Curious lost lines

Brain hurricane season is still present; I have had more ideas in the past few days than I knew what to do with.

This appears to be a long one and I blame it all down to the “Bluewater technique” I spoke about in a previous post.

I really did try to force myself to write something every day whether it’s going to be published or not, whether it’s more than a sentence or not and I got thinking about some very wacky things!

You’ll see them as posts such as “If I were a fairy” or “life of a mermaid” though the latter is due in the first week of June, so you won’t see that just yet.

Somethings I consider unpublishable or are unfinished poems or plays.

I don’t like to leave poems unfinished but it is a habit I am trying to get out of because a book I’ve been reading called “How to grow your own poem” by Kate Clanchy says, it is easy to lose a good line, never delete the line when you don’t know where its taking you, store them in a folder called “lost lines” and come back to them later, a poem doesn’t need to be rushed.

So I’ve done that and have accumulated approximately twenty unfinished and would be deleted poems in just a week!

They don’t even have to be poems actually; they could be good prose lines for a short story or a novel.

Who knows where those lost lines will lead us?

There is a whole paragraph which seems exciting, but I don’t know why yet.  But it’s very intriguing and it’s called “The Masters of Dream”.

I haven’t been able to add more to it yet, because in all honesty I was busy with other things today and working on those things with a raging head and ear ache.

But I could not ignore that paragraph, which started like that.

I hope I have time tomorrow to think about it and see what this is!

Thanks for reading!

Currently reading May 2023

I am currently reading quite a few book according to my Goodreads.com list, but I would say I am only really active in four of them for the past week now, despite there actually being 22 books on the list, a handful have been slowly slogged through for the past year!

But never mind – it’s just the result of an ever increasing chaotic and information starved mind!

The four I am currently reading are from the library so I have to whip myself to read them before the 21 days is up!

They are;

The High Five Habit by Mel Robbins

Grow your own poem by Kate Clanchy

A nature poem for every day of the year Edited by Jane McMorland Hunter

Eating to extinction by Dan Saladino

“The high five habit” by Mel Robbins is being read the fastest because I am trying to get my act together basically!  I finished a free Mel Robbins course a couple of weeks back and I wanted to learn more about this “high five habit” I’ve heard about and although I have been doing it for a few days now I have forgot on two days, so it’s not ingrained to do that yet for me. 

But I have noticed a difference with me approaching mirrors nonetheless, I have a faint smile these days, which is something – because I was a pretty miserable person whenever I look in mirrors before this thing.

I’m really trying to motivate myself to fight for a life and I tell you it is hard, it is a battle and I have virtually no support in doing this – I am on my own!

So I have to haul my own ass to change, as Mel Robbins says time and time again “nobody is going to save you, only you can save you”.

So that’s what I am trying to do.  Save myself.

“Grow your own poem” by Kate Clanchy has been borrowed and reordered to borrow from the library with small breaks in between since November!  Why?  Because there are a lot of small tasks in them and I would like to do them spread out, so I could learn better that way – it will stick better.  If I read the whole book then go back to do the essay one after the other I am more likely to forget what I am learning.

So I am doing it my way and it works!

I have noticed an improvement in the quality of my work and so has Paul and I thank this book for it!

“Eating to extinction” by Dan Saladino, is a gripping read about how humanities social progress and diet is actually going to eventually starve out humanity because it is unsustainable and not very diverse; monocultures and picky farmers are literally making extinct thousands of alternate food sources around the world yearly, in order to condense our diets down to a few of our favourites.

Which by and large is not healthy for us and not a wise thing to do in the long run because of climate change, but also our microbiota is starving which is causing all kinds of auto-immunity problems and other health risks.

And if you know me, from reading things about me in the dim and distant past, not only am I a huge advocate for sustainability and paleo thinking, but I am also incredibly geeky about microbiomes!

“A nature poem for every day of the year” by Jane McMorland Hunter – again I am reading this to kind of study poetry but also because of Ray Bradbury’s idea of reading a poem, an essay and a short story every day. 

I read a lot of non-fiction daily anyway, it’s a habit I’ve always had, I don’t read much fiction to be honest but when I do I tend to like picking up short story anthologies and I virtually never read poetry until recently, so I felt like a kindred spirit of Ray Bradbury when I read this quote the other week!

I used to read fiction a lot when I was younger but I got out of the habit of it because I started to panic that my ideas were like this and that and this too!  So it made me worry constantly about plagiarism.

Again, if you know me, you’d know by now I am an incessant worry wart!

So to ensure I don’t give up my current words in progress (WIP) I got out of the habit of reading too much fiction.

Which is kind of stupid, but there you go.

Thanks for reading!

Abstract poetry rookie

I was always confused by poetry; especially the poetry which doesn’t rhyme because I was always taught that poems must always rhyme, when in fact, this isn’t so.

I have learned recently through a book called “how to grow your own poem” by Kate Clanchy that there is something in the world called “Abstract poetry” which doesn’t necessarily require you to rhyme your words, in fact by doing so it can come across as boring, predictive and limited.

Much like trying to understand abstract art, I am now in the process of trying to learn to understand abstract poetry and I have to say, I am finding this more difficult than the art.  I know that art is subjective, but words mean a lot to people, how can you be abstract with your written words and people to understand what the heck you are saying to them?

With art you should paint what you feel and you don’t need to explain yourself if you don’t want to, because the person who buys your art would find it visually appealing for them – but with words, that’s different surely a few things that mean a lot to me pulled together would utterly confuse another person reading them?

Let me try for example to do this now, in a state of total ignorance to abstract poetry;

My Heart (is the title)

Butterflies weep within the cage that is placed within my chest

Their wings breathe me life, sorrow and love

Nobody can see my caged butterflies, but I know they are there

Flittering around the cage, crying at beauty and pain alike

Those butterflies want to be free, but they are trapped

They know that if they found freedom I would die

My life is everything to them

Now for me this is beautiful, it totally explains how I feel within my heart and what my heart means to me, but did anyone else feel it too?  Maybe I have been too sheltered to understand that these things other people can feel and understand, but I would like to think that the above poem wasn’t too difficult to grasp.  If the above indeed was what true abstract poetry is all about, then I think I would love doing more poems like that about other things.

But is it what’s expected by people who understand and have experienced abstract poetry?

If you know anything about abstract poetry, please let me know if I have understood it, or whether or not my poem wasn’t vague enough… if that’s possible?

Thanks for reading!

The table exercise

I am going to share my poetry exercises from the book I am reading about how to improve my poetry or get into it, because I am not confident in what I do;

The book is called “How to grow your own poem” by Kate Clanchy and I borrowed the book from the local library.

There is a poem in the book called “The table” by Edip Cansever and I am supposed to write my own version of the poem.  Here is a link to the poem if you are interested?

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~rwtill/Poems/table.html

She comes home eager to share the events of the day

Chattering like there is no tomorrow

Putting her damp coat up on the rack and kicking off her shoes

Throwing her handbag down at the side of the couch

She takes her hair out of the neat bun and places her scrunchy and pins in a green bowl on the coffee table

Nobody cares about what she says, but she chatters on

An old lady got her walking stick stuck in a drain pipe today

Oh and I was told that Liam is having a party at the weekend and asked if I could go

Feet soggy in damp socks placed upon a footstool in front of the fire

Warmth sighing through her – release

Gerald was thinking about getting a cat too, can you imagine it?

Snuggling down deep into the couch

A hot mug of cocoa placed in her hands, stings but then sooths

Happily she sips the creamy sweet drink

Smiling to herself

I know they aren’t bothered by what I have to say

But I‘ve had a good day

Helped a stranger, made a friend, got all the work done in time for a change

She feels herself nodding into a snooze

Life is so draining here

Not like out there where I come home full of energy

She smiles to herself again

I suppose they can’t help it

Being stuck in all day

I wish they’d talk more about their day

Then thinking about the muppets song…

Now what was it?

Ah yes!  Cabin fever!

That’s probably what it is with them

They’ve been stuck inside so long they’ve forgotten about life outside!

Mum, why don’t you go out more?

It’s not right to be stuck in like this!

You are hardly talking anymore!

Putting the mug of cocoa down on a pile of magazine on the coffee table

She turns to look at her mum

Her mum is sleeping in the green armchair next to her

She never used to be like this

She used to be vibrant too

As you can see, the poem doesn’t rhyme like a lot of my poems do, but that’s the point, to broaden my poetical horizons.

I am not happy with the above; I would probably delete it and ignore it.  But then I wouldn’t grow, tell me what you think of it!

Happy reading!