Day 3 - the super quick draft

I've had very little time today, and have literally sat down and boshed this out while dinner is cooking. From start to finish the draft took 20 minutes.

I tried a brief response to an image (I usually love using images as prompts) but was getting nowhere, so I returned to another old favourite - line replacement. For this technique of poem generation, randomly select a poem from a book, copy out every other line, fill in the blanks with your own words (it has to make a new poem that's half yours, half the original poem). Then write out the lines you wrote and fill in the blanks again. Voila, you end up with all your own work.

Today I used Denise Riley's poem 'Knowing in the Real World'.
This was my result.

My yells rebound, puddle

at the feet of strangers

the echo simpers towards me

unable to contain that moment

between wavelength & velocity

each vibration sizzling against my skin

like sunburn. I am scorched

tears evaporate

I seal my lips, huddle

beneath my imaginary silence

wrap myself

in invisible conversations

We always underestimate

the way they speak, whispers

cut skin, and this blood shadow

shouts beyond the dark.

Second shitty first draft :)

I have this printed out, ready to tweak n edit, but decided to be truthful and post the real first scribbled draft. It amazes me sometimes how these seemingly random collection of words end up being shaped into something completely unrecognisable, its like a treasure hunt where you get clues and have to dig for the real words underneath it all.

This disjointed hand free falls

curves past tattered faces

that tangle and writhe

we tried to hold on

but they plummet

we can never keep

cracked knuckles immobile

shudders spasm them open

Impact will not shatter us

only tears and voices

make us crumble

it’s the moment before we fall

that splits us

we hope these frantic gestures

give us something to hold

unrealising

that what we cling to

is what crashes  us down.

In celebration of shitty first drafts! Day 1 :)

The wedding is all done and dusted, I'm officially a 'Mrs' now for the first time in my life. I've spent the last few months doing the headless chicken wedding planning dance, and now that's over, I need to get on with the rest of my life.

A big part of that needs to be my writing. I have a dissertation to complete over the next few months, so need to get back on track with my writing. The slight problem I have is that, in my poetry, I've been following a similar theme for the last couple of years and that seems to have come to a natural end. So I need to find out where it's going now.

Having done bugger all over the last couple of months, I need something to kickstart myself and have decided to attempt the poem a day for a month challenge. I tried this quite a few years ago and it worked really well. Most of what I churned out was crap, but some of it wasn't, and it helped a lot with the writing discipline. Although, having just spent over 2 hours battling with my internal critic, and trying to breath life into something, I'm going to rename it to the 'Shitty first draft a day' - just to remind myself that it really doesn't matter whether it's any good, it's the doing not the end result that's important.

Everyone writes truly awful first drafts at least some of the time, for most people it's most or all of the time. And it's far to easy to listen to our critic shouting at us that we're no good, that it's pointless, that we may as well give up now.

So, all hail the shitty first draft! Here's mine for today :)

Cloud shadows

bombard skin

threaten to scour away

the weight of her world

she pins each toe, ankle, knee

stops herself running

pierces thighs & hips

stomach to still his butterflies

pulls skin taut over ribs, breasts

limits her inhalation

punctures throat, stops

that scream

pins eyelids, lips closed

fingernails first left

then right self-

mutilating

only thumb and forefinger

untethered

weightless

beckoning.

Counting days up, counting days down.

My life seems to be pivoting on counting up and counting down now...

I've been doing the #100happydays on Facebook. 42 days later, without a day missed, I can say it has changed the way I look at things. Each day I'm looking for what I'm going to post, it's making me much more aware of the positive things in each day. Some days I'm spoilt for choice!

I've also noticed that so many of my happy things are to do with Lee or Willow, both of them make me smile so many times each day. I feel so lucky to be where I am right now.

So that's the counting up... Now the counting down, it's 32 days till the wedding!! We seem to have been doing the proverbial blue-arsed fly rushing around, but things are slowly getting sorted. All the major things are in place now, it's just the finer details that need tweaking. We are alternating between panic and excitement!

New Year's resolutions

It's been over a year since I blogged - and that's pretty bad for a writer! So one of my resolutions is to properly blog, I actually made loads of resolutions, but have been sensible and cut them back to basics. My main one is that I'm going to find things to motivate me to make time to write. I've taken some whole days recently to write (I have a portfolio due in at Uni), and I had forgotten how much I love it!

So, with this in mind, I'm taking part in the 100 Happy Days challenge. The idea is for 100 days you post a picture of something that made you happy that day. We all have sometime, no matter how little, that gives us happiness in our days, just half the time we don't pay attention. This challenge makes us pay attention. You can read about it here: http://100happydays.com/

I'm going to be posting on Facebook each day, but will stick the pics up here too, it just won't be everyday.

My one today was a really bad photo of some scribbled notes, but it shows the thing that made me happy today was doing lots of poetry editing.

Reflections on Wise Words

Taking part in the Wise Words project has been an amazing experience. It began with the launch of the project in the cellar area of the ancient Eastbridge Hospital in Canterbury, where we met the others involved, and were introduced to our partners for the project. I think everyone was a little nervous, I certainly was, but soon we were chatting away and getting to know each other.

My partner Kasia and I had a lot in common from the word go, and when we heard that one of the groups of young people had special needs, we requested to work with them as we both felt they would be an interesting challenge. And we were right.

Our first session at St Nicholas school was a real education, and I think we probably learnt more than the young people. We had to adapt the usual range of writing workshop activities as the young people we worked with had a whole range of special needs; their reading and writing abilities varied greatly, as did their concentration span.

One of our main aims was to create an enthusiastic response to language, to share some of the pleasure that we both enjoyed when writing, and in order to do this we had to think laterally. We saw that working in groups really helped the young people’s confidence and created an ideal situation for the ladies from Moving Memories to work together with the young people.

I really enjoyed the challenge of creating new ways for both young and older people to use language, and it was fantastic to see the reactions our activities generated.  One of my favourites was asking them to draw shapes and lines in response to some music from Doctor Who. They were encouraged to think about the dynamics and the shapes of the sounds in the music and really responded well, concentrating for much longer than we expected. One boy produced some fantastic doodles and we were told afterwards that he always draws in groups of four – however this time he didn’t, the doodles continued on down the page. The groups were then asked to write words around their doodles in response to the music, and even the most reticent young people joined in.

One of the most rewarding aspects was seeing the relationships that developed between the generations. The Moving Memories ladies were very supportive of the young people, listening to all their ideas, scribing for them, and helping with spelling. I heard a lot of laughter as funny stories were shared, and fantastical ideas were conjured up for their group writing. When I look at the work produced by our group I am impressed at the power contained within its rawness.

Taking part in Wise Words has been an incredible experience, I have learnt a lot about myself, about other people, and about how language can be used in so many different ways to bring people together. 

Wise Words finale!

Last Saturday was the launch of the Wise Words anthology, which is an amazing testament to the work carried out by all the community groups involved. It contains raw, powerful writing both from experienced writers and from many who have never written before. You can read about it here.

The evening was held at the Canterbury Heritage Museum and was full of wine, wise words and laughter. The official Wise Word exhibition was opened, full of gorgeous writing, images and interactive zones. Participants from community groups read their poems and we were treated to a reading by Sarah Salway.

If you're in Canterbury over the next week, go and see it :)