Day Twenty - snow

The Christmas holidays have begun with snow for us - a rare treat.


Snow

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.


Louis MacNeice

Day Seventeen - Kingfisher

Despite the bitter cold here in the East of England (snow is forecast) I made msyelf go out for a walk/escape from the office at lunchtime. Worth braving the cold as down by the river Ouzel I came very close to kingfisher on one of the pollarded willows by the water's edge. You only ever catch a glimpse of these birds but such colours. Here's a poem I wrote earlier about another kingfisher.

Catch fire

The hedge monochrome in this morning’s frost.
Each black twig outlined with white.

The cold air hostile
against your ears, inside your nose.

The canal water muddy grey
matching the overhead clouds.

A morning walk not to be
lingered over until the sudden chirp and flash.

Unforgettable fire disturbed into flight.
Opal and orange breathless
streaking away of a kingfisher.

Day Fourteen – Time for some Salt

If you have not heard yet of Salt Books, based in Cambridge, England then you are in for a treat. They publish some of the best and most original poets writing today. About this time last year I treated myself to a subscription to their
poetry bank – the best kind of bank around if you ask me.


As a result during 2009 I’ve been receiving regular deliveries of gorgeous hardback poetry books, which I would probably have been too mean to treat myself to. My favourites have been Sian Hughes The Missing and Eleanor Rees Eliza and the Bear.

Samantha Wynne Rhydderch

I am really enjoying the wit,humour and underlying sadness of the poems in her second collection Not in These shoes - my lucky find on Sunday.

My favourite poem is Crayfish Tail Salsa - based I suspect on a real experience of working in a hotel and how exploited you can be as a young person.

My copy of the book has the last couple of pages missing but fortunately the Picador blog has the complete version of her poem Doing time and the story which inspired it.

Day Seven

I've been browsing the Blackbird website today - an on-line journal of literature and the arts which has lots of fine poetry to offer. Today's poet is Katie Ford who has published two collections including Colosseum (Graywolf Press, 2008), which won the 2009 Levis Reading Prize.
As well as her poems Blackbird includes a conversation in which she mentions Tess Gallagher's comments

You don’t have to be a poet when you leave, but poems can be your companion throughout your whole life.”

Day Six

While elder son was at his guitar lesson I discovered one of the charity shops in town was open (unusual for a Sunday) and spent a happy half hour browsing their books. Came away with Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch’s Not in These shoes. Worth buying just for the opening poem Decoupage.

One Hundred Days

From 1st December I've committed myself to writing (or if no time to write) reading a poem every day for one hundred days.

A day without any poetry in it is rather like a day without smiles.

Today is Day five and I've just finished revising over twenty poems to send off for critique.

The poet I've discovered this week is Myra Schneider.