Lately I have been thinking about poetry and the fact that 'anything goes' and have been fiddling about with this little offering. As usual I feel a bit nervous about showing anyone else my poetry, but here goes.


Miss. Lucas We Love You.

Miss. Lucas, Miss. Lucas we love you,
With your twinsets, your high heels and pearls.
Bolshie Five A will blossom and warm
To your literary outlook on life.
Squabbling and spiteful teen-age girls
Are welded together with enthusiasm
To freely adapt Jane Austen's great work,
To set on our tiny school stage.

She chose me to be Lady Catherine.
Should I belong to the aristocracy,
With my elegant Roman nose?
'Roamin all over your stupid face,'
My facetious brother would say.
In a dress made from curtains,
Black shawl and black

WHO?  WHAT?  WHERE?  WHEN?  WHY?  (oh, and How?)  

I know the "Summer" UK weather has hardly been sun cracking the paving stones stuff, but this month seems to have been a dry time for inspiration to write prose or poetry, and I have gone back to a Christmas present that others may find helpful in prompting them to write.

It is called, appropriately, The Writer's Block by Jason Rekulak.

Again appropriately, it comes in the guise of a block of square pages, and its blurb runs as follows:

"Just open The Writer's Block to any page, and you'll find an idea, exercise, or photograph that will jump-start your imagination.  It's chock-full of great advice from legendary and contemporary writers - everyone from Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway to Barbara Kingsolver,

The stag edges from trees, senses and smells the air, watches, looks across a sloping meadow to woods beyond, sees, feels no danger. The breeze in his face carries no threat. Careful, without haste, he starts to walk, eyes wide, ears pricked.
A cry behind! Instantly, within a bounding, darting run, the deer zigzags over the field, its hooves barely touching earth as arrows plunge around him into turf. None find their mark. He leaps into the forest opposite. The field is calm. Once more.
"Whose idea was that? Which fool shouted?" breathes the captain, as audible as if he were bellowing within the glade. "Quiet, I said. Don't show yourselves, I said. So what do you do? What do I get? Who was it?"
The archers watch. John moves forward: faces his captain. "I made the hunting cry,

Horses for Courses

Earlier this week Christopop gave us another entertaining and thought provoking blog on the benefits of writing courses as an aid to writers block. His blog can be found here:

http://my.telegraph.co.uk/christopop/blog/2008/08/12/so_what_good_are_courses_for_writers

As you can easily tell, I have never taken any writing courses. I have however been a beginner in several other adult courses that had about them an air of predictive similarity.

Many years ago when I was a student at university it was deemed important that the inhabitants of the Physics and Maths department be exposed to some cultural or artistic endevours, and as a result, a range of such courses were offered on the understanding that a minimum of one such course should be taken albeit non-credit

Thursday’s Child Has Far to Go

Jack was one of those people absolutely convinced that he was destined to live out his sad life devoid of luck. He always blamed it on his mother’s insistence on having him by caesarean on a Thursday of all days. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known what she was doing. He always claimed she was one of the most superstitious women who ever drew breath.
“Why, oh why,” he would always lament, “couldn’t she have arranged things properly so that I was one of the lucky ones who’s supposed to be full of grace or, better still, fair of face? Just look at me,” he would invariably continue, “I haven’t got a single redeeming feature. My eyes are too close together. My nose is like a squashed button mushroom

My purpose in entering this is to show how creating Short Stories can very much be cut and paste jobs, and a story may well go through several incarnations before it gets close to feeling "finished".

It is a long time since I put up a Story (as opposed to poems) for consideration by other people, and I realise that there is still a great deal of work to do on it, perhaps even incorporating it into a much longer piece.

Please see what you think, and if, as a reader, you can make positive suggestions for which I should be grateful.

Long Time; No See.

Both of them had aimed carefully for the sort of work they wanted  after graduation.

“So, if I get you an audition through Arturo, you’ll go?”  asked Nicholas.  Peter smiled at Susannah; then, “You’ll slay

This morning I decided to have a look in on The Olympics (ex-KGB has been glued to the set, pedalling every uphill yard with our Welsh Gold-winner; windmilling arms in the pool for our Gold & Bronze there).

I am not remotely "sporty", but can admire the phenomenal training efforts folks will put in to get themselves in shape physically to challenge the best of the Rest of the World, and sometimes end up with a medal.

What I keep hearing is "specialist coaches" and "supported with grant aid", and it is apparent that in some sports, British effort in these directions is improving performance.  We tend to "do better" in both rowing and cycling than ever we used to do when the U.S. collegiate system and the East German and Soviet Armed Forces systems produced medal-winner after medal-winner

A small offering for this month's competition.

Haiku

Practice can be felt

as tedium of the mind

or taming luck's smile

(I tried to stick to the traditional 5/7/5 style)