The Kreativ Blogger Award

Kimberley at The Possiblity of Being (cool name for a blog) has given me  the Kreativ Blog Award. Until now I have been too busy with NaPoWriMo to formerly accept it. Kimberley is one of the talented writers I  discovered over the last month.

The award comes with a few responsibilities:

1.  Post the award on your blog and link to the person who gave you the award.

2. List seven things you love.

3. Pass it on! List seven blogs you love and let those people know you’ve given them the award.

Seven Things that I Love

1.  My family.

2.  My cat, Jack.

3. Chocolate. It’s best that I don’t get the taste of it as once I start eating it I can’t stop.

4.  The great outdoors which includes my garden, the New Forest and the sea (both close by), lakes and mountains.

5.  My computer. I wouldn’t be without it and I’ve written a poem dedicated to it.

6.  Holidays in faraway places which I came to late in life as the result of having wandering offspring. To date I’ve visited China, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia and  Malysia.

7. Oh dear! I’ve come to the end and there are still lots more things that I love. I love writing, which means I also love reading…and, of coure, poetry.

(I realise that I’ve cheated and crammed in far too many things).

Now I don’t know who has already received this award and please feel free to turn the Kreativ Blogger Award down if it isn’t your thing.

This is my opportunity to flag up the blogs I enjoy visiting.

Blogs that I love

1. David King at Pics and Poems. Dave’s blog is a mix of art  work, fine poems and (sometimes controversial) topical posts.

2. Kay McKenzie Cooke at Made for Weather. Kay is a published NZ poet.  Kay illustrates her posts with wonderful photographs.

3. Andy Sewina at Sweet Talking Guy. Andy is the creator of the Naisaiku (or was that Wendy Naisaiku?) and the American Sandwich.

4. Linda Jacobs at Linda’s Poems. Linda is an American High School English teacher who writes some very original poems and co-hosts Totally Optional Prompts.

5. Elizabeth Enslin at Yips and Howls. I ‘met’ Elizabeth through NaPoWriMo. She  is a writer and anthropologist who claims not to have written much poetry before.

6. S. L. Corsua at Unguarded Utterance. A pen name for a blogger who writes powerful poems as an antidote to the law. She is based in the Philippines.

7. Wayne Pitchko at POGA…Poetry. Wayne writes poetry and paints. I also ‘met’ Wayne through NaPoWriMo. His poems are quirky (I like quirky).

#28 An Anglo-American Sandwich

Thank you Read Write Poem for mentioning that Carol Ann Duffy is joint favourite, with Simon Armitage, to be the next poet laureate here in the U.K. I used a phrase from her collection Rapture in my collage poem on day 22 of NaPoWri Mo. The present laureate, Andrew Motion, has done much to promote poetry with the Poetry Archive, but although there are some female poets, Duffy and Jackie Kay (also included in the betting) are not included. Both, however, can be found on the British Council site and Famous Poets and Poets, which also features American poets.

Today, I have written a list poem using Andy Sewina’s American Sandwich, which is based on Allen Ginsberg’s American sentence (17 syllables like the haiku). Andy lives in the Manchester area of the U.K., which is where I have my roots. The prompt at Read Write Poem is ’seeing red’. I’ve given my American sandwich a British flavour by making it red white and blue. If I had more time, I would have worked at the rhythm more.

Red blooded, ruddy, robust, violent tempered, bolshie, leftie, Marxist
White skinned, Caucasian, bloodless, blanched, ashen, pure, clean, whitewash, coward
Blue blooded, patrician, profane, racy, risqué, dejected, down, sad.

P.S. I couldn’t make the ‘white’ white as you wouldn’t be able to read it.

And my Naisaiku, also with a red theme.

the last day of April
with thirty blossoms blooming
A RED LETTER DAY
with thirty poems written
the last day a party

#24 Sounds of silence

NaPoWriMo #24 and I’ve just received an acceptance for one of my poems – ‘The Cloakroom of my Childhood’. I will add a link to it on my  ‘About’ page in due course.

Today’s prompt at Read Write Poem is noise (or silence).

Silence

In my room
a fan whirrs
my computer clicks
and it sounds as though
I’ve put a sea shell
to my ear.

Outside
I hear
the hum of a tractor
the drone of an aeroplane
as it rises to a crescendo
and then diminishes
car wheels screech
on the tarmac.

In the garden
my cat meows to be let in.
The busyness of birds
in their aerial arena
hits me like a wall
of sound.

In my head
conversations
with people
real and imagined
what my kids are doing
what I need to do
what is urgent
what can wait
who is coming
who is going
a re-draft of
a short story
or an idea
for a poem

Is there such a thing as silence?

#18 t-rex and a thesaurus

Day 18 of NaPoWriMo with Read Write Poem.  Somehow or other I missed Carolee’s lexical prompt on Thursday. I had fun with this, although it’s only a fragment which I hope to develop later. The word I chose was ‘fugitive’ and I think the following  quote from Shakespeare may have been in my mind as I framed my first line:

Shylock: … you call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
(Shakespeare: ‘A Merchant of Venice’)

Fugitive

The locals call him drifter, hobo, bum,
apostate, absconder, escapee,
renegade, rebel, runaway,
I favour émigré, exile, political refugee.
Interrupted, disjoined, divorced, unplugged,
cleft from a branch of an ancient tribe;
ephemeral, short-lived, a shifting silhouette;
a canvas for fantasy.

Protected: #17 Missing something?

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NaPoWriMo #13

The Changeling

When she was very young
she often thought that
the fairies had swapped her
for a mortal child. Not that
she would ever impugn
her parents – respectable,
solid, dull – but
much loved.

At night, she would lie in her room,
bring light  beams to play
upon the ceiling, watch
through narrowed eyes,
the rose-patterned wallpaper
mutate into the faces
of hobgoblins, then
she would ascend
until she was  flying
in the ethereal realm
above the sky.

I’ve used Read Write Poems read write word #14. The words I’ve used are: changeling, impugn, room and bring.

NaPoWriMo#9

Today’s poem is a meditation on a letter, a prompt supplied by Linda Jacobs at the Totally Optional Prompts site. I used to be a maths teacher and hope this doesn’t sound too much like a lesson.

Ode to O

O is the perfect letter.

It can be drawn without
taking pen from paper
(as can several  others, I know).

It has two planes
of reflection symmetry
(For the non-mathematical
that means there are
two places where one half
is a reflection of the other)
and rotational symmetry
of order two (two places
to which it may be rotated
and still look the same).

If squashed down
it becomes a circle
which has infinite symmetry;
a numinous symbol
without beginning or end.

NaPoWriMo#8

I was never really into dating so I don’t have a vast store of old flames. Today’s prompt over at Read Write Poem is to list them and write a poem. I’ve had to be inventive but as is usual with my poems there is a tiny grain of truth in there somewhere. I’ve used a fibonacci sequence (1,1,2,3,5,8…) for the syllables.

At
a
party
introduced
me to French kissing
and could have put me off for life.

Slick
hair
flattened
on the crown
a ballroom dancer
giving chocolates I didn’t love

Our
time
stolen
years ago
a clandestine tryst
you were older, and now you’re dead.

Blogging break

Watermaid will be away from her weblog until 16 March 2009.

My new blog.

I have started a new blog for musings and prose writing. Please visit and take part in my poll.