I feel guilty – I have been more attentive to my Moon blog than to this one. I’ve had plans! An essay/review on sonnet sequences in the work of Eleanor Brown and Patience Agabi, for example. That’s a particularly good figment of my imagination. I have been reading rather a lot of poetry…
Or I could tell you about the agony and the ecstasy of the everyday poet? For example – I recently had a poem shortlisted for the York Literature Festival. In the last 50 of over 900. But didn’t win. I had poems rejected by Alliterati and Butcher’s Dog magazines, but had ones accepted by Streetcake and When Women Waken.
I’m writing poems about the WW1 bombardment of Hartlepool – they’re pretty nifty, but I can’t share until the end of the year when they get published in an anthology. And I’m writing poems in response to the Bloodaxe Archive, but they’re all pants so far, so I’m not gonna show you.
OK, how about this little smidge, written in response to a prompt from the fabulous 52 project, on the subject of ‘praise’.
Praise After Bad Times
No balance to the meal
without a pinch of bitter.
The hunkered marriage-bulb knows
to bide the blink of winter.
Kisses re-risen, purple mouths
open gold tongues.
The patiently espoused
Worth our weight in saffron.
Kirsten Luckins 