“Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem from the point of view of one person/animal/thing from Hieronymous Bosch’s famous (and famously bizarre) triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights” said the optional prompt for Day 6’s NaPoWriMo jolly. I had never seen this piece of art, and if you follow the link you’ll see why it is such a good prompt to be given!
I chose to write a poem from the point of view of the owner of the third foot in the shell on the man’s back (to the left of centre, towards the bottom of the middle panel, with a description on the website marked ‘travel journal’) 😉 I decided that foot belonged to a woman…
Again
And again, he muscled in –
Bade me clam up and cleave to him.
My wisdom:
Pearls among swine,
His one wish my eternal command.
I am to be cloistered with his need,
Unobserved by the world;
Just flesh upon
A mere shell of all I was.
Not the happiest little ditty, but one of those that arrived in my handwriting within 5 minutes and I didn’t feel the need to tweak (apart from adding one word to the last line). Always a godsend when time is at a premium!
I think I will bookmark this painting and come back to it – so much to look at and think about! What characters do you like the best?
Keep staying safe and well, and I’ll ‘see’ you for Day 7!
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
Today’s optional prompt, on theNaPoWriMo site, was to “write a poem about a specific place” and to include details to make it feel real to the reader.
Imprint
I stared at the flowers on the wallpaper
And they looked back.
I traced their faces
With imaginary ink,
Whilst sat on the loo.
I look for similar designs
In swathes of
Vintage material.
And a Liberty print,
Or crisp gingham check,
Can catapult me back
To the smell of the tile
In that childhood porch.
(Always that smell!)
And a black marble’s swirl
On a worktop…
But,
Somehow,
The patterns I seek
Are not available to buy.
As we watch more and more Dr Who while the kids are at home all day, I keep seeing ‘portals’ to the past everywhere and reflecting on their significance. I feel this is shaping up to be a bit of a theme…but there are 28 poems to go in the month, so maybe Day 3’s will veer down another path 😉
I hope you are all well and taking time to get creative yourselves? Take care, and I’ll see you in my third NaPoWriMo post…
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
I haven’t been doing earth-shattering things over the last few months that I was away from the blog, but interesting things none the less.
There have been teeth lost and creative offerings left under a happy little boy’s pillow. I will elaborate on that in future posts.
My sketch books sport doodles aplenty, I even went through a spate of following YouTube videos to start teaching myself one (and two) point perspective in drawing. I managed to do a doodle or part of a larger drawing EVERY day from mid-February 2019 until the 13th of December, but then the kids caught a nasty tummy-bug-fever-thing – and once we got over that we were swept away by Christmas…but I got back into the practice of producing a doodle or part of a drawing every day by the end of January 2020 and I know it’s going to sustain me through all the lockdown measures in the weeks (and possibly months) to come.
I did have a nice little writing practice going, where I wrote at least 500 words a day, for more than six months in 2019; but it also fell by the wayside when the kids got ill. Now (somehow) we are in April 2020 and I’ve not written creatively with any regularity for a quarter of a year!! Eeek!
But 2020’s NaPoWriMo challenge has urged me to fill that void with its optional writing prompts and thought-provoking nudges to look for inspiration in interesting places 😊
Today’s prompt was to “make a specific action a metaphor for your life”. I wrote the below, which is probably too literal to be a metaphor…
Upon Opening *That* Cupboard
And again: I face my nemesis
The place I dread – the one I miss
Out of the plans, because it is
A seething, shame-filled stack of shizz.
[But shizz I ‘need’
And shizz I ‘want’
Shizz that, if tossed,
My dreams would haunt!
(Because: a shizz-pile towering tall
Cannot mean I’m, in fact, small…?)
A past collected in one place
Becomes, then, a fixed point in space.
It matters (does it not?) that I
Could have my mess from rockets spied?!
A declaration: (arms outflung)
“I came! I lived! I AM SOMEOOOONE!”
And one day,
(Maybe?)
They could build
A new me
From the dust and silt…??]
The last few lines are something I turn over in my head a lot (!) so I have probably written something very similar on this blog before?! I have over 520 posts on here, though, so I have no idea how to begin looking for it, but know that one day history will probably roll its eyes at my repetitiveness 😉
Catch me in my next post to see what I make of Day 2’s prompt…
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
I am sitting with my milky cup of tea, looking out of our Eldest’s window at bright November sunshine this morning. I dug out the quirky china mug that my Auntie bought me for my (second, I think?!) pregnancy and I am savouring how it keeps my caffeine hit warmer than other mugs.
The sky is the colour of a happy watercolour wash, and it is peppered by the snowflake stickers we stuck on the glass a few Christmases ago – Eldest asked to keep them there, so we did. There are also still some of the chalk pen doodles from a few years ago, because he finds them nice to look at and I’m not picky about how it appears from outside.
I am not an Autumn lover, but I can appreciate it has beauty in it. The colours can be breathtaking, the symbolism raw – and the general lean towards knitwear, layers and crafting obviously works in my favour 😉
I really should share a happy poem for this gorgeous-yet-frosty day…but the generator had other ideas.
This feeling of being an imposter, hiding in plain sight.
Trapped in a blizzard of shoulds
Unsure which way is up.
Phenomenal self-doubt descends:
A locust storm munching
On all the harvest
You once thought you could count on.
Distancing oneself
From all who like to think they matter
Becomes a way of life.
At first it feels rude,
But the relief becomes addictive.
That liberatingsilence in one’s head
Is better than any mere drug.
Maybe I’ll write a happy ditty tonight, when I think back on how nice it is sitting in a sun spot having cleared off our Eldest’s desk while he is at school. How decadent it feels settling to apply myself to my creative passions in daylight; as the dust motes gather on all surfaces and the washing whirls in its endless rumbly rounds… 😉
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
“…Today, I’d like to challenge you to blend…concepts into your own work, by producing a poem that meditates, from a position of tranquility, on an emotion you have felt powerfully. You might try including a dramatic, declarative statement, like Hass’s “All the new thinking is about loss,” or O’Hara’s “It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.” Or, like, Baudelaire, you might try addressing your feeling directly, as if it were a person you could talk to. There are as many approaches to this as there are poets, and poems.” [from the NaPoWriMo site]
Well, I don’t know about you, but if I ‘meditate’ on an issue I’m having, my inner wisdom has a way of never pulling her punch. I get it squarely between the eyes and have to stop flinching and actually accept the lesson before I can move on. I get a lot of these home truths dealt to me while doing mundane things like washing our dishes, folding laundry or just wandering back from the school run looking at the sky…
Something I read (or someone said) might stay with me, and my inner wisdom will shrug and tell me that I might not like it, but if I look across the patterns of my day-to-day there is this piece of evidence, this silly sabotaging habit, this phrase I use that proves that person/book was at least half relevant to something I’m wrestling with. There is usually a very annoying list of achievable steps that gets presented to me as well, or a YouTube video pops up that is ridiculously well timed…don’t you just hate that?!
This poem came out of our need to start tweaking things around the house now that the kids are getting more independent and the fixtures and fittings are not holding up as well as they used to, etc etc…
If it gets too good they’ll change it,
Better not get comfy here;
Then your confidence won’t be hit
When ‘they’ turn – and you can’t steer.
So: these walls did not get painted
And this carpet’s still the same
As the day the previous owners
Picked it out – yes I’m to blame;
And there’s still unopened boxes
Lurking in our storage piles
That I have no heart to ditch yet
So keep lugging o’er the miles.
I think I’m waiting for some signal
That I can trust what is good
Not to vanish like a mirage
If I drop my guard. Then: stood
In the glow of my achievements
(And the knowledge I now hold)
I’ll stop running scripts from childhood
And refusing to be bold…
So that’s my little pep talk with myself over for another day 😉
That’s the penultimate poem of NaPoWriMo dusted, too! Whoa!
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
“…I’d like to challenge you to “remix” a Shakespearean sonnet. Here’s all of Shakespeare’s sonnets. 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, like “hey baby, this poem will make you immortal” (Sonnet XVIII) or “I’m really bad at saying I love you but maybe if I look at you adoringly, you’ll understand what I mean” (Sonnet XXIII)…”
It is our wedding anniversary today. We sat on the couch with the kids and watched a couple of nervous 30-somethings say their vows to each other, remarked upon the length of my dress and how hard it was to walk in, calculated how old different family members must have been then, etc etc. Our Youngest liked the song we’d picked for our first dance (Katie Melua’s Nine Million Bicycles), and our Eldest was asking about the logistics of me getting in and out of the bridal car 😉
So when I read the prompt for today’s NaPo contribution, I decided to look at Sonnet number 27 (because we met on the 27th of March 2005 and were married on the 27th of April 2008…) and I realised that it was a fitting Sonnet, as it is about being really tired after a busy day, but one’s mind spanning the miles to a lover as soon as one lies down.
Being a ruminator, however, the 3rd and 4th lines have a darker meaning for me, too:
“But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired…”
So I decided to change some of Shakespeare’s words to tweak the feel of the poem from one of romantic infatuation to one of anxiety. I have given Shakespeare’s lines in grey and the ones I’m using in blue, so you can see how they compare and contrast…like the good wee English scholar I was taught to be, haha.
** Trigger warning for some of the imagery I’ve used **
Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, Wearing a tee, Hub snoring in my bed,
The dear respose for limbs with travel tir’d; The dear lord knows I’ve never been so tir’d;
But then begins a journey in my head
But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:
For then my thoughts–from far where I abide—
My stupid thoughts—their whirl I can’t abide–
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
Intend a zealous voyage out my tree,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see:
Musing on pointless questions I do see:
Save that my soul’s imaginary sight
The demons that I should keep out of sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Present their shadows to my helpless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Which, like a slipknot hung in ghastly light,
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
Makes blessed night dangerous, and her sweet face skew.
Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.
For Hub, and for myself, no quiet find.
I rather enjoyed messing about with the bard’s work 😉
Only three more April poems to write for this year! I can’t believe that I have managed to keep up (and post up) an entry for every day with all the holidays and kid wrangling. (I know a few, like this one, have had to be backdated by half a day or so, but the poems have still all been accounted for).
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
I wrote a poem after the Grenfell Tower fire news bulletins (here), and the Manchester arena attack (here).
When I was 18 I wrote one about the horror that unfolded at Dunblane. I lived not far from there at the time, and the death of children particularly haunts me.
I fervently miss a few people in my life, but I write most often about the void I experience without my maternal grandmother (see here and the second poem from here, for example) she even creeps into short scenes I have written from prompts people have left me on my Facebook page!
“Today, I’d like to challenge you to write an elegy of your own, one in which the abstraction of sadness is communicated not through abstract words, but physical detail”
You’d think it would have been easy to comply.
Nope.
I enlisted a generator for inspiration and wrote a poem using all of the nine words I’d been given, then realised it read better when shaved to about two thirds of its size… I only ended up using “execute” and “describes” in my final cut. I am not being a stickler for my usual generator rules for NaPoWriMo though, so it’s all good 😉
I don’t know if what I wrote meets the prompt for you, but I know that I’m referencing four relatives who have passed on in the poem, so I think it does…
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
“Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that…presents a scene from an unusual point of view. Perhaps you could write a poem that presents Sir Isaac Newton’s discovery from the perspective of the apple. Or the shootout at the OK Corral from the viewpoint of a passing vulture. Or maybe it could be something as everyday as a rainstorm, as experienced by a raindrop”
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
It was Eldest’s birthday today, and the Na/GloPoWriMo prompt decided to run with this nicely:
Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem of gifts and joy. What would you give yourself, if you could have anything? What would you give someone else?
Happy writing!
Youngest’s birthday was only eight days ago.
I get sentimental at this time of year, I warn you now…the start of the poem is Eldest’s answer to “what would you like for your birthday if you could have anything?” while he was talking about his X-Box adventures 😉
“Sixty-four emeralds!” – said with a grin
(For Minecraft – it’s all ‘invent’ry’ will fit in)
Why did I not know that all we’d to do
Was ‘dig’ him up a shiny green thing or two?!
I wish that my joy could be bought with such ease –
I’m standing here mourning that time is a thief,
And I’m wishing this handsome young man with bed-hair
Could somehow rewind a few years…it’s not fair!
Though, better still, please the capacity
To visit myself in my uncertainty
In each parenting stage (once at last I am wise)
With assurances, hugs – more rational eyes.
It would be nice to think in my quiet old age
I could comfort my young self, sow peace through my days;
That the next time I felt like collapsing in sobs,
I’d be at my own shoulder,
whisp’ring softly:
“Good job…!”
I am getting this up on the blog at a ridiculously wee hour of the morning, so I must dash, but I’ll be back later for day eight. Ciao for now!
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
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