hat retrieved from Their autumnal hiding place,  The warm caress of early summer Toasting skin with its first taste of tan, Disturbed by the buzzing of insects  Returned from their secret hiding places,  New growth pushing through dusty soil In need of evening water, Smoky wafts of neighbours' barbecues, The first sweet cut of th

Gleanings

Gleanings Day 24: write a poem inspired by a reference book.  Open it at random and use the two pages as your inspirational playground.  I found a copy of The Reader's Digest Encyclopaedic Dictionary [1976 ed] and opened it at pages 374-5: glaucoma to gnu. What a treasure trove! Such glorious glimpses can be gleaned Between these pages,  losing their glue Glimmering in the gloom, like a gnarled old hand Poised in its glove, whilst hidden from view. A glaucous glaze gleams amid the gloom Words glittering,  glistening,  gleefully glib A gnomic glossary, a gloating glut glints, A feast for a word glutton, pure glycerine. But they glide through your brain,  buzzing like gnats Which inhabit a glen in the gloaming You snap the book shut,  with a glower, and groan Enough!  Some different pages need combing! © Copyright 2019. Chris Auger. All Rights Reserved

Turkey vulture

Turkey vulture Day 23: write a poem about an animal. This is a poem I wrote while cruising on the Amazon river last year.  It's a triolet, where the lines and rhymes repeat in a set pattern. It soars on a thermal way up high While I stand here rooted, on the ground Wondering what it's searching for, and why. It soars on a thermal way up high Making me wish that I could fly Up in the air without a sound. It soars on a thermal way up high While I stand here rooted, on the ground. © Copyright 2018. Chris Auger. All Rights Reserved

Portrait of an art class

Portrait of an art class Day 22: write a poem that engages with another art form. I go to a local art group once a fortnight,  so this seemed an obvious choice. The sitter sits,  relaxed,  composed, Hands gently clasped, a smile playing across her lips An impulse soon regretted, discarded. I sit and look,  then move my chair To get a better angle. Lay out my pad, pencils,  eraser, Pick up a fine line pencil, Take a breath, plunge in, Make a line,  any line,  make a start. One line follows another Skull,  forehead,  cheek,  nose,  chin, The outline of a head emerges Then brow,  ears, lips. Eyes always last, Despite convention, peer advice. Decide to risk some colour, Skin tone so hard to replicate Not pink,  nor brown,  nor yellow,  quite, Green,  blue and purple all combine To make their mark. A likeness needs distance: Screw up your eyes and squint, until The face dissolves, exists as shapes, Blocks of light and shade. The sitter sits,  still as a statue,

Easter dreamscape

Easter Dreamscape Day 21: write  a poem that  incorporates wild, surreal images. Try to play around with writing that doesn’t make formal sense, but which engages all the senses and involves dream-logic.  What better subject than to recall childhood Easters in Devon in the 60s? Car journeys in a too small car,  lasting all day Chanting the list of towns as we pass through Chocolate eggs melting on the parcel shelf Dear old farmer and his wife , dearer than grandparents Lean and fat,  like Jack and Mrs Sprat Took in two evacuees - my dad and uncle So long ago,  ancient history,  Rough and gentle at the same time Kittens hiding from the sack,  found high in the hay loft,  Slimy mouthed cows barring the way to the cowshed Arguments with my sister about what to do next Arguing in the car there and back,  "Will you two stop it!"  "We can't stop yet,  you'll just have to hold it in!" Trailing after her all day, climbing hay bales,  Strange we

Are you listening to me?

Are you listening to me? Day 20:  write a poem that “talks", that's  largely based in spoken language, interspersed with the speaker/narrator’s own responses and thoughts. Try to write a poem grounded in language as it is spoken - the messy, fractured, slangy way people speak in real life. You know that old dustbin, I say,  That's been down by the shed for ages,   The one we took out of the workshop  That time we were looking for, what was it?  My memory gets worse every day.  Old age!  You know,  that time  You'd finally got around to putting up the shelves in the bathroom  I love them,  they've made such a difference That's it! You were looking for the drill  After turning the workshop upside down and inside out  We found it in the cupboard under the stairs. Typical!  I thought we'd use it as a water butt.  The bin.  I'm tired of lugging watering cans down the garden  All the way from the kitchen sink.  And the onions are looking

From there to here, alphabetically

From there to here,  alphabetically. Day 19:    write an abecedarian poem – a poem in which the word choice follows the order of the alphabet. You could write a very strict abecedarian poem, in which there are twenty-six words in alphabetical order, or you could write one in which each line begins with a word that follows the order of the alphabet. The first three lines took me in an unexpected direction,  back 15 years to a less happy, but more intense time. After the rain,  the streetlights reflect  Bright circles on the pavement  Calling us to follow,  to join the dots, Drawing us closer to the station,  Ending our day together.  For now,  we travel on separate paths,  Guilty of wanting to be together,  when Home pulls us in different directions.  I grip your hand tightly Jealous of it leaving mine so soon,  Keeping you close,   Longing to make time stand still.  My train mercifully leaves after yours No way I could be the first to go.  Over the tannoy, an annou

Elegy

Elegy Day 18: write an elegy of your own, one in which the abstraction of sadness is communicated not through abstract words, but physical detail. The boats float safely in the harbour Overlooked by a  square church with a tall steeple, Two peaked hills, f ishermen' s cottages,   Each detail picked out in  a different shade of wood.  The picture you pieced together patiently Over weeks and months - Your life-long love affair with wood Enabling the choice of the exact piece of veneer To bring the scene alive,  The various grains becoming clouds, ripples in the water - Now hangs, almost forgotten Over the bed in the spare room.  Slightly faded, it stills holds its power To remind me of you My patient,  dogged,  father Always there in the background,  Quietly giving support,  a safe haven.   © Copyright 2019. Chris Auger. All Rights Reserved

Ruminations

Ruminations Day 17: write a poem that presents a scene from an unusual point of view.  Each day I graze across these fields Sometimes alone,  Sometimes taking my brothers with me In a flanking formation Raking the grass with our muscular tongues Finding the tenderest shoots  Chewing,  and chewing,  and chewing.  If we're lucky he's left open the gates,   We can roam from field to field In search of the greener grass on the other side.  On good days there's a fight We lock budding horns, trying our strength Trying to push each other backwards To rise up the pecking order a notch or two.  I like it when the trailer comes With new friends,   Always much smaller than us old timers, In need of an education -  Where the best grass is,   Where to shelter when it rains,  Who's the boss  How to fill the long hours of liberty.  It's not so good when the trailer comes empty And leaves with an old friend One I've got to know well  Over the week

Excavation

Excavation Day 16: write a poem in the form of a list to defamilliarize the mundane.  Lucy English's 'Things I Found in the Hedge ' was given as an example,  and prompted me to remember the things we found when we tackled the wild area in our garden last summer turning it into a vegetable plot.  Like the poem,  it's not finished,  but it's getting there. First: the living layer, lending a cloak of invisibility to all beneath Brambles, with thorns that catch on skin and clothes        each bead of blood ruby red in reproach Nettles,  with super strong venom,  skin raised        in angry welts that sting for days Buttercups, with runners spreading across the ground        like a gigantic web for yards around Bind weed, roping everything close tight,        ripping away in satisfying sheets Dock plants,  with their thick long leaves,  where were you        when we needed you? Second: the surface layer, forgotten objects now revealed Bricks,  a scatter

Kitchen Monologue

Kitchen Monologue Day 15: write your own dramatic monologue. It doesn’t have to be quite as serious as Browning or Shakespeare, but try to create a sort of specific voice or character that can act as the “speaker” of your poem, and that could be acted by someone reciting the poem. Crickey! Rather daunting. But then this popped out!  Come in, love, find a seat,  Don't mind the mess!  We're in the middle of doing up the kitchen, Always worse before it gets better! It's taken much longer than I thought, mind, First one thing,  then another. Who'd've guessed there'd be so much mould! Black it was, behind all the cupboards Must've been there for years, Used up a bottle of that bleach spray Getting it clean again.  Disgusting.  Marvellous! The different kinds of specialist paint  You can get nowadays, We went to Bailey paints - Up round by Stroud On the Bath road - d'you know it?  All sorts in there.  Stuff I've never heard of! 

Guarding orgasms

Guarding orgasms Day 14: The  video resource for the day is this recording of Taylor Mali performing his poem “ The The Impotence of Proofreading .”  It's very funny and worth a look to understand the prompt.   There many words in English that sound and look  like other words. Write a poem that incorporates  homophones, homographs, and homonyms , or otherwise makes productive use of English’s ridiculously complex spelling rules and opportunities for mis-hearings and mis-readings. Anyone who knows me, will know this is anathema to me - I can't bear misspellings and incorrect grammar - but I've tried to give it a go.  Like the words of the gendarme in 'Allo 'Allo, it may need to be read 'allowed' to make sense!  Have yew heather licked clothesly At the flours in yore guarding? Itch won is a compleat whirled. If your very licky Yawl sea orgasms youth never scene beef ore, Beatles, spindles, a tinny be, Bussing quite lea,  omnivorously,  There se

The witch

The witch Day 13:  write a poem about something mysterious and spooky. Something that is mysterious and spooky in a bad way (a witch?)  or mysterious and spooky in a good way (a witch?).  Or just the everyday, mysterious, spooky quality of being alive.  I've been interested in witchcraft for a while,  and tend to think that witches were misunderstood and feared because they were different.  Women who shun society are rare,  and therefore mysterious,  and in less enlightened days,  were viewed with suspicion.  Did they have magical powers,  or were they just in touch with aspects of life most people have no time for?  A voice cries out from the crowd "You're a witch!" She recoils, melts into the shadows, Afraid of what might follow,  Accusations,  interrogations,  humiliations,   Perhaps worse.  She slips away,  glad to be alone,  Her preferred and natural state. At home,  she stands and stares an age at her reflection. A weathered face bears witness