AppleHouse Poetry Workshop

And what will you do this year?

2012-01-05T18:34:00.000+01:00

Where will you go?
Who will you speak with?
What will you dream?
How will you resolve any problems or difficulties?
What will you begin?
What will you give up?
Who will inspire you?

Write a poem that begins:

This year I will...

It doesn't have to be factual. It can be imaginary, or wishful, or fantastic too.

Write wildly at first. Worry about shaping and editing later. Keep going for at least 10 minutes without stopping to judge or change your mind.

I look forward to reading your final drafts of your year ahead.

Write well.
L x

Celebrating one of our own

2011-12-08T00:22:00.000+01:00

Many congratulations to Catherine (Foster) for winning 1st Prize in a competition run by First Time magazine with her powerful poem, The Prodigal Son. And thank-you, Catherine, for sharing it with AppleHouse:

The Prodigal Son

It’s the hogshit stink rising with the sun

that’s done for me.

My hands webbed, gloved with the stuff.

And the cornhusks: dry as old harlots I’ve had

when shekels ran low.

One shindig after another. Sex

like shooting stars. My belly a wineskin,

now scooped out, shrivelled as the last fig of summer.

Birds could perch on each rib.

A cowl of shame.

Dare I shadow my father’s house?

The utterance of my name-

each letter an ulcer on his tongue?

Will I be but a mote of dust

shooed out by his hirelings?

I set off, sandals flap like dying fish.

Vultures fidget in my path.

My Father-

arms outstretched in folds of the wind.

I stagger, kneel.

The forgiveness of a fatted calf,

purple robes to cover skin pleated over bones.

Words of silver to quench my thirst.

My son who was lost is now found.

And my brother?

He vomits envy.

I thought it would be a good idea to set a poetry prompt in response to Catherine's poem. Choose a biblical character and write a poem in their voice. 'Persona' poems, as they're called can be written in a number of ways:

1. You stay true to that character's experience and re-tell their story.

2. You use that character as a mask to talk about your own concerns (e.g. using the voice of Eve to talk about feminist issues)

3. You update the character and their story and give it a contemporary 21st century spin.

There's no shortage of characters to choose from and given the season you might even like to choose one from the nativity story.

Looking forward to reading your work.

Write well.

Lynne

Oven cleaner, apples, open fires

2011-11-16T12:23:00.000+01:00

Hello from Kent where I've spent more time inside the oven that I really wanted to and where the cardboard boxes are gradually diminishing. But not in my writing room. We left all our library shelving in the house in France so I'm waiting for new pine bookcases and a new pine desk which won't be here until after Christmas. It's not that I really need access to all my books but I do feel better when they are all facing me, the bright colours and words on their spines smiling at me as I pass, and not lying on their backs in the dark. But not long now.

Home means apples - there are 20 acres of apple trees just outside my door. It means log fires - we've kept the wood stove alight 24/7 since being home. An open fire in late autumn and winter is one thing I really missed in the house in France.

This week I've paired things that I haven't paired before: apples and sausage-meat (for a savoury supper), and big paintings and little paintings (to create a different effect on the walls in the lounge and kitchen:

Placing them next to each other like this made me think of haiku, of the phrase and fragment (or fragment and phrase) construction a lot of contemporary haiku take:

The haiku at the end of my last post was phrase/fragment:

fall, yet new leaves
on the plane trees:
we pack to go home

The longer part of the haiku, the phrase, extends over the first two lines and the fragment (a single image or comment) is confined to the third.

Free verse poetry can play with similar constructions e.g. long lines alternating with short lines, or perhaps a poem made up from regular stanzas that closes with a single line set apart at the end. The poet's craft lies in knowing why we do this, the effects that changes in pace will have on the reader, on their breathing, how isolating lines will change their relationship to the words on the page.

Write a poem that changes its form at some point during its development. Think about:
long lines
short lines
changes in stanza structure
a poem of two halves
long sentences
short phrases

But choose your subject matter to suit this form change. Remember that form arises from subject matter, that it can be used to effectively reflect emotional tone.

Write well.
L
x

Goodbye and au revoir. And quite soon, hello again.

2011-10-20T09:59:00.000+02:00

Many thanks to those of you who posted poems in response to the end of September's prompt. Catherine, Keith, Martin, Glen, Jim, Anne - I'm sure you'll understand that organising the move from France to the UK has got in the way of me responding individually to you all as I usually do.

And thank you to everyone who has written a poem and posted it to AppleHouse over the last fours years and those of you who follow the blog and pop in to see what's happening every now and then. Yes, four years! AppleHouse began in December 2007 and I never anticipated that I'd still be here in 2011.

But I am and you are too. And once I get settled into our home in the UK I'll be back with more prompts and ideas and look forward to reading more of your poems.

See you next month.
L x

fall, yet new leaves
on the plane trees:
we pack to go home

Changes

2011-09-26T11:49:00.000+02:00

Hugging the Plane tree in the garden
when we first arrived

I'm moving from the South of France back to the UK at the end of October. I have mixed feelings about the move. We've achieved so much here but it hasn't always been easy (you can read a little bit more about it here).
I'm not at the point of having to say goodbye yet but it does seem that I spend a lot of time thinking about it.

The end of September.
All traces of our summer guests
have gone: sand rinsed from showers,
beach towels folded away.

Under the terrace
the deflated paddling pool
gathers leaves.

We will not be here
much longer: palm trees, the Mistral,
the smell of coconut oil
at the supermarket check-out,
things of the past.

Four years of our life.
We measure it in numbers:
additions, subtractions,
try and make sense
of what we gain, what we lose.

A language. The scent of bread
carried on a sea breeze. The company
of the sun. The people we love
far away at the end of a phone.

Let me imagine a year ahead:
my parents' will celebrate
their 60th year together.
The smell of apples in the cold store.
The cat will have captured
a foreign territory and accepted it
as home. Which is what

we all crave: home.

I find it relatively easy to feel 'at home'. I can adapt to circumstances and situations. Sometimes it's a temporary home, a writing retreat that's made more familiar with a bed-throw, a rearrangement of the room's furniture. Sometimes it's more permanent: learning a language to feel part of a community.

Write about changes. About home. About the year ahead. Or the one you're leaving behind.

Write well.
L x

Welcome back to AppleHouse

2011-09-02T12:02:00.000+02:00

And welcome to September.

How is yours? I've had two September experiences so far. Both in one day. I left Kent, UK yesterday which was a surprisingly summery 20 degrees and a welcome comparison to the wet and cold August. The change in the weather made me want to stay longer but the flight was booked and we took off from London City Airport, flew east along the Thames and out over the southernmost part of the North Sea.

1 hour and 50 minutes later we landed at Nice and drove to Antibes where it was 32 degrees and sunny, but so humid. This morning I couldn't tell where the wet quilt cover ended and I began as I struggled to lift it over the washing line.

Coming back to France in September meant I missed most of our crop of figs. I took a bowl of them back to Kent and left instructions with my cat and house sitter to help herself to whatever ripened in my absence.

All that's left now are a few, small late ripeners. September is too late for them. I missed their best time.

Here's a poem called 'September' by Linda Pastan, a poet I've previously introduced on AppleHouse Poetry

September

it rained in my sleep
and in the morning the fields were wet

I dreamed of artillery
of the thunder of horses

in the morning the fields were strewn
with twigs and leaves

as if after a battle
or a sudden journey

I went to sleep in the summer
I dreamed of rain

in the morning the fields were wet
and it was autumn

from Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998
W.W. Norton & Company, 2009

Buy from The Book Depository

September is our ninth month but takes its name from 'septem'/seven as it was the seventh month in the Roman calendar.

We tend to associate September with autumn but in the Southern hemisphere it's the beginning of spring.

September was always a mark of going back to school. More recently it reminds me of 9/11 and the attack on the Twin Towers.

Write about September, or the shift from one month to another. Or dreaming. Or waking up. But anchor your poem to a particular time of year.

Write well.
L
x

Summer Break

2011-07-03T19:25:00.000+02:00

As usual AppleHouse takes a break in July and August as our family and friends fly into the South of France for their holidays with us. We have a busy few months with people we love and I hope that's how you'll spend your summer too.

Here's a list of 10 things I will do, or attempt to do, this summer. You can add your list too if you like.

Write a poem for my nephew's wedding celebrations.
Take the cat on her first trip back to the UK.
Make soda bread.
Write something small every day in July (See my 'open field' blog.)
Go swimming in the sea.
Try to spend less time on Facebook.
Think positively about my possible contract for a new book but cross all available bits of my body too!
Be relaxed about sharing the control of my kitchen when I have guests. (Tough one!)
Drive our new tractor around the apple farm in Kent.
Remember to drink more water than wine. (Another tough one!)

See you in September.
Write well.
L x

Today I want to say something wonderful about...

2011-06-09T13:52:00.000+02:00

My niece and her family have been staying with me for a week.
'This potato peeler is amazing,' she said as she was peeling carrots for her little boy. He is three and has a thing for raw carrots and cucumber, even for breakfast.

Last year, a friend over from Kent picked up the same potato peeler and exclaimed, 'Isn't it great?!' He had the same one at home.

It's reassuring to know that you're not completely alone in such extreme appreciation of a kitchen utensil. Although I'm the only one among us to have a written a poem in praise of it.

In Praise of Things

Today I want to say something wonderful
about my potato peeler –
the way the ergonomically designed handle
fits snugly in the curve of my palm as if
it was made for the valley of my right hand.

I want to tell you how it is soul-mate
to thick-skinned vegetables –
cloudy tangerine columns of carrot
knobbly orbs of King Edward
how it slides over them as if it might be
wrapping them not unwrapping them
as if it might be whispering
while secretly stealing their skin.

I love the way the steel head swivels
gently rocking from side to side
accommodating each slight
ridge, bump, lesion. Under the skin

everything glistens new born –
vulnerable, true colours rising.

Write your own celebration of a ‘small thing’. Choose something that is functional. It has to be ordinary, of no real value. It shouldn't have any built in emotional value. You might not even realise how much you appreciate this thing until you start looking around you.

Start with the same opening phrase. Tell me just how wonderful this thing is. Be specific about what it does and how it does it. It’s also an opportunity to have fun.

Don’t try too hard to get a secondary meaning in the poem. My last two lines emerged unexpectedly after writing about the physical aspects of the potato peeler for some time.

If we work too hard at a ‘sub-text’, what’s going on between the lines if you like, the poem can sometimes come across as too didactic. Writing needs a lighter touch than that, unless you’re writing an instruction manual, in which case you can be as didactic as you want!

And the secondary meaning might just be that we should celebrate the small things in life.

It was only when I took some photos of the potato peeler for this blog entry that I realised it had a brand-name. I've been using it for years and have never noticed that word written on the underside of the handle. Perhaps because its function is its most important quality I've never even thought of examining it closely - there's never been a need. Perhaps I would have if it had ceased to work properly.

I imagine there are lots of things like this in my life, things I take for granted. There are probably praise poems waiting to be written all around me.

Write well.
L x

The Beautiful List

2011-05-06T09:41:00.000+02:00

I've spoken about and shared list poems a couple of times before but I really don't think we can have too much of a good thing. List poems, done well, sing to us because of their deceptive simplicity: they wear the disguise of an ordinary everyday thing (shopping list, to do list etc) but the poet's choice of form and language lifts them up out of the ordinary and makes them extra-ordinary.

The following poem, by Tim Nolan, (which you can listen to HERE on The Writer's Almanac before you read it), slows our reading down with its short couplets. It asks us to pay the same amount of attention to the 'forgotten'. But this isn't just a poem about a literal change of season. The introduction of the human relationship in the middle of the poem - the flush of your face/ so much - asks me to reconsider the other imagery, the statements at the close of the poem, and the title as metaphor. Here it is and many thanks to Tim for giving his permission:

Long Winter

So much I've forgotten
the grass

the birds
the close insects

the shoot—the drip—
the spray of the sprinkler

freckles—strawberries—
the heat of the Sun

the impossible
humidity

the flush of your face
so much

the high noon
the high grass

the patio ice cubes
the barbeque

the buzz of them—
the insects

the weeds—the dear
weeds—that grow

like alien life forms—
all Dr. Suessy and odd—

here we go again—
we are turning around

again—this will all
happen over again—

and again—it will—

Tim Nolan

If you're in the UK or Europe
then check out the The Book Depository
for Tim's collection, The Sound of It.

What do you take from that penultimate couplet and the final line on its own? Inevitability, acceptance, understanding?

I take comfort from it; repetition in all its guises can be comforting. Although my comfort is tinged by inquietude. I'm not sure I want another long winter, I'm not sure that I want some things to happen over again. But I also know that my experience of life is deepened by living through change.

Poems that make us think, that shift us between different emotions, these are the ones to cherish.

I don't want to be prescriptive with a poetry prompt. Let this poem work on you through several readings then set out on a journey of your own.

Write well.
L
x

The poetry of who and what we are and do

2011-04-21T19:55:00.000+02:00

It's natural that we read other poets to inspire us with the writing of our own poems. And healthy too! We should be aware of what's going on in the world of contemporary poetry around us. And I know that when I'm reading poetry, I write more poetry. I also know that if I read more prose, I find it more difficult to write poetry. Perhaps the patterns and rhythms of what I'm reading are absorbed by my unconscious and, when I sit down to write, the echoes of what I've read most recently are the first to emerge.

How about you? Do you write what you read, influenced by the patterns, and perhaps themes, on the page? Or are you able to write in whatever form you choose, regardless of what you're reading?

And have you identified what kind of poetry you write?

When someone asked me that for the first time, in the early 1990s, it took me by surprise. I hadn't long been writing and hadn't developed any measure of objectivity towards my own work. But to know what we're doing, to be aware of what matters to us and how we want to affect an audience, can only help us as writers.

I've always wanted poems I read to make me think and feel, so I've tried to achieve that in my own writing. And feel a responsibility to 'entertain' an audience. But I don't mean that in the sense of superficial laughter and enjoyable trivia. I mean it in the sense of the original meaning of the word, which comes from 'inter' (to be among) and 'tenere' (to hold). Isn't that an amazing thing for us to try and achieve? To be among our audience, to be part of them, and to hold their attention.

Feel free to respond to any of the above questions and points, and extend the discussion too, in the Comments box, in prose or even poetry.

Write well.
L
x

Hearts & Minds

2011-03-31T13:14:00.001+02:00

Dali & Captain Moore

There's a story about Salvador Dali, told to me a few years ago by his long-time manager, Captain Peter Moore.

Peter called on Dali at his house and studio in Port Lligat to see how he was progressing with a commission and was alarmed to see that the painting was far from finished.
'No problem, el capitano,' said Dali, 'I have until end of October.'
'But it's already November,' said Peter.
'November!' exclaimed Dali. 'Someone has stolen my October!'

I feel a little like that about March! Although rather than stolen it was filled to the brim with exciting events for the launches of another country, haiku poetry from Wales (Gomer Press).

But I'm back home in France now, catching up with writing and AppleHouse, and I came across this poem, in my Poems on the Underground anthology, which I can't remember ever reading before:

from The Mind is an Ancient and Famous Capital

The mind is a city like London,
Smoky and populous: it is a capital
Like Rome, ruined and eternal,
Marked by the monuments which no one
Now remembers. For the mind, like Rome, contains
Catacombs, aqueducts, amphitheatres, palaces,
Churches and equestrian statues, fallen, broken or soiled.
The mind possesses and is possessed by all the ruins
Of every haunted, hunted generation's celebration...

Delmore Schwartz (1913 - 1966)

Lots of the metaphors make immediate sense to me, particularly the mind being full of monuments 'which no one/ Now remembers' and 'Catacombs', although I'm a little unsure about 'equestrian' statues. I suppose the horse and rider could symbolise war? But I still like the poem a lot.

A few years ago I wrote a poem entitled 'Your Heart' which was published on a poster for a Hospital project:

Write a poem about the mind or the heart. Use metaphor rather than direct explanation to suggest what the mind or heart is, or does.

Write well.
L
x

Your age... contented, accepting, resentful, indifferent, curious?

2011-03-06T15:38:00.003+01:00

There's a saying... if you want to feel young, mix with younger people. If you want to look young, mix with with older people. Here on the Cote d'Azur, particularly outside of the holiday season, there are a lot of elderly people, and for the most part all pretty sprightly for their eighties, so at 52 I'm a bit of a teenager!

1960

2010

Apart from being alternately accepting and resentful of the usual signs and effects of age - aches, wrinkles, long-sightedness, unable to drink more than a half bottle of wine without getting a hangover - I really do like being in my fifties and wouldn't want to go back to a previous age or time.

How about you? And do you ever wonder what you'll be like in 20 or 30 years time? It's difficult enough to feel any real connection to the child, girl or young woman who stares out at me from old photos so to imagine what and who I might be in the future feels like an impossible task. Perhaps I should have a go at one of those 'ageing' apps you see on Facebook and on people's mobile phones!

The danger of writing poems about getting older is that they might sound sentimental, even self-indulgent if we write about ourselves. How do we explore the personal and particular but make it universal, make it something that matters to other people? Philip Schultz talks about age in this poem:

76

My bones aren't what they used to be; my eyes ache,
as if I've been reading an ancient text by candlelight.
My back and knees creak. I'm happy if the car starts
and I can walk the dogs along the ocean which looks
a little less robust. It replenishes itself with stretching
and long cleansing breaths. The sun is another story.
It's beginning to show its age. Perhaps we've enjoyed
enough springs and everything is getting a little redundant.

Philip Schultz
from Living in the Past - Available via Amazon
Harcourt, Inc., 2004

Co-winner of the 2008
Pulitzer Prize

I like how he links ageing to the planet - what he notices about the sea, the sun. Do you think the last sentence is a little defeatist, or is it philosophical? Why should we expect our planet to last forever? And this is one of the thoughts I leave the poem with rather than just thinking about the narrator's own experience.

There's one phrase in the poem that makes me smile: I'm happy if the car starts/ Me too! Do we expect less as we get older? Or do we learn gratitude? Again, I'm prompted to reflect on particular ideas that are implicit in the poem but take me outside of it too.

Write your own age poem, using the above poem as a model, or stretching out in your own direction. But be careful, you don't want to put your back out : )

Write well
L
x

Consider this... a very un-Valentine writing prompt

2011-02-14T16:20:00.001+01:00

Barbara Ann Kipfer
Random House 2007

I bought this book while on holiday in the US a couple of years ago. It's not the kind of book you read from cover to cover. You pick it up and glance through the 8 or 10 questions it has on each double page spread, and the occasional large print single pager, and see if one catches your eye. I've noticed that sometimes one does arrest me but I move on because I feel it's asking too much of me at that moment. Cowardly? Lazy? Probably a little of both. But I don't find it easy to think deeply spontaneously. It's is if I have to be shoe-horned into it, and for that reason dinner with good friends often has the right elements - comfortable companionship, good food and wine - to ease me slowly into a stage of, I hope, intelligent reflection. Of course a discussion of beliefs and opinions can become very energetic, even over-heated, particularly when there's a decent quantity of wine around, but if there are enough of you one person is generally able to lower the temperature and pull everyone back to a level of consideration. That's not always possible with family though... at least in my experience. Maybe yours is different?

My poetry prompt for today, and a very un-Valentine one it is too but I'm going on the assumption that there's plenty of Valentine stuff already out there, is to write a poem in response to the following question:

(p. 63) What will happen to the world when you die?

Here's my spontaneous response, raw and unedited but something to work on:

What happens to the world when I die

In the movie
of my life
there’s a moment
of stillness:
a street empty
of traffic;
a cashier’s hand
hovers over
the buttons on a till;
someone looks up
through the bare branches
of a Plane tree,

and then it’s over,
a car-horn blares,
a customer asks
if avocados
are on special,
a sudden gust
forces someone
to clap their hands
against the cold
then fast-dial home
to say they won’t
be long.

How carefully
I read the credits
looking
for myself.

Lynne Rees

I look forward to reading your poems.

Write well.
L
x

The Stories of Beds

2011-01-30T17:13:00.000+01:00

How do you feel about your bed? Have you ever thought of painting it, like Robert Rauschenberg,

Rauschenberg, 1955

or displaying it as a work of art as Tracy Emin chose to do.

Emin, My Bed 1998

Powers, Pictorial Quilt 1898

The quilt, left, was made in the 19th century by Harriet Powers, an African American slave and artist.

What story would you sow into a quilt? Who would be the main characters? Would there be a happy ending?

What do you keep at the side of your bed? If your bed could speak what would it say? About you, about the dreams you share with it?

Think about the beds you have slept it, from childhood to now. In houses, in tents, between trees, on boats...

Write a poem about one, or about many.

Write well.

I resolve not to...

2011-01-18T14:53:00.000+01:00

New year, new page, new leaf, new look... we can't help but associate the beginning of the year with starting new projects, or resolving to change things, or give up things.

I'd like us to think about the things we resolve NOT to do:

I resolve not to make fun of my sister's dog
I resolve not to open the 2nd bottle of wine

But let's not be limited by reality or practicality:

I resolve not to invade Iraq
I resolve never to die without informing you of place, date and time

Have fun with free-listing over the next week. Then look back and see how parts of those lists could be shaped into a poem.

Write well.
L
x

Blog Visit: a hungry writing prompt

2011-01-11T22:25:00.000+01:00

Hello everyone. I'll be back to AppleHouse properly this weekend, once I'm home again in France. In the meantime there are delayed flights and missed connections to negotiate out of Miami and London. The joys of travel : )

If you'd like a writing prompt you could visit The Hungry Writer blog and respond to the prompt at the end of my post, either in prose or poetry. There'll be more prompts as this project continues so please feel free to follow it too. It would be lovely to see you there.

Write well.
L
x

Welcome to 2011

2011-01-04T14:19:00.000+01:00

I'm on holiday in Florida until the middle of January so it will be a little while until I get back properly to AppleHouse but in the meantime here's a poem by a poet whose words always speak to me very loudly:

Green-Striped Melons

They lie

under stars in a field.

They lie under rain in a field.

Under sun.

Some people
are like this as well—
like a painting
hidden beneath another painting.

An unexpected weight
the sign of their ripeness.

Jane Hirshfield

Perhaps her words will inspire you to write about something hidden, something that doesn't reveal itself easily but which rewards us when we do notice it.

Write well
L
x

Wonder and joy

2010-12-24T13:30:00.000+01:00

Ffion Richards
in her prize-winning costume:
The Enormous Crocodile

Thank you everyone, poets and writers, readers and passers-by who have inspired me to keep blogging along.

To close the year I have a poem by my great-niece that is full, appropriately, of wonder and joy:

wen the snow is drop in,

it is lite,

the snow it is litlee

drop in drop in

it is like the sky is cumin undun,

frowin snowballs,

making a snowman today.

Ffion Richards, age 5

I wish you all a lovely holiday and a happy and healthy 2011 full of wonder and joy.

A River of Stones: National Small Stone Month January 2011

2010-12-21T10:41:00.000+01:00

Fiona Robyn

The dynamic Fiona Robyn, creator of a small stone and a handful of stones is dircting this fabulous project, NaSmaStoMo, to encourage as many people as possible to write a small stone every day during January. What's a small stone? This is what she says:

What is a small stone?

A small stone is a polished moment of paying proper attention. You can see many fine examples at our sister blogzine, a handful of stones.

Why would you want to join in?

Because choosing something to write about every day will help you to connect with yourselves, with others, and with the world. It will help you to love everything you see - the light and the dark, the happy and the sad, the beautiful and the ugly.

You don't have to be a 'writer' to get involved. The PROCESS of paying attention is what's important. I'd especially like 'writers' and 'non-writers' to get involved. If you'd rather not publish your small stones on a blog, you can write them in a note-book. It could change your entire year...

For more information about joining the project, and getting a badge for your blog or website, visit a river of stones. I can't think of a better way to start the year so I'll be taking part and posting my own small stones on my haiku and haibun blog an open field.

I believe...

2010-12-19T18:29:00.000+01:00

I believe that the best poetry looks at the world from a slant point of view. If, as poets, we approach a subject straight on, talk directly about our ideas and feelings, we can risk being overly sentimental or didactic. And no one really enjoys reading things that either make us feel like a voyeur or someone on the receiving end of a finger wagging lesson.

Emily Dickinson sums up this idea up:

Emily Dickinson

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—

Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

I like that line: The Truth must dazzle gradually.

And that's exactly how I feel about the following poem by Michael Blumenthal:

What I Believe

I believe there is no justice,

but that cottongrass and bunchberry
grow on the mountain.

I believe that a scorpion's sting
will kill a man,
but that his wife will remarry.

I believe that, the older we get,
the weaker the body,
but the stronger the soul.

I believe that if you roll over at night
in an empty bed,
the air consoles you.

I believe that no one is spared
the darkness,
and no one gets all of it.

I believe we all drown eventually
in a sea of our making,
but that the land belongs to someone else.

I believe in destiny.
And I believe in free will.

I believe that, when all
the clocks break,
time goes on without them.

And I believe that whatever
pulls us under,
will do so gently

so as not to disturb anyone,
so as not to interfere
with what we believe in.

Michael Blumenthal
from Days We Would Rather Know
Pleasure Boat Studio, 2005

Can you write a 'credo' poem, a list things you, or someone else, believes in, but make that poem speak to other people too? I think part of this poem's success is how it shifts between points of view, from I to you to we. What matters to the narrator becomes something that matters to the reader (the personal you), to the world in general (the universal you), and to all of us (we).

I like how concrete images are set against abstract ideas: justice/cottongrass and bunchberry, clocks break/time goes on. I like the swings between opposites: weaker/stronger, sea/land. And I like how the rhythm of the poem changes with the enjambement (the read on lines) between the last two stanzas, how it gently extends our reading, and thus our understanding.

There's a quiet voice behind the poem, but it has authority too. The use of the first person, the I, often has that effect.

I suggest a poem of no more than 40 lines that draws on some of the craft choices in this poem: juxtaposition of image and idea, shifts between opposites, and a deliberate choice of point/s of view.

Write well.
L x

Above us, Below us, Behind us, Ahead of us

2010-12-09T19:02:00.000+01:00

I recently read this poem by Ted Kooser:

Flying at Night

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies

like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,

some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,

tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.

I'm astonished at his comparison of a dying galaxy with a snowflake falling on water. That juxtaposition of something so huge with something so small wouldn't have occurred to me, but it works so well, doesn't it? And the image acts as a vehicle for so many ideas too: how small we are, how everything is connected, how even 'death' can be beautiful. I'm sure there are more.

My poetry prompt is to write a poem, not using the 'Above/Below' structure that Kooser uses, but 'Behind/Ahead' instead. So, you can talk about the past/future, or something more concrete like the sea and the mountains, or something closer to you like the kitchen and the bedroom. It's up to you.

BUT your poem can only be 8 lines long, the same length as Kooser's, and it should compare, or juxtapose, two things that we might not expect to see connected.

Write well.
L

Poetry Prompt: Treasures

2010-11-20T13:56:00.000+01:00

Not the pirate and island kind we usually associate with the word. But the things you would grab from your 'hypothetically' burning home before you ran out of the door. They can only be what you can carry in two hands, or in your pockets; things that won't slow you down or hinder your escape. Things that will comfort you when you realise you have lost everything else.

Let's not include people or pets; let's take it as a given that everyone you love is safe.

So, you have less that two minutes before you have to be out of that door. What calls to you?

They can be real things, or they can be invented or imaginary. They can be concrete or abstract. What matters is not factual accuracy but emotional truth. We must make our readers FEEL that it IS true.

Write well.

L x

The Hungry Writer

2010-11-07T17:29:00.003+01:00

I've started a new writing project based around food - you can take a look at the most recent blog posts here. Although, as Molly Wizenberg says, Food is never just food. It's also a way of getting at something else: who we are, who we have been, and who we want to be. If you'd like to keep in touch with my weekly memoirs, you can become a Hungry Reader and follow the blog.

So, I wondered if you'd like to join me for a bite to eat, or something to drink, for this prompt?

Free write around the idea of food. Think of the food of your childhood, your likes and dislikes now, about the first ever restaurant meal you ate. What are the colours of food that attract you? Do you remember the first time you got drunk? Have you ever been in a situation where someone has fed you, or provided you with food because you were unable to do it for yourself? Have you ever grown your own food? Can you describe the first sip of cold beer, or champagne, or hot tea? Let your mind have a free rein - allow it to take you wherever it wants to go.

I never expected to write the following poem. I don't know where it came from... I definitely don't know a man like this! But the images arose during a free writing session. It's good to surprise ourselves sometimes.

Fat

Skinny women order his fish
fried in low-cholesterol oil,
batter as crisp and sheer as glass.
He teases them about goose-fat,
the slip of it, how it dimples
under fingertips, at the right point
of tenderness how it gives
to the tip of a tongue.

He dreams of women
whose flesh parts for him
like lard – their overlap, the spill
and pleat of them, his hands skating
over their suety gleam, their excess
rejoicing under his palms.

from Learning How to Fall

Write well.
L x

Of Love and Hope

2010-11-03T21:20:00.001+01:00

Before I post a prompt this month I wanted to let everyone know about Of Love and Hope, an anthology of poetry in aid of Breakthrough Breast Cancer and Breast Cancer Care, two UK charities working to prevent and treat the disease as well as support families who have been affected by it. I'm proud to have a poem in here alongside an astonishing list of internationally known writers and celebrities.

I was 30 when I had breast cancer and fortunate enough to find it in the early stages. But so many women have fought much harder battles than I ever had to.

The anthology is available through Amazon in the UK (click on the title above), from branches of Blackwell's and Waterstone's, and also directly from the editor, Deborah Gaye: deborahgaye at blueyonder dot co dot uk (replacing at and dot with the appropriate symbols).

Thank you.

L
x

Startled by the visible

2010-10-26T15:45:00.001+02:00

Dannie Abse, born in 1923, is a poet, playwright and novelist whose literary career spans half a century, the first of his fourteen collections of poetry, After Every Green Thing, being published in 1948, his latest selected appearing in 2009. In between Abse has established himself as one of Britain's leading and most popular poets. Brought up in Cardiff, Abse draws on both his Welsh roots and Jewish inheritance but is above all famous for combining the twin careers of author and doctor. The influence of the latter on the former is considerable and has helped develop his unique identity in British poetry.

You can listen to him reading some of his poems here.

The following poem appeared in Poems on the Underground 10.

Mysteries

At night, I do not know who I am
when I dream, when I am sleeping.

Awakened, I hold my breath and listen:
a thumbnail scratches the other side of the wall.

At midday, I enter a sunlit room
to observe the lamplight on for no reason.

I should know by now that few octaves can be heard,
that a vision dies from being too long stared at;

that the whole of recorded history even
is but a little gossip in a great silence;

that a magnesium flash cannot illumine,
for one single moment, the invisible.

I do not complain. I start with the visible
and am startled by the visible.

Dannie Abse

Read the poem several times over the course of the next couple of days. Don't write anything down at first. After a fourth or fifth reading, make free notes of your responses: direct comments about the poem, what the poem made you think about, what it made you feel. Anything at all that comes into your head, but try and include at least one memory the poem made you think about

Put these notes away for a further couple of days before reading back over them and beginning to draft your own poem.

Write well.
L x

What's in a name?

2010-10-13T15:03:00.000+02:00

Who gave you your name?
Do you know what it means?
Do you like it?
If your name was a shape, what shape would it be?
Would you prefer to have a different name? Why?
Have you ever been called by another name, or names?
Do different people have different names for you?
If your name was the title of a novel what kind of novel would it be? What would the main character be like?
Have you ever had any nick-names?

Free write around your name for about 15 minutes, responding to these questions and anything else that enters your mind.

Let the writing sit for a couple of days, without reading back over it, though continue to think and make notes about any other ideas that come to you.

When you're ready, read back over all your notes to see if you have the material for a poem.

You'll see a poem of mine below, written some years ago when I was alone in a small spanish village on a writing retreat.

Write well.
L x

How Are You?

After twelve anonymous days
I walk into the supermercado and someone says
my name and my heart
ignites with something that feels like heat, light.

No matter that rain is pushing its cold smoke
down the mountains,
that I can smell it coming,
the damp evening air sticking to my skin.

What more is there? My place in the world
confirmed, still hearing it in the street –
Lynne! Que tal? Like a blessing. And I am fine.
I am so fine.

Lynne Rees

A quickie - 10/10/10 becomes a poem

2010-10-10T17:27:00.001+02:00

By way of haiku writers Nora Wood, Dennis Chibi, and Curtis Dunlap: Today is 10/10/10. Can you write a quick three line poem of 10 syllables each? Here's mine:

All day this odd malaise accompanied
by the first true autumn day - grey sky, wind.
A day for spiced tea, letters to old friends

L x

National Poetry Day UK - write about 'home' today

2010-10-07T10:57:00.000+02:00

It's National Poetry Day in the UK today, Thursday 7th October 2010, and the theme is 'Home'.

We looked at this theme from a different point of view in Where Home is so today, let's write about what home really is for us, now, right at this moment.

Is it a place, a person, a feeling, a memory, an animal, a dream, a bowl of porridge, a tree, a book? The list is endless, and we could spend days, weeks and months making notes and working on drafts. But...

...the challenge is to write something today, to contribute to National Poetry Day, and post it today. Of course these will be early drafts and should not be scrutinised with a critical eye. And they won't be. But they will be evidence of our desire to write and be part of a wider writing community.

So post away, as many as you want. Let's celebrate!
L x

Write a poem...

2010-09-26T20:26:00.000+02:00

... of 5 lines where the middle line acts as a pivot, i.e. it can be read in conjunction with the first two lines, or it can be read as the line that leads into the final two. Here are a couple of examples of mine:

What it might be called

Two women
are sharing a beach picnic
in January
I breathe in the cold sea-air
and what I want to call, love.

First published in Modern English Tanka 2007

How the story ends

In myths the lost girl
is saved by a prince or eaten
in the forest
I will cut off my hair
paint my nails red.

First published in Simply Haiku Fall 2007

I've been reading Jane Hirshfield who says in an essay about short poems:
Whole fields of saffron pollen can be held in a one-ounce glass vial, acres of lavender in a few drops of oil. The same distillations occur in certain poems’ words.

Good luck!
L x

These are the women

2010-09-11T12:04:00.000+02:00

Today's prompt was inspired by this beautiful poem by Eleanor Lerman that appeared on the Writers' Almanac on 8th September 2010 and which she has generously allowed us to reproduce here:

Small Talk

It is a mild day in the suburbs
Windy, a little gray. If there is
sunlight, it enters through the
kitchen window and spreads
itself, thin as a napkin, beside
the coffee cup, pie on a plate

What am I describing?
I am describing a dream
in which nobody has died

These are our mothers:
your mother and mine
It is an empty day; everyone
else is gone. Our mothers
are sitting in red chairs
that look like metal hearts
and they are smoking
Your mother is wearing
sandals and a skirt. My
mother is thinking about
dinner. The bread, the meat

Later, there will be
no reason to remember
this, so remember it
now: a safe day. Time
passes into dim history.

And we are their babies
sleeping in the folds of
the wind. Whatever our
chances, these are the
women. Such small talk
before life begins.

from The Sensual World Re-Emerges (2010)
available from Sarabande Books
and Amazon UK

I love how the detail in this poem recreates both scene and character, how the poet invites us (our mothers, we are their babies) to share this moment of reflection, a time before loss, a time before whatever is going to happen, happens.

I like how the poem expores how life is made up of 'small talk', or ordinary things: a kitchen window, pie on a plate, a cigarette, even decisions about what to make for dinner, yet this attention applied to them helps us recognize their worth, how they are the building blocks of our lives.

I am also incredibly moved by the insight in:

......... Whatever our
chances, these are the
women.

There's an acceptance in these lines I find both comforting and liberating to read. These are our mothers. Whatever comes later does not change that moment.

I look forward to reading your 'mother' poems. Here's one of mine, a haibun (a blend of prose and haiku poetry) that I didn't intend to be about my mother until I came to the end. And that surprised me.

Fast Train

When the 17.22 heads out of Victoria and begins to pick up speed I start thinking about seatbelts, or the absence of seatbelts, and how in an emergency I might be thrown onto the woman opposite, cracking my head against hers, or puncturing my face on a corner of her open hardback book. But then I notice her breasts which are packed beneath a bib of pink frills, her tiered paisley skirt rumpling in waves over plump knees, her curly hair the colour of hazelnuts, her milky skin, which takes me back to her breasts which are pendulous, generous. And I’ve forgotten about seatbelts, as I shift my knees to one side to get a view of her feet, the shoes she’s wearing which I know will make all the difference to whether she’ll scream and push me away as I fall, or cradle my face away from her book, those wonderful breasts receiving me like a tumbled duvet.

not knowing
how to hold her
my mother at eighty

First published in Frogpond Volume XXX Number 3
And in dust of summers (Red Moon Press 2008)

I'm away at the Ghent Haiku Festival in Belgium for the next 10 days so, write well, and I'll speak to you when I get back.

Changes

2010-09-01T10:20:00.000+02:00

Welcome back to the new look AppleHouse after the summer break, or welcome if you're joining us for the first time. I look forward to reading your poetry and comments in response to my posts over the next few months.

When I was a kid September marked the end of summer. Some years there was no perceptible change in the weather but returning to school removed the freedom of the previous months and a prescribed timetable took its place, as well as a different dress-code, and social pattern too: school friends weren't always the same as holiday friends.

Now, apart from this post to AppleHouse, there's really nothing in my life that makes the beginning of this month any different from the last week in August. Ot at least that's what it seems like on the surface.

In fact, if I look closely, there are differences:

1. The humidity level has suddenly dropped. The wooden doors to the pantry and the kitchen cupboard have shrunk back to their usual size and now close properly.

2. The days are still gloriously sunny but the nights are cooler and I wake in the early morning to pull the quilt up from the bottom of the bed, dislodging the cat.

3. The grass is regrowing. There are thick, healthy green tufts spreading across the baldness of July and August.

4. I find myself looking at sweaters and boots and imagine wearing them in the not too distant future.

5. Red wine seems more palatable rather than the chilled rosé.

6. There are less people walking up and down ave des Chênes, to and from the beach. And the voices of those who are tend to be Italian, or Scandinavian, or British.

7. Today I packed up the buckets and spades, the inflatable blue deer, the beach parasol and straw mats from under the terrace and put them in the garage. We have no guests due to arrive, no children with sandy toes and flushed cheeks clutching pebbles.

So I have said 'goodbye' to lots of things, and 'hello' to others. I suppose we do this often in our lives when seasons, circumstances and relationships change. Perhaps it might be an idea to write about one of those times or about goodbyes and hellos in general.

Of course, 'goodbyes' to things and people don't necessarily have to be sad. And 'hellos' aren't always joyous either. But they can be what we expect too.

Write a poem that explores 'what has left and what has arrived'.

It's good to be back.
L x

AppleHouse has a new frock...

2010-08-28T20:26:00.001+02:00

... and I hope you like it. People keep telling me that it's better to read white text on a black background, although I'm not quite sure why!

If anyone has any response to the design and layout before we re-launch next week, then please feel free to comment.

Speak soon.
Lynne x

Time for 'une petite pause'

2010-07-16T17:10:00.000+02:00

The thermometer is rising and guests are on the brink of arriving. It's that time of year filled with the scents of suntan lotion, chicken roasting on the spit, and watermelon...the time for wet footprints and sand on the kitchen floor... for bottles of chilled rose beading with condensation.

I'll be busy with family and friends from this weekend until the beginning of September, so I wish you all a wonderful summer, not too much sunburn or too much rain, and lazy evenings, and some days too, filled with laughter and the voices of good friends.

I'll speak to everyone in September.
L x

It's that time of year... for plums

2010-07-07T22:50:00.002+02:00

...and also when the French start to wind down, kick back, and close up : ))

July and August tend to be the months when you don't try and get anything done. And here on the Cote d'Azur your life is definitely more stress free if you can stay off the roads as much as possible.

Last year AppleHouse Poetry closed up for two months too, but my spell in Wales in June ate up so much time that I'd rather keep going for at least part of July. I hope you'll keep going with me.

Recently, I've been reading William Carlos Williams' poem, 'This Is Just to Say'. It's a poem I know well, but each time I've re-read it, it's felt as enigmatic, and as inviting, as the first time.

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Maybe I've become re-enchanted by this poem because we have a wild and very old plum tree in our garden here. The fruit is small, but incredibly juicy. You can not bite into them without an explosion!

Let's use the Williams' poem as a model, and let's 'talk back' to it.

1. Keep the same title: This is just to say...
2. Write three stanzas of 4 lines
3. The first two stanzas state something that has happened
4. The third stanza offers a response of some kind.

What do you think? I hope you'll join in. I'm already thinking of something I want to write.

Looking forward to reading your poems.
L x

Where Home Is

2010-06-23T14:28:00.000+02:00

Well, I'm back in France where my house is, where I currently live, where I love and am loved, so this is home. But Wales is home too, at least the concrete aspects of it: the pebble-dash house where I was born, the sea, my dad's vegetable garden, my mam's walnut wardrobes and dressing table that she's had since she was married in 1952. My family. The way people in South Wales use the word 'bad' for 'ill', as in 'she's been bad since last week'. It is so nurturing to feel connected to people and place.

But it is possible to lose our sense of connection even if the people and places in our lives remain unchanged. Perhaps we change. The way we feel. The way we think. Perhaps our view of our world becomes warped. Sometimes that sense of disconnection is temporary. Other times it represents the need for a fundamental change in our life.

Can you write about not being 'at home', either in a literal or metaphorical sense?

Here's a poem I wrote a few years ago.

Where Home Is

A woman stands at the side of the road
staring up at the night sky. Questions
about desire have made her stop her car:

how it’s born, how to tend it, how it dies.
She has read of people killing for it.
She knows a woman who almost disappeared

under its weight. Places return to her –
Belleville, Sweetwater: beauty, something
to quench the heat of her tongue.

It is June, the nights are warm.
One star shines too close to the moon.
She is still so far away from home.

Runner-up,Yorkshire Open Poetry Competition 2006
Published in Equinox July 2007

Thank you for waiting for my return.
Write well.
L x

BIG Thanks

2010-05-31T11:38:00.000+02:00

Thanks so much to everyone who posted their 'three things' over the last week. I've been inspired by reading your words, by the inherent power that resides in the precise observation of everyday things, events, memories. I know I'll be reading them all again.

I have to take a break from AppleHouse for a couple of weeks. My poor Mam, in Wales, has had a fall and a hip replacement and isn't doing too well in hosiptal and I'm flying back on 1st June to see her and hopefully be there for when she goes home where I can look after her for a little while. I'm not sure how long I'll be away but hope to be back posting and chatting to you all by the middle of June.

Keep writing well.
L x

7 Day Writing Challenge - Day 7

2010-05-30T11:04:00.000+02:00

Already at the end? The week's gone toooo quick : )

1. tree roots push up the tarmac on Chemin de Sable we have things to say

2. I buy strawberries, but not any strawberries. I buy Gariguette strawberries whose scent can be detected through the cellophane wrapper. A barquette of red hearts, small, soft, aromatic. And the lady at the greengrocer's gives me a rose - Bonne fete, she says. It is Mothers' Day this weekend, and even though I am no-one's mother I still get a long stemmed, peach rose. Strawberries and roses. Kindness and sunshine.

2. We go to Juan les Pins tonight and drink rose wine at the bar and eat the little plates of amuse-guele that the Bar Crystal serves with drinks between 6 and 8pm: green olive tapenade, pizza squares, plates that keep coming, and coming, because Lionel, the barman, likes us. So many plates we need no dinner.

7 Day Writing Challenge - Day 6

2010-05-29T11:34:00.000+02:00

1. When Magda speaks she tosses her long, blonde hair, primps her lips, tightens her eyes. Today she wears a fuscia pink shirt. Yesterday, a black Calvin Klein t-shirt. Her eyelids are perfectly outlined, an exquisite tick upwards at the corners. I can't help staring when she runs one hand through her hair, when she brings both of them together in front of her on the table. Still. When she looks at me I feel she is really listening to what I have to say.

2. grass cuttings and puddles over the paving stones the cat flicks its tail

3. On her 6th day in hospital my mother sounds tired but positive. 'No more sentiment,' she says, 'I'm getting rid of the walnut headboard and footboard and buying an electric bed.' The boards match the his and her wardrobes and dressing table, the bedroom suite she's had since she was married in 1952. The suite that I have always known in this house where I was born. The wood is smooth, rich and dark, the grain patterned with knots and whorls. My parents' bedroom is at the back of the house and in my memory it is always in shade. Walking in there made me feel like whispering.

7 Day Writing Challenge - Day 5

2010-05-28T11:53:00.000+02:00

Sorry, I'm a bit late today...

5th Day. Nearly there. Don't give up : )

1. A few red poppies between the leylandai at the edge of the garden, and one, completely on its own, in the centre of the lawn, though by the time I walk out to look at it close up the petals have been blown from the stem, or brushed off by the cat, and scattered in the grass. Such things that are beautiful but so quickly disappear.

2. Trim the fat from a magret de canard, score the skin in a diamond pattern, press crushed green and black peppercorns, crushed coriander and cardamom seeds into the flesh. Cook in a hot skillet, skin side down to burn off the fat, for 6 minutes, then turn and cook for 6, 7 or 8 minutes depending on whether you like it rare, medium, or well done. Let it rest on a wooden board for 5 minutes. Fry thin slices of apple in a small amount of butter for 1 or 2 minutes on each side. By now the juices will have started to ooze from the duck. Slice the duck thinly and fan out on the cooked apple. It was delicieux.

3. an armful of fresh laundry these days I feel I am waiting for things to happen

7 Day Writing Challenge - Day 4

2010-05-27T08:07:00.000+02:00

About the challenge.

1. Our first two, tiny, green, plum tomatoes on the plant in the pot where a line of ants tracks to, twice a day, from the rosemary bush at the edge of the terrace, across the paving stones, under the wooden slatted sunbed, and over the cat, if she happens to be sitting there, in the shade.

2. On my desk: a pension letter from HSBC, a black and white photograph of me at 22, an open diary with my brother's birthday marked on 31 May, a calculator, a mobile phone and charger, my glasses, the latest copy of the Frogpond journal, two retractable pencils whose rubber ends have gone hard, a cup of coffee, lukewarm, a list of french and english vocabulary for my hairdresser, a note of the hospital phone number and address where my mam is recovering after a fall and hip replacement, magnetic letters from which I've made the word 'MUCH'.

3. Lots of people keep their shutters closed here, not just at night, or when they're out, or away from home, but during the day when they're there. I think of secrets, of drawers with keys. Of looking over shoulders. Once, at a neighbour's drinks party, a woman got up and left when favourable talk of Marechal Petain began.

7 Day Writing Challenge - Day 3

2010-05-26T09:52:00.000+02:00

Read about the challenge here.

1. The cat refuses to walk in her new red harness that straps around her neck and also around her body so she can't slip the lead when she travels back to the UK in the car. But the red is such a good colour against her black coat, or 'robe' as her french passport says - 'robe noir'. It makes me think of Coco Chanel and her little black dress.

2. A salad of rocket and fresh pear and soft blue cheese on a white china plate with two slices of crusty pain de campagne.

3. Wind rushes through the house today, doors slam from the pantry to the attic, windows, left ajar, shake and rattle. Outside, the palm tree fronds bounce and thrash, the sun umbrella flaps like a prehistoric green bird.

7 Day Writing Challenge - Day 2

2010-05-25T12:13:00.000+02:00

You can read about the challenge here.

1. A man wearing an apron and a crash helmet runs from the bakery with a brown paper sack of baguettes and jumps on his scooter.

2. Some distance away but what must be a large crab scuttling across the lowest stone step on the quay at Le Bleu Royale restaurant and plopping into a sparkling sea.

3. The sound of my husband having breakfast in the kitchen downstairs, a spoon clattering against a china bowl, the bowl knocking against the wooden table. A chair scraped back.

7 Day Writing Challenge - Day 1

2010-05-24T08:45:00.000+02:00

If you haven't already, you can read about the challenge here.

1. The tiny asian boy, who can't be more than two, standing in my line at the Intermarche supermarket, is chewing on the crusty end of a baguette broken off by his older brother whose arms are filled with bread.

2. Outside the cafe/boulangerie at L'Ilette a woman quickly slides the skinny strap of her red t-shirt back up onto her pale shoulder.

3. The fresh, emerald green growth at the tips of the young leylandai curl over, too slight to bear their own weight yet.

Another 7 Day Writing Challenge. Are you up for it?

2010-05-23T17:42:00.000+02:00

Those of you relatively new to AppleHouse might not know of two previous 7 Day Writing Challenges, here and here. They weren't as arduous as they might sound! And I'd like to try something similar for the next 7 days. I hope you'll join in and post something for as many of the 7 days as you can.

I've been reading Kim Addonizio's Ordinary-Genius and one of her chapters is called 'three observations'. She says, 'Training our awareness is important, not only for writing, but for experiencing life moment to moment.' She talks about how easily her thoughts can turn on themselves, 'like a cat licking and licking its fur, obsessively grooming', and how making herself really 'see' three things, in detail, helps her tune into the world.

So, each day for the next 7 days, until the end of May, I'm going to post 3 things I have observed, and I invite you to post yours. We may not write a poem in response to our observations, but an image may stick and turn up in one at some point. But even if we end up using nothing we've written, there is no waste in writing because we have been engaged in the act that connects us to the world. There is nothing wasteful about that.

If you do decide to join in and you don't already follow the blog, then it might help if you do become a follower, as then you'll receive an email notification of my daily post.

I'm going to remove the spam protector (Comment Moderation) for the next week too. It seems that the mysterious japanese spammer has left the building, and I much prefer the spontaneity of being able to see your posts immediately on the blog.

Look out for the first of 7 posts tomorrow, Monday 24th May.

Write well.
L x

What will be done

2010-05-15T12:13:00.001+02:00

I really look forward to receiving the daily emails from The Writer's Almanac. Not just for the poems, because sometimes I'm not that taken with the choice, but also for the news items. If you don't subscribe then you might want to.

The second prompt of the month is in response to Betsy Johnson-Miller's poem, 'What a mouth will do', that arrived this morning:

What a mouth will do

Kiss
the impossible hope that love
will last. An end to looking
as if for one glove.

Swallow the sweet
lust of fruit—one way a body

can be pleased.

Tell others why.

Tell others nothing.

Feel the tongue and how
goodness
and mercy can flow
like a river from the north

or how it can rage as only rage can

and know there isn't much to say
after that.

Betsy Johnson-Miller
from Rain When You Want Rain
© Mayapple Press, 2010

My prompt it to write about 'Hands'. You might want to use a similar title. 'What hands will do', or you might choose your own direction and title.

Here's a poem of mine that explores 'hands' but, for me, acts as an extended metaphor for trying to rid myself of something.

Letting The Side Down

I am making a map of my left hand –
drawing a line past my wrist, around
the starburst of thumb and fingers.
I circle in nails, mark the flex of tendons,
folds of knuckles, each freckle and vein.

I want to have something to remember it by –
this useless hand that cannot write, or eat
alone, or catch a ball, this hand that shrinks
from meeting people, that sometimes hides
beneath tables and curls to a limp fist.

It is less than my left foot, my left eye;
at least they have a go at competing
with the right; this hand doesn’t even try,
it trembles with the grip of scissors,
fumbles at doors, a full cup.

Stupid hand - I’ll be better off without it.
Look how confidently the right grips
a knife, not a tremor, not even when
steel breaks skin; how unselfishly
it wraps itself around the stump.

Lynne Rees
from Learning How to Fall

Write well.
L x

Who are we?

2010-05-05T15:29:00.000+02:00

This is an exercise that the wonderful Catherine Smith set during one of the original AppleHouse Poetry Workshops in the apple orchard studio at my home in the UK. It's a challenge, you'll see that. But it does force you to make every word count, to choose language that can suggest the most.

Epilogue

I have crossed an ocean
I have lost my tongue
from the root of the old one
a new one has sprung

Grace Nichols

Is this the poet's epilogue to her life so far, as she stands in it and looks back? It also reads as a very compact biography.

Can you write your biography with similar economy?

Let's be kind to ourselves and allow another two lines, if we need them.

Write well.
L x

Praise and Celebration

2010-04-17T20:47:00.000+02:00

During a poetry module at the University of Kent I used to set an exercise to write a string of curses and/or a string of praises about something/someone. Most people preferred the curses because they found that their praising tended to sound too sickly, cliched, overstated, or even ironic. Perhaps it is harder to be genuinely and overtly kind than to pick a fight : )

However the following poet has no problem with praise.

Beach Attitudes

Blessed is the beach, survivor of tides.

And blessed the litter of crown conchs and pen shells, the dead
blue crab in all its electric raiment.

Blessed the nunneries of skimmers,
scuttering and rising, wheeling and falling and settling, ruffling
their red and black-and-white habits.

And blessed be the pacemakers and the peacemakers,

the slow striders, the arthritic joggers, scarred and bent under
their histories, for they're here at last by the sunlit sea.

Blessed Peoria and Manhattan, Ottowa and Green Bay, Pittsburgh,
Dresden.

And blessed their children.

And blessed the lovers for they shall have one perfect day.

Blessed be the dolphin out beyond the furthest buoy,
slaughtering the bright leapers,
for they shall have full bellies.

Blessed, too, the cormorant and the osprey and the pelican
for they are the cherubim and seraphim and archangel.

And blessed be the gull, open throated, screeching, scolding
me to my face,

for he shall have his own place returned to him.
And the glossy lip of the long wave shall have the last kiss.

Robert Dana
from The Other © Anhinga Press, 2008

I like how everything is blessed, what we might naturally find beautiful and inspiring (dolphins), what we might normally dismiss (the dead blue crab), and what might normally irritate us (a screeching gull). I like the place-names that anchor the poem to a real world.

Some readers might find the personnification in the last line a little too sweet (the wave kissing the beach) but I don't mind it here. Perhaps because of the language - glossy lip, which, for me, is a fresh and vivid image for a wave. And perhaps because the poem has engaged me so fully that I'm happy for the poet to take a risk with an edge of sentiment at the end.

Can you write a praise poem about a particular aspect of the world? You can use Robert Dana's structure of 'Blessed be...' if you like, or find your own.

Try to let the reader experience your 'world' - let them see and smell and touch and taste and hear it. Let them celebrate it with you.

A maximum of 30 lines please, and I'll comment on up to 2 poems.

Write well.
L x

Informal analysis of Jack Gilbert's 'Hunger'

2010-04-13T11:27:00.000+02:00

The title of the poem is abstract but it carries an emotional weight – I immediately think of starvation, of need, while my initial response to the poem on the page, the vertical shape of it, and the repetitions my eye picks up even before reading it from line to line, suggests a journey of some urgency.

The first line with its hard consonants and continuous present tense also communicates and reinforces this sense of urgency – we have come across the poet/narrator in the middle of an action, no preliminary details, no introduction, we’re as involved as he is in this activity of ‘digging’, a verb which we might not initially associate with eating, or taking apart, a piece of fruit.

As I continue on with the poem I begin to realise that this poem isn’t about eating, at least not in the traditional sense. It is more about searching for something, about discovery. The present participles continue - digging, scraping, refusing, digging, turning, feeling, getting, going, not taking, getting – and they’re reminiscent of the language we’d naturally associate with an archaeological dig, the hard earth being dug away, the soft earth cleared, going below the surface. We even have images of clogged nails and going deeper that resonate further with the idea of the possible discovery of something valuable that lies under the earth.

I actually begin to feel quite physically uncomfortable while reading the poem. Eating an apple is generally a pleasant experience, yet here I’m affected by the discomfort of the clogged nails, then the poet’s explicit statement of the sweet juice running over his hands unpleasantly. He compounds this with the violent word gouge, the sensation of the juice as sticky, and the skin itching. We’re made to feel that this is ‘dirty’ work, and also ‘hands on’ work – something we have to get involved with at a physical level.

It’s also interesting how the poem moves from pleasant images of the moon colour of the flesh and the smell and memories associated with a sweet apple, and works towards less appealing images of chunks and stickiness and the hard wooden part. Though the hardness, or difficulty, doesn’t stop him. He goes beyond that to reach the seeds, an image that suggests the beginnings of something new, of growth, of hope, at which point we might have expected him to stop. Because if this poem is working as an extended metaphor, then surely reaching the ‘heart’ of something, the seeds at the centre of the apple, would be the desired destination, wouldn’t it?

But no, the poet urges going on and getting beyond the seeds. The line that interrupts these two phrases (Not taking anyone’s word for it.) is the only line in the poem that shifts us away from the concrete physical activity, yet it also uses the language of metaphor. We don’t literally ‘take’ someone’s word. We ‘accept’ intellectually or emotionally what other people tell us.

It seems to me that the poet here might be referring to the idea of ‘received learning’. I can’t help but associate the image of the apple/fruit with the Bible story of Adam and Eve and its issues of obedience and the poem has given me a greater insight into how I’ve previously interpreted that myth.

I’ve always seen the judgement of Eve as unfair. Why shouldn’t she have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil if she wanted to. Why should limitations be imposed upon her by an omniscient (and very male) god?

With the benefit of reading this poem I’m now considering an alternative interpretation. Eve’s taking of the fruit could symbolise a refusal to think for herself. The easy option of eating the fruit from a tree already in existence could represent her ‘eating’ someone else’s knowledge in favour of developing her own and learning ‘the hard way’ from her own experiences.

Gilbert uses the apple as a symbol for something that holds much more inside of itself, more than we already know. We might be told it’s an apple and it’s good for us, but if we stopped to think for ourselves we might look at it again, and end up going beyond the flesh and the juice (the easy parts of learning) to the wooden core and find the seeds. But to stop at the seeds isn’t enough either. They still represent the seeds of someone else’s knowledge. To be really authentic we need to get beyond those too, and become the creator of our own seeds.

As a poet I feel the poem works as a very successful metaphor for the writing process during which I do dig, and refuse to accept the first ideas and images that surface (moon flesh and sweet juice) in order to discover what lies beneath them.

It’s true that the images I first write down can end up being unpleasantly sweet - too easy or cliched. And, at times, the editing process does feel like gouging out chunks. And it can make me feel physically uncomfortable – itchy – as if the writing is still at a stage of being prickly and uncomfortable. And the wooden part feels very true too! All writers have the experience of hitting a ‘wall’ – the feeling that we might not get through this barrier.

The image of the seeds threw up a feeling of paradox for me at first – isn’t this what I start with? The seeds of fleeting ideas and images that arrive suddenly, or are noticed arbitrarily? The poem makes me wonder about my creative process – that before the seeds can arrive I have to cultivate or prepare the ground. In this way I’m going beyond the seeds. I am responsible for creating a place for those ideas and images to be received. For me this is a state of mind that’s receptive and open, rather than resistant to change and possibilities.

Gilbert’s apparently simple structure of repeated grammatical phrases draws us into the poem. The simplicity of the language allows the poem to be accessible on the surface level yet the familiar metaphorical verbs take us to a deeper level very quickly so the idea of the poem as an extended metaphor is realised without any real effort.

The repeated present participles also act as rhyme within the poem – they have a unifying effect that pulls each action into another, almost drags the reader along with their insistent patterning.

His line breaks generally follow the pattern of natural breath pauses, as if we are too having to stop for breath at each stage of this activity. Sometimes the images are confined to single end-stopped line, as in moon color and smell and memories and this feels appropriate for the pause we might have to make to consider the loveliness of what we are refusing before making ourselves go on.

On other occasions the images extend over two lines for clarity as different senses are dealt with – the implied taste of sweet juice followed by the sensation of touch: running along my hands. There is, I feel, a particularly successful line break with on my wrists. The skin itching/ which connects the two images and allows us to read the line backwards and forwards, a technique that also acts as a unifying tool, uniting each step of this process.

However, the last five lines of the poem are all end-stopped lines. They add a rhythm and weight to the seriousness of each statement. They reinforce the idea of any process being constructed around steps. And the last line with its image of the unknown – going beyond the seeds – avoids closing the poem down, leaves it open for the reader to ponder the possibilities that might exist there.

I admire the deceptive simplicity of this poem. It uses straightforward concrete language to express something profound. And the universality of the language makes the poem open to interpretation in all sorts of processes – not just the creative arts. The use of repetition is both a warning and an encouragement. It says: this will not be easy, it will take hard work, yet it’s worth working towards an absolute beginning, something that will be your own hard-earned creation.

© Lynne Rees 2010

What's in a poem?

2010-04-04T11:00:00.000+02:00

How does a poem work on us? The best poems can make us think and feel. They can transport us into our own memories. They can suggest ideas and ask us to reflect and ponder. But how? And how can we make our own poems do that to readers too?

We have to learn to articulate our craft choices. We need to know why we choose a particular form or shape. Why we break lines at certain points. Why we choose one word or image over another. And all those choices need to relate to what the poem is about as a whole, its emotional tone, its intention. The HOW and the WHAT of a poem are inextricably linked.

This critical process isn't a part of first drafts though. That's the time to play, let the creative mind express itself freely and not impose any restrictions and what we want to say and how we want to say it. It's in the subsequent shaping and editing that we need to make conscious choices.

One of the best ways to improve our own conscious critical process is to look at other poets' poems and try to identify what craft choices they have made. It's not necessary to know anything about the poet themselves to do this. All we need is the poem on the page in front of us, several readings over a number of days to let the poem work on us, and then a couple of sessions looking more carefully at the poem and making notes.

If anyone would like to give this a go, try it with the poem below.

Hunger

Digging into the apple
with my thumbs.
Scraping out the clogged nails
and digging deeper.
Refusing the moon color.
Refusing the smell and memories.
Digging in with the sweet juice
running along my hands unpleasantly.
Refusing the sweetness.
Turning my hands to gouge out chunks.
Feeling the juice sticky
on my wrists. The skin itching.
Getting to the wooden part.
Getting to the seeds.
Going on.
Not taking anyone’s word for it.
Getting beyond the seeds.

Jack Gilbert

1. Print the poem and read it ALOUD once or twice a day over a period of 5 to 7 days WITHOUT making notes. This is thinking time.
2. Once this time has elapsed look at the poem again. What does it make you think and feel? Is there an overall theme? What choices do you think the poet might have made during the creation of this poem? The following aspects might be worth looking at:
a. The title
b. The shape of the poem on the page - its overall shape and where line breaks have been made
c. Some of the language choices the poet has made
d. The repetition in the poem.
d. The poem's dramatic development, i.e. how it begins and where it ends and what happens in between

If you'd like to post your comments, please feel free to do so, but please keep them to less than 500 words. Thank you.

A slightly different prompt to start the month and I hope you enjoy it. Jack Gilbert's poem is a favourite of mine.

L x

End at the End

2010-03-18T12:28:00.000+01:00

Not a very snappy title for a prompt but I was playing against the title of a previous prompt 'Begin at the Beginning'... and because I mentioned in another post how difficult it can be to end a poem. Too direct an ending can lock out the reader, prevent them from entering and making the poem their own. Or worse, come across as didactic, or too telling, and no-one wants a finger wagged in their face at the end of a poem. But too oblique an ending can have the reader turning the page wondering if the last few lines have been left off! I've done that myself, while reading poems and stories!

So, what you'll find below is a list of last lines, or the two final lines of a poem you will write. It's a bit like going on a journey and having a destination in mind but not having any idea where you need to start from :)

As you can see, all the endings are taken from published poems but I suggest you write your own before checking to see how the original poet arrived there.

I can comment on upto 2 poems you may choose to post, and I recommend that they're no longer than 40 lines. That's a standard length in poetry competitions so it's not a bad idea to work with that every now and again.

Here are the endings:

1. until one world rings truer than the other.
(Michael Donaghy, 'My Flu')

2. the corpses of angels.
(Carolyn Forche, 'Selective Service')

3. from the root of the old one/ a new one has sprung.
(Grace Nichols, 'Epilogue')

4. you have no place in the world.
(Louise Gluck, 'Mirror Image')

5. I touch/ a flake of his skin.
(Pamela Gillilan, 'Four Years')

6. That astounded me most of all.
(Stephen Dunn, 'Each from Different Heights')

Write well.
L x

Capturing a ritual

2010-03-08T17:01:00.000+01:00

The following poem is taken from 'Poems on the Underground' :

Loving the Rituals

Loving the rituals that keep men close,
Nature created means for friends apart:

pen, paper, ink, the alphabet,
signs for the distant and disconsolate heart.

Palladas (4th Century AD)
trans. by Tony Harrison

The ritual of letter writing might not be as prevalent in our lives as it was, but we have other rituals, don't we? We might call them habits... although if there's something comforting in them, an aspect of the activity that gives us something - pleasure, delight, comfort - then perhaps we should refer to them as rituals.

At the risk of sounding ridiculous, I've got into the habit of picking up my cat in the mornings and looking out of the window with her. We look at birds, clouds, the neighbours leaving for work. I can feel her heartbeat under my palm. I feel very still.

I have a ritual of never leaving the house without kissing my husband goodbye.

When he worked as a professional entertainer and got home in the early hours of the morning I used to leave out a china mug, with the teabag and sugar already in it, and the kettle ready to boil.

I think we need rituals of some kind in our life, and while they can be religious or spiritual, I don't believe they necessarily have to be in order to connect us to ourselves or other people, or entities.

Can you capture a ritual in 4 lines? Well, perhaps 8 at the most : ) Aim for concentration.

I'll work on one myself.

Write well.
L x

Begin at the Beginning

2010-03-01T13:57:00.000+01:00

Thanks to Erin for suggesting a poetry prompt where we start with a title and see what evolves. And in honour of St. David's Day (Patron Saint of Wales), today 1st March, here are some titles from poems written by Welsh poets during the last 510 years : )

Choose one, and run with it. Or choose several and do some relays. And share your final draft with us, please.

The Angry Summer
Blood Donor
Day Trip
Every Single Night
Foal
Getting It Wrong Again
Interlude
Let's Hear It for Goliath
My Grandfather and His Apple Tree (perhaps change apple-tree to something else?)
Sliding
Thoughts on Happiness
X-Ray

Write well.
L x

February Rain

2010-02-19T12:44:00.002+01:00

We've had a pretty wet winter here on the Cote d'Azur. And just when I think it's over (yesterday was delivered into blue skies and sunshine and 15 degrees) it starts again. Fine rain, but so much of it that it's like pushing through a curtain.

During the first ever writing course I went on (Poetry and Rock-Climbing, I kid you not!, at Ty Newydd in North Wales) we were asked to write down all the different words and phrases we knew of to describe rain...

...drizzle, shower, flurry, patter, picking with rain (that's South Wales), deluge, driving rain, squall, monsoon, drenching rain, soaking rain, torrential rain, cloudburst, bucketing down...

I'm sure you could go on. So please do go on. And on.

Read about rain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain

Google for images about rain. I love this one.

And then think about and write in response to the following:
1. What colours and emotions do you associate with rain?
2. What memories emerge when you think about rain?

I've just remembered a trip to Paris a few years ago and it started to rain when we were still 20 minutes from the hotel. Monsoon-like rain that rose in waves from the gutters as the cars passed. You can only get so wet. After that it doesn't matter.

I look forward to reading your rainy poems, celebrations, memories, complaints, elegies. All of them.

Lynne x

Rain

Rain is the sky’s way of forgetting.
Mist drags over your face. You can only see
the gaps between trees, can’t make yourself small enough
to hide from yourself and the windows
keep letting in rain.

Write ‘cunt’
in salt on the kitchen table, imagine him
slipping into the hills’ slatey folds, the earth
closing over.

Rain for days.
The river rocked with stones, the bridge carved
with someone else’s name. You walk the lanes
sit on gates and watch sheep
mist shrouding the peaks
the sky trying to forget.

from Learning How to Fall.

Spam Protection

2010-02-12T19:09:00.000+01:00

Hello everyone - a brief post to let you know that I'm going to enable 'Comment Moderation' on the blog because of some recent comments in Japanese! I hope I'm not maligning a very keen japanese poet : ) but I don't think so. And it takes me some time to delete them all too.

This means that when you comment it won't appear straight away, but I'll act as promptly as I can to publish them.

Thanks for your understanding. I dislike constraints but sometimes they're inevitable.

L x

Happy February, and here's a poem for you

2010-02-02T11:06:00.002+01:00

We can't like every poem we read, or are shown. Some poetry irritates me. Some poetry seems to have nothing to say to me. But as a writer of poetry I do try and articulate why a poem isn't working for me (in relation to craft choices rather than subject matter) and it's often the case that after taking a poem apart, looking at its language, its form, its dramatic development, and trusting in the sincerity of the author, I actually end up liking it more! But not always : )

But what is truly wonderful is coming across a poem that seems to speak to me before I have even thought about engaging my critical mind. A poem that really does enter the body first, that somehow feels true and honest and essential, even if I don't fully understand it.

The poem below had that effect on me. It might not have the same effect on you, but however you respond, try and use it as a model for a poem of your own. By 'model', I mean try copying some of the syntactical and language choices; try and use the engine of this poem to drive your own.

I had a go myself and you can read my unfinished draft below.

Small Town

You know.
The light on upstairs
before four every morning. The man
asleep every night before eight.
What programs they watch. Who
traded cars, what keeps the town
moving.
The town knows. You
know. You've known for years over
drugstore coffee. Who hurts, who
loves.
Why, today, in the house
two down from the church, people
you know cannot stop weeping.

Philip Booth
from Lifelines: Selected Poems 1950-1999
Penguin Group, 1999

And here's my attempt:

Home

We know.
Sunlight moves
across the face of the house
between 9 and 3. The growl
of the postman’s Vesper.
Tuesday night episodes
of CSI with a break for tea.
Paving slabs wait to be laid.
The Bleu Lavande is cut
50/50 with an oil-based white.
The air is warming by degrees
despite the unexpected snow
this week. The Mairie have said
‘yes’. Twenty five years
have passed since we met.
Tears. Laughter.
These last two years have not
been easy. The jasmine hedge
will start to flower soon.
The days will lengthen. We know
we will grow old together.

Write well. I look forward to reading your poems.
L x

January Poetry Prompt - What will we remember

2010-01-18T19:19:00.004+01:00

I find the following poem by Gary Snyder incredibly beautiful. I think that the stasis of it, a frozen past moment captured in the photo, is part of that, as is the rhetorical question in the first line. In haiku writing there's a term 'wabi sabi' which means, as far as I can be sure, a combination of beauty and loss. Memories often have that quality.

Looking at Pictures to Be Put Away

Who was this girl
In her white night gown
Clutching a pair of jeans

On a foggy redwood deck.
She looks up at me tender,
Calm, surprised,

What will we remember
Bodied thick with food and lovers
After twenty years.

Gary Snyder
from The Back Country
© New Directions, 1957

I wrote a poem for my grand-daughter called 'What we remember' parallelling my childhood memories with what I imagined hers might be:

What We Remember
(For Summer)

How Dadcu wore his belt buckled at the back, pulled
so tight around his skinny waist the tops of his trousers

fluted like piecrust; how he swallowed raw eggs, breaking
the yolk in the chamber of his throat; how the fire roared

behind yesterday’s paper stretched across its mouth
and Granny melted cheese in dishes on the grate,

kept an open tin of condensed milk for tea. The lumpy
featherbed, the musty wardrobe, a chocolate coloured fur coat.

And what will she remember? Her granddad throwing her
in the air, the fat china woman on the edge of my bath,

the window at floor level in her bedroom looking down
on red tiled roofs, sheep in long grass, the apple orchard?

Or the day we smeared our faces with burnt cork
and she said You are my best friend. But no,

that is what I’ll remember, and how she asked
Why do you make that funny face when you look in the mirror?

Perhaps these two poems will help inspire a poem of your own about one or several past memories.

Free write in the first instance from the phrase - What will we remember... then, when and if you feel you're ready to start shaping your words into a poem, think about form.

Short lines or long lines?
One block, or couplets, or tercets or quatrains?

Experiment with different shapes and try and identify the form that suits what you're saying, the emotional tone of the poem. And, if you'd like to, when you post your poem, add a few notes about why you've chosen that particular form.

Write well.
Lynne x

Happy New Year

2010-01-10T17:31:00.002+01:00

... to everyone who follows this blog, or has just come across it accidentally. I hope you enjoy what AppleHouse will deliver during 2010.

It's too early in the year to apply too much pressure to ourselves, so let's take it easy as far as writing a poem is concerned, and just play with lists (a little like the 2010 Wishlist, but with a different focus). Anything we write feeds into our writing practice... except emails! They just make us feel as if we're writing : )

Write a list of 10 things you have never done. Be playful, bizarre, honest, emotional, intellectual... don't try and control your writing.

Then close the list with something you have done during the course of your life, beginning with the phrase 'But once I...'. Describe this thing in detail, what happened, how you felt.

Here's my own spontaneous attempt. I look forward to reading yours.

I have never travelled across a desert.
I have never been lost.
I have never learned to tango
or how to fly a plane
or how to tell when a man is lying.
I have never left the house and kept on walking for days.
I have never lied about my age.
I have never tried to tightrope walk
or hang upside down from an acrobat’s bar.
I have never slept on sand.
But once, in a dream, I flew,
my feet lifting from the ground the way
a balloon rises in the air
and in those moments before I woke
I was incredible.

Write well.
Lynne

2010 Wishlist

2009-12-31T17:54:00.001+01:00

I'm not a fan of New Year Resolutions. They reek of being good and behaving yourself! And no one should have that kind of pressure.

But a wishlist is something else. What would you like to see in 2010? For yourself? I played a wishlist game, quite a few years ago now, during a Christmas Party at the University of Kent... collecting wishes from as many people as possible and then assembling them into a poem. You can read it below.

One of my wishes listed in the poem was 'a house by the sea', and, now I live in one! Maybe writing things down can make them come true : )

So, post your wishlists here. Have a wonderful New Year's Eve and wishing you all the good things you need in 2010.

Lynne x

What We Want
The School of English Christmas Wish-List 2002

We want flats in London, shepherds’ huts,
houses by the sea. We want the smell of pine trees,
lavender and roses on pillows, fresh white sheets.
We want a cure for snoring, more hours to sleep,
more laughing dreams. We want convertibles
and window seats, movie posters and movie passes,
crystals and mirrors, ironwork in unexpected places.
We want unlined hands, half-moons in our nails,
smooth feet. We want good foot-balling knees
and J. Lo’s bum, faces that don’t give us away,
20/20 vision, hair that goes white not grey, bodies
of Greek gods that won’t shrink as we get older.
We want to be piano players, Salsa dancers,
lucky in cards and Lottery winners. We want
our books to write themselves, win contracts,
to say goodbye to QA and PhDs. We want to write
shining essays. And can we have more chairs,
more money, full time jobs? Can we please
abolish Comedy & Tragedy? And have gardens
that look after themselves, magic fireplaces
that light every morning and clean away at night,
clothes that don’t need ironing - purple shoes,
tight red leather skirts. We want cranks
to open our minds wider, devices to translate
what people really mean, to listen harder.
We want our futures to survive their construction,
for our children to get their degrees, to find
themselves, their places in this world,
and return to us safe and in health. We want
to remember them at their best. And for all of us
to be happy cats and birds, to drink good wine
and have the space and time to watch trees
change slowly. And if magic really does exist –
for Spurs to win the title, Liverpool the League,
for Bob Marley to rise and give us babies.
And less fear, yes less of that, no wars,
and more joy, freedom and peace, and peace
of mind, yes, much, much more of that.

December Poetry Prompt 1 - Keeping it Anonymous

2009-12-19T11:45:00.000+01:00

A Scandal in the Suburbs

We had to have him put away,
For what if he'd grown vicious?
To play faith healer, give away
Stale bread and stinking fishes!
His soapbox preaching set the tongues
Of all the neighbors going.
Odd stuff: how lilies never spin
And birds don't bother sowing.
Why, bums were coming to the door—
His pockets had no bottom—
And then-the foot-wash from that whore!
We signed. They came and got him.

X.J. Kennedy
In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus: New and Selected Poems, 1955–2007
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.

XJ Kennedy's poems is a rant, and a defense, and a contemporary spin on the biblical story. I like how no names are mentioned but we are absolutely sure of what we're reading because of certain details: bread, fishes, lilies, footwash...

Can you write a poem about a famous, or infamous person, that does not mention them by name, either in the title or the text, but still make it clear who the poem is about?

To make things a little more challenging, try and keep the poem to a maximum of 12 lines too.

You can either write the poem in the voice of your chosen character, or adopt the voice of an 'observer' as in the case of this poem.

And remember, a poem needs to be 'about' something too. It needs to be the vehicle for an idea, or ideas. 'A Scandal in the Suburbs' is not just about the Jesus story, it makes me think about how easily we judge people, how we find ways to defend our actions. It's about fear of difference. Perhaps of change.

Good luck and write well. And enjoy the holidays.
Lynne
x

December Poetry Prompt 1 - Food

2009-12-10T16:25:00.006+01:00

Food is on my mind. Not surprisingly since I seem to have eaten non-stop for the last three weeks! I always end up eating more when I'm doing less - lazing about on the beach and loitering in bookshops must use up far more energy than I realise : )

Although, to be honest, food is never very far from my mind. When I was teaching at the University of Kent, in the UK, one student remarked that I had never managed to last a whole seminar without mentioning food or drink. In the context of the seminar's theme, that is... But it's true that my novel, The Oven House, is full of foodie bits - coffee shops, poached salmon, kettle crisps, home-made soup, pesto sauce, ice-cream...

I also know that food plays an important part in my memories, from my dad's vegetable garden, to the tin of condensed milk my granny kept on the kitchen table to add to her tea, to the frozen peas I tried to outstare every time my mother put them on my plate and said, 'Eat them. They're good for you.'

Brainstorm for food associated with your childhood. Food you liked and food you hated. Food and drink that you weren't allowed to have. Treats. Special occasions. Fears and rewards.

Here's an old poem of mine to start you off.

Bean Picking
for my father

When the jungle of leaves
dropped their scarlet blossoms
we waited for them to grow
at first invisible against the green

but in August we pushed
between the rows with a colander
and your orders to leave the small
and not to miss the big.

The coarse underside of leaves
grazed our bare shoulders, sun
dribbled through the overlaps.
We smelt hot, uncooked beans

and tugged them from their stalks,
some solid bodied, plumping
along their length, others curling
like witches’ fingernails.

In the kitchen you topped, tailed,
and pared the spines away.
Just a plate of these’ll do me you used to say,
with butter and a drop of pepper.

At the end of Summer
you saved twelve maybe twenty
moist red hearts
to harden in brown paper.

Write well.
Lynne
x

November Poetry Prompt - The Sacred

2009-11-17T12:05:00.004+01:00

I like Stephen Dunn’s poetry a lot, and the following one, The Sacred, is no exception.

The Sacred

After the teacher asked if anyone had
.....a sacred place
and the students fidgeted and shrank

in their chairs, the most serious of them all
.....said it was his car,
being in it alone, his tape deck playing

things he'd chosen, and others knew the truth
.....had been spoken
and began speaking about their rooms,

their hiding places, but the car kept coming up,
.....the car in motion,
music filling it, and sometimes one other person

who understood the bright altar of the dashboard
.....and how far away
a car could take him from the need

to speak, or to answer, the key
.....in having a key
and putting it in, and going.

Stephen Dunn
from Between Angels
© W.W. Norton & Company, 1989

I like it for what it says: how a teacher encourages students to share intimate thoughts, (good teachers are gifts we need to celebrate) and how the familiar (a car) is elevated to the sacred.

And I like it for its form: how the line breaks introduce exquisite hesitancies before we read over to find out what the next line/stanza will reveal; how they put emotional pressure on ordinary language and draw attention to what is being said, and what is being suggested.

It’s a joy to read aloud. Try it, and introduce a slight pause, as if you’re catching your breath, at the end of each line where there’s no punctuation.

The second poetry prompt/challenge for November is to write a poem about a sacred place. But… the place has to be an ordinary place, a place that you wouldn’t normally associate with grandeur… so, no cathedrals, mountain tops, or star-watching in the open air.

The second limitation is that I’d like you to write the poem in the 3rd person – he/she/ they. Now, you might still decide to write about yourself, and if you do you might find that the 3rd person actually gives you a little more freedom to ‘observe’ yourself. Or you might choose someone else’s life and sacred place to write about, and that’s good too: to step outside our own concerns and explore what the world might mean to someone else.

You won’t be hearing from me for three weeks, as I’m taking a holiday, but I’m already looking forward to reading your poems when I get back on 8th December.

Write well.
Lynne
x

November Poetry Prompt - Fire

2009-11-04T11:22:00.003+01:00

Fire. It's the time of year that we light them. In our houses and in our gardens. November 5th, in the UK, is Bonfire Night, and fire becomes an entertainment.

Fire keeps us warm. It comforts. It can even, for some people, ward away danger. But fire destroys too - homes, land, lives. But it also purifies.

We can control fire to a certain degree, perhaps like the way we can only control our own passions and emotions to a certain degree, unless we're particularly self-contained. But does everyone have a breaking point? A point when the 'fire' will escape and engulf someone or something? A point when the 'fire' will clear the way forward, or destroy what is in its path.

Free write around 'Fire'. What are the emotions, images, memories, songs, phrases ... anything at all... that spring spontaneously to mind? Follow the thread of one that feels the strongest.

I look forward to reading your poems, and here's one of mine from my collection, Learning How to Fall:

Spontaneous

It happened at the Turkey Farm.
Witnesses heard a woomph like someone
stepping smartly on a bag of air and when
they got there, found the charred remains
of cloth, some bones. And a man
in Minnesota had done it on his deck at home,
mid-morning, the temperature only 54
but the Budweiser in his glass was warm.

If she could do at will what all these people
did in error, she reckoned on a money-spinner,
all sorts of side-lines – self-help books like
How to Find the Warmth Within. She’d start
small, spend days imagining the glow
of an orange ball inside her chest. The weeks
focusing on the hairs along her arm until
she could feel and smell the heat, hear

a crack like a mosquito on an outside light.
She knew she was on a roll. Soon she’d be
hiring halls to accommodate the crowds.
She’d open with a nest of leaves transformed
to a smouldering pyre on her palm,
and build to her grand finale – the full
combust, walls racketing with applause,
the diminishing calls of Encore!

Lynne Rees

Free Writing Ideas

2009-10-19T10:19:00.005+02:00

Write about five different things, one for each sense - sight, sound, touch, taste and smell - that you have experienced in the previous 24 hours.

We don’t have to search far for material to write about – it’s constantly around us, we just have to notice it, and remember to make a record of it.

Paint the picture/moment/event in words - really see (re-experience) all the details.

Give yourself 10 to 20 mins for each one. Start writing and make yourself continue until your chosen time is up.

You could do one a day for the next five days. Don't worry about reading back over them. Let them sit in your notebook for a while.

And for a little inspiration, here are some delicious excerpts from Charles Simic's notebook:

Seeing is determined not by the eye but by the clarity of my consciousness. Most of the time the eyes see nothing.

My soul is constituted of thousands of images I cannot erase. Everything I remember vividly from a fly on a wall in Belgrade to some street in San Francisco early one morning. I'm a grainy old, often silent, often flickering film.

Two young birch trees wrestling in the wind. The crow in the snow refereeing.

The day I went to make funeral arrangements for my father-in-law, I caught a glimpse of the mortician's wife nursing the mortician's new daughter. Her breasts were swollen huge with milk.

The restaurant is Greek. The waiter's name is Socrates, so Plato must be in the kitchen, and Aristotle is the fellow studying a racing form at the cash register. Today's special, grilled calamari with fresh parsley, garlic, and olive oil.

From The Poet's Notebook, Excerpts From The Notebooks Of 26 American Poets, WW Norton New York 1995.

Write well.

Happy October

2009-10-06T13:31:00.005+02:00

Autumn slips in very slowly, and rather late in the year, in the South of France. The two plane trees in the garden are still sprouting and green, although the small oak has decided that it's time to turn. People are still swimming during the day, but the nights are cooler and we tend to move indoors by around 8.30 rather than our usual 11.

I suppose when we think of autumn we tend to think of change: shorter days, trees becoming bare, fires lit for the first time in months. It's a season of things slowing down.

When I lived in the UK I used to look forward to putting on a thick sweater. There's something quite lovely about being encased in thick wool or cotton when it's cold and blustery outside.

The following poem is from a sequence commissioned by Medway Maritime Hospital to accompany a series of artworks you can still see in the Fracture Clinic Waiting Room - 'The Four Seasons' by Tony Crosse.

Autumn

This is the gathering –
fields grubbed bare
leaf, flower, seed
settled to mulch.
Winds rattle
the garden’s ghosts.

We light bonfires
to tempt the sun
but the day’s too full
of doubt. At night
the fox’s scream –
the first cold snap.

The four panels are abstract representations of the seasons and are made entirely from materials used in the Clinic:

Here are some ideas for a poem:

1. Write a haiku with an autumn 'kigo' (season word). There's a two part seminar on writing haiku here.

2. Write about slowness. Research the word first for associated ideas.

3. Find an artwork that you really like and write in response to it. Here's a post that appeared earlier in this blog.

I'm in the UK between 7th and 17th October (and I'm really looking forward to catching up with a few of you) so I'll comment on any poems posted when I get back.

Write well.
Lynne x

Listening to Prevert

2009-09-28T18:53:00.004+02:00

La meilleure façon de ne pas avancer est de suivre une idée fixe. The best way not to move forward is to pursue a fixed idea.
Jaques Prévert

I did have a pretty fixed idea to change the way AppleHouse worked and spent quite a lot of time researching online forums, getting as far as setting up three different ones but then deleting them in turn when they weren't as user friendly as this site, or were plagued by adverts.

It seemed that I couldn't find the right format for what I had in mind, so I've decided to drop my 'fixed idea', give the old AppleHouse blog a new look and carry on posting at least one exercise and prompt every month and commenting on as many of your poems as I can.

I hope you'll join me here for another AppleHouse season. And here's the first prompt for Autumn:

I discovered the poetry of Kay Ryan a few years ago, but only recently realised that she's the current US Poet Laureate. Her poems remind me of pressure cookers - tight forms that hold their words under such tension. One of her ways of working is to take a familiar expression, a cliche, or even an abstract concept and 'unpick' it, or explore it, in a poem. I really do recommend her work to you. Here's one example:

The Best of It

However carved up
or pared down we get,
we keep on making
the best of it as though
it doesn’t matter that
our acre’s down to
a square foot. As
though our garden
could be one bean
and we’d rejoice if
it flourishes, as
though one bean
could nourish us.

My challenge to you is to write a poem around one of the following expressions or cliches:

Putting on a brave face
At the end of the day
All's well that ends well (I know Shakespeare wasn't 'cliche' in his time but this one has been done to death!)
One volunteer is better than ten pressed men
Pushing your luck
Under the weather

Try free-writing to get under the skin of the expression you choose. Dig deep. Find out what it's hiding. Go to a place where the words have more resonance than their familiar usage.

Good luck.

Back briefly...

2009-09-05T10:36:00.004+02:00

Did you all have a good summer? The heatwave here reached an almost unbearable level last week but a Mistral for two solid days (that snapped the spokes on the garden parasol!) has blown it away and we're back to a loveliness of blue and warmth and light breeze, a special combination that I've only ever experienced on this coast.

Thanks to everyone who expressed an interest in the subscription only poetry seminars. I'm still working on the fine details and will post all the information here once I've finished.

In the meantime here's something to ponder and perhaps let a poem emerge from your ponderings.

Getting rid of things:
1) Does it have significant sentimental value?
2) Would the memory of the time/place/person it represents be enough?
3) Does it have functional value (i.e. do I use it more than once a month)?
4) Would I be able to get by without it?

These are questions I asked myself before moving in an attempt to de-clutter and avoid packing up a load of rubbish! And they worked... to a certain extent. But here are some more questions:

What's the difference between the things we can get by without and the things that are essential to our well-being? Is functional value more important than beauty? Are we frightened of memories fading? Can we measure and compare the depth of our feelings and emotions towards different people/things?

Feel free to post any responses.
Lynne x

News

2009-07-01T11:43:00.004+02:00

Hello everyone - many thanks to you all for contributing so enthusiastically to the haiku seminars last month.

Here are a couple I wrote during the course of the month:

early breakfast
the sweet flesh
of a freestone peach

longest day
the sound of salsa
from the beach

I think the first one needs some editing - it's not quite tight enough, not quite saying what I want it to. It could be that 'sweet flesh' is too sensuous and takes me away from the ideas behind 'early' and 'free'. Any ideas, please post them!

As last year, AppleHouse will take a break during July and August, and will probably take on a different incarnation from September.

I enjoyed the haiku seminars so much and it reminded me how teaching poetry and sharing my insights into the writing process has informed my life for so long. And I've missed that over the last year or so, since moving to Antibes and becoming an amateur builder!

What I'm planning to do is to set up an online poetry course which people will be able to subscribe to. If you think you might be interested then please let me know by emailing me at lynne@lynnerees.co.uk.

It seems that my offer of a creative 'life writing' course here in Antibes is also coming to fruition, so once again, I'll be regularly involved with other writers. I'm looking forward to it.

I hope you keep writing haiku through the summer - although the best thing is not to think about 'writing' haiku. Just take notes of the things around you, brief thoughts, memories. Then, when you have a few relaxed moments, look over them and see how they might fit together.

I'll be in touch.
Lynne
x

writing haiku, Part 2 of 2

2009-06-22T16:08:00.004+02:00

What an amazing response to the first haiku seminar and prompt. You’ve all re-inspired me too and once again I find myself making notes for haiku as well as ‘seeing’ fragments of them throughout the day... just like you, Kay.

The second part of the seminar will ask you to think about writing haiku in a different format, but before we move on to that, let’s just recap on some general aspects of writing haiku:

Economy:
say no more than is absolutely necessary; question the role of every word.
Simplicity:
avoid overstatement, decorative language, explanations.
Significance:
use concrete imagery that is capable of suggesting more than its literal meaning; allow meaning and idea to emerge from the details.
Authenticity:
write from your own experience, your insights, observations, memories.

‘Light touch’ is a good expression to keep in mind as an overall guide to writing haiku - with language, punctuation (is it really needed?) and the effects of line-break.

However, you won’t have to worry about line break in this half of the seminar as we’ll be looking at one line haiku, or single sentence haiku.

Take a look at this one by Jim Kacian, a master of the one line haiku:

a last glint of sunlight from each polished headstone

(originally published by White Lotus, Winter 2006)

When I read this haiku the language propels me (albeit gently) from the beginning to the end of the line. There’s no sense of pause within the line and the image, although divided into two parts (sunlight and gravestone) is all of one thing. It’s the kind of scene that we notice in a split second, with no sense of division, no conscious realisation that we’re aware of the sunlight before we notice it glinting against the stone. A moment perfectly captured.

This ‘oneness’ is what makes it, for me, an effective one line haiku.

Now take a look at another one by w.f. owen:

spring rain drips from the still naked tree

This can be read in two parts:

spring
rain drips from the still naked tree

or as a single sentence with ‘spring rain’ as the subject and ‘drips’ as the verb. And it can also be read with a pause after ‘spring rain’, with drips acting as a noun. But the overall image still feels contained within a single theme. There’s no strong juxtaposition that we were exploring in the phrase and fragment structure.

Here’s one of mine that was published on tiny words last year:

all this green forgiving the rain

I enjoyed playing with different pauses in this haiku: after ‘all this’, or ‘all this green’, or even, ‘all this green forgiving’, but I also wanted the reader to have a single experience of rain and spring time, to be submerged in a single experience, so the one line haiku was a better option than splitting into two or three lines that would direct the reader where to pause.

So, to recap on these one line haiku:

propulsion: language that drives you to the end of the line with the single line seeming essential to what the haiku is saying, what it has captured.
OR
multi-reading: pauses that are not marked through punctuation but which can be applied at different points in the line to suggest different meanings and/or relationships.

You’ll notice that I haven’t attempted to interpret or suggest meaning in either Jim Kacian’s or w.f. owen’s haiku. There are things that they suggest to me but I’d prefer you to have your own responses rather than be influenced by mine.

Haiku are quiet poems and it’s true that we can sometimes feel they’re not saying much, or anything at all. That can be due to the way we read them, or the mood we read them in, or even to our expectations of what they should be doing. And sometimes, it’s just a case of a particular haiku not being the poem for us. But there are plenty more haiku that will speak to us.

I hope you enjoy playing with this form and if you can restrict yourself to posting one at a time that will make it easier for me to respond.

Looking forward to reading your work.

writing haiku - practice

2009-06-18T21:09:00.004+02:00

This is an exercise by Timothy Russell.

It's like bootcamp for haiku writers! It takes discipline. It hurts. It's frustrating. But in the end you're glad that you did it : )) Here we go:

This is a training exercise. It helps condition the muscles necessary for making haiku.

Write down what month this is.

Next to the month write another single word that names or indicates some feature of today ... sun, rain, moon, clouds, wind ...

(ME: This will be your fragment e.g. June rain, June sunrise, June haze, June roses... you get the picture.)

Now look out the window, or go outside.

Without thinking too much (or at all, if you can manage) write a short description of any detail you see (any thing and/or any action).

Look in another direction. Write a short description of any detail you see (thing and/or action).

Turn your head and write down another detail.

Do this at least 7 more times.

Really.

When you have at least ten (TEN) little descriptive phrases, none of them longer than a single short sentence, please, go to a comfortable spot and choose one of your phrases and write part of it on the line immediately beneath the line you wrote when you first started.

Write the rest of your chosen phrase on the line beneath that one.

(ME: And this will be your two line phrase.)

Skip a line.

Write down the same month and same detail of today you used on the first line.

Write part of one of the remaining phrases on the next line.

Write the rest of that phrase on the following line.

Do this until you run out of phrases.

This is only an exercise, not a test. Do not pass any judgements on yourself, on your performance, or on what you have written. Do the best you can.

November trees
shadows stretching all the way
across the lawn

November trees
a white car speeding along
the river road

Put this sheet of paper with at least ten (TEN) little balls of words out of sight. You do not need to think about them at all for a while.

Tomorrow, repeat this exercise. Completely. Don't think.

Really.

The day after tomorrow, repeat this exercise. Don't think.

On the fourth day, after you complete your exercise, take out the first sheet and read it several times (three or four is enough), and put it away.

On the fifth day, read the second sheet.

In one week, a single week, just seven days, you will have taught yourself more about haiku than it's possible for anyone else to teach you.

Really.

(ME: You can do it! Really.)

writing haiku, Part 1 of 2

2009-06-08T20:53:00.004+02:00

Something different for June: a two part seminar on a poetic genre that’s not that popular in the UK, and is often dismissed as rather lightweight. My own interest in haiku writing began a few years ago and I hope to share some of my enthusiasm with you.

Most people think of haiku as: a short poem arranged in three lines of five, seven and five syllables that has something to do with nature.

These perceptions of haiku come from certain characteristics of classical Japanese haiku that were translated into English during the 19th century. Let’s take a look at those elements:

three lines
The three lines echo the structure of traditional Japanese haiku that were written in three parts, although in Japanese these tended to be written in one vertical line. This was obviously impractical in English… so the three horizontal lines served, and still serve, as an alternative. However, there are contemporary haiku writers who write one, two and four line haiku, although let’s not step too far ahead of ourselves at this point.

syllables
The Japanese language does not have syllables that compare to English language syllables. They have ‘on’, which are closer to our idea of sounds. For example, the word haiku in Japanese has three sounds: ha/i/ku, all of which have an equal amount of weight. So when English translators took Japanese haiku, they counted the ‘sounds’ in a haiku, (some of which were not even words as we know them, but the equivalent ‘sound’ for English punctuation, like a dash or a pause or an exclamation), realised they were composed of 17 sounds, and they subsequently made the translated haiku extend to 17 English syllables. Because of this imposed syllable count, and the 19th style of language, quite a lot of these translated haiku, can feel overstated and too wordy.

A poem, regardless of its form, is a piece of writing where every word has to earn its place. In such an economic form as haiku surplus words really do draw attention to themselves and contemporary practitioners have adopted the idea of ‘free verse’ haiku that will more often than not be less than 17 syllables, sometimes as few as 6. That’s not to say that there aren’t some good haiku around that do have 17 syllables. But that’s because they need that amount of syllables to effectively say what they’re saying and not because of an insistence on the syllable count regardless of content.

nature
More specifically, traditional haiku contain a ‘seasonal’ reference or a kigo. In Japan where haiku is still written and read by millions of people, haiku are still expected to contain ‘seasonal’ references. These references are often multi-layered and contain suggestions of Japanese life, customs and history.

No such expectation is required of English language haiku, although you will find seasonal references in many as a matter of course. Some haiku poets do insist that it isn’t a haiku without a seasonal reference, however, if haiku are written out of our life experience, (the present moment or from memory), then reflections of the season, from icicles to lambs, from barbecues to autumn leaves, will inevitably find their way in.

writing haiku
Martin Lucas, in his book Stepping Stones, an anthology of haiku with commentaries, talks about English language haiku being a completely different animal to Japanese haiku. And I’m inclined to agree with him. And while it is obviously beneficial to study the history of any form, I do feel that reading and examining contemporary English language haiku is more helpful if that’s what you want to write.

The art of writing haiku is centred on simplicity:
+ Saying no more than is absolutely necessary.
+ Using language that does not rely on special effects.
+ Not imposing judgement but letting the reader come to their own conclusion.

The best way to learn about haiku is to read them. And then to write them. And one of the most accessible approaches with which to begin writing haiku is ‘phrase and fragment’ structure – or more simply put, a short bit and a longer bit.

Example 1

snowy night
sometimes you can’t be
quiet enough

John Stevenson
quiet enough

In this haiku the first line contains the fragment and the last two lines contain the phrase. The fragment is an image, and a seasonal reference to winter. The phrase is a statement.

I find it difficult to write really effective haiku that juxtapose image and statement as there’s always the danger that the statement will be too didactic, or that it will direct the reader too much towards the poet’s way of ‘seeing’ things rather than letting the reader come to his/her own conclusions and insights. The use of the 2nd person here is a good choice, I think, as it encapsulates both the poet speaking to himself, and the ‘universal’ you. In addition, the poet has captured a moment that many of us will be able to respond to. This haiku, for me, produces the ‘ah!’ of recognition, but it took this poet’s articulation of the moment to make my response fully conscious.

Example 2

family court
the lawyer’s tie lolls
against his gut

Sharon Dean

Again, the fragment precedes the phrase, yet this haiku has no seasonal reference in it and focuses on a particular aspect of the human experience. It would be easy to dismiss this haiku as purely ‘description’ but a slow and careful reading reveals its subtlety.

The expression in the first line – family court – is very familiar, but it is only when it’s isolated in a piece of art, like this, that we ‘see’ it clearly and begin to think about the conflict it contains. Family should be about love and nurture, shouldn’t it? But a court is a place of battle and dispute. With these ideas in our minds the juxtaposed image of the lawyer becomes even more distasteful: the lolling tie, combined with the soft consonants in lawyer, suggests inactivity, ineffectualness, and the further idea that the only real winners in situations like this are the lawyers.

Example 3

sprinkling her ashes
on rocks at low tide
the long walk back

This is one of mine, written for my mother-in-law. This begins with the phrase in the first two lines and ends with the fragment. There’s no strong seasonal reference but, for me, ‘low tide’ connects the human and natural worlds here, both physically and emotionally, and gives the haiku a sense of place for the reader to experience. And I consciously chose the three long syllables in the last line to underpin the emotion of the haiku.

And finally, a few other things to consider when writing haiku:
+ No titles - the haiku shouldn’t need any kind of introduction.
+ A very light touch with any ‘effects’, e.g. line break, figurative language.
+ The suggestiveness of your language – work with concrete images that are significant not just descriptive.

So, how about attempting a few haiku of your own using the phrase and fragment construction, and juxtaposing either two images, or an image and a statement? I’ll choose a selection to comment on, although if you’d rather nor receive any feedback on anything you post then please let me know.

The second part of writing haiku will appear later in the month.

Happy haiku-ing!

Lynne

May Prize Poem

2009-06-07T15:14:00.003+02:00

My two shortlisted poems for May were by Eileen Carney Hulme and Alyss Dye, both with the title of 'Life Waits Inside Us'.

One of the things I love about reading poetry is being surprised by the language or startled by an image. The damp stars in Eileen’s poem did that for me; I don’t think I’ve ever read about stars in this way.

Alice’s poem has more straightforward imagery yet it's equally as suggestive, and her use of contrast in the following lines is subtle and moving: Life is work and a day off work./ It‘s the funeral tea.

After reading both of these poems several times, I’ve decided to choose Alyss’s poem for the quiet way it reassures me that life does wait inside us, even at times when we can’t make ourselves believe it.

Congratulations, Alyss. Can you email me with your address, please?

The first of June’s prompts will follow in a couple of days.

Lynne

Life waits inside us

Life waits inside us for a ribbon to be cut.
In May, we walk round the corner
and it’s there –
ice-cream chimes,
warm pavement,
a man resting on a garden wall
with his face turned to the sun.

Life is the lottery ticket.
It is tea and toast in the recovery room.
A mistake corrected.

Life is work and a day off work.
It‘s the funeral tea.
After weeks of sleepless nights
it surprises us,
like a baby’s first smile.

Alyss Dye

May Poem Prompt 2

2009-05-25T19:42:00.004+02:00

Among the Things He Does Not Deserve

Greek olives in oil, fine beer, the respect of colleagues,
the rapt attention of an audience, pressed white shirts,
just one last-second victory, sympathy, buttons made
to resemble pearls, a pale daughter, living wages, a father
with Italian blood, pity, the miraculous reversal of time,
a benevolent god, good health, another dog, nothing
cruel and unusual, spring, forgiveness, the benefit
of the doubt, the next line, cold fingers against his chest,
rich bass notes from walnut speakers, inebriation, more ink,
a hanging curve, great art, steady rain on Sunday, the purr
of a young cat, the crab cakes at their favorite little place,
the dull pain in his head, the soft gift of her parted lips.

Dan Albergotti
from The Boatloads
BOA Editions, 2008

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I've posted 'list poems' before, so I'm sure the idea won't be new to you, but it's true that they look easier to create successfully than they actually are . We need to find the right rhythm to carry the reader through the poem, the right blend of imagery (precise or general, concrete or abstract), general comment or statement, and, at the end, the reader needs to feel as if they've been exposed to more than just a list. There might be a sense of revelation, or surprise, or an insight into someone's experience that, somehow, informs our own.

I've read Dan Albergotti's poem several times and I'm still not exactly sure of what's behind it, e.g. is the 'he' of the title the narrator speaking about himself? But that doesn't matter to me because there's so much in the poem that speaks so clearly to me.

Here are a just a couple of things that stood out for me, but I could talk about every line:

1. The rhythm in line 2 that's broken into two parts - read it aloud and hear the precision and care contained in those three one syllable wordsthe of the final image: pressed white shirts

2. the miraculous reversal of time: coming after the title, and after the reading the poem to the end, then reading this abstract image again gives me that sense of regret that I've felt now and again in my life... if only I could go back an hour, a week, a year. Has everyone felt that dread at sometime in their lives?

3. How it begins and ends with food: greek olives, crab cakes. But that's probably just me - I love reading and writing about food :)

So onto your poem. Brainstorm for a title first - really brainstorm. Use the phrase - Among the things... and see what emerges when you write freely...

Among the things:
she'd like to forget
they never said
he said he'd never do
you will never miss

That's just off the top of my head... there must be dozens and dozens more.

Choose one and see where it leads you.

And here's a list poem of mine that was published a couple of years ago in the New Welsh Review:

Olives

Plump ‘Queens’ glistening in oil,
the size of small eggs, or little

beads of green stuffed with garlic, jalapeno,
or laced with herbs and sun-dried tomato,

or the glossy black ones we ate
in Juan Carlos’ bar on Carrer d’Albet

with white anchovies and litres of sweet cava
then walked home up Via Laietana

through Eixample, up Carrer
St Juan to the apartment we rented that year,

opposite the supermercado where I bought them in tins,
con huesos, or pitted – sin

huesos, the Spanish for olive pits and bones,
as I remember us then – our bodies

slipped free from their bones, the last time
we made love, the last time we made each other come.

Lynne Rees

I hardly ever write with a regular rhyme scheme but the rhyming couplets (mostly slant rhymes) felt right for the subject matter and music of the poem.

Write well. I look forward to reading your work.

Lynne

May Poem Prompt 1

2009-05-12T14:26:00.002+02:00

Larson's Holstein Bull

Death waits inside us for a door to open.
Death is patient as a dead cat.
Death is a doorknob made of flesh.
Death is that angelic farm girl
gored by the bull on her way home
from school, crossing the pasture
for a shortcut. In the seventh grade
she couldn't read or write. She wasn't a virgin.
She was "simpleminded," we all said.
It was May, a time of lilacs and shooting stars.
She's lived in my memory for sixty years.
Death steals everything except our stories.

Jim Harrison
from In Search of Small Gods.
© Copper Canyon Press, 2009.

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The above poem arrived in my inbox courtesy of The Writer’s Almanac. Apart from being astonished at the wonderful metaphors in the first three lines, I was surprised at how ‘real’ the story of the young girl killed by the bull felt to me, even though I didn’t grow up in a rural area and have never known, or heard about, anyone who had a similar accident.

But the phrases ‘on her way home from school’ and ‘she couldn’t read or write’ and ‘she was simpleminded’ resonate with me so strongly that the girl becomes someone I feel I might have known. It’s true that simple language is capable of communicating strong emotion.

The first poem prompt for May is to write a poem modelled on Jim Harrison’s poem, i.e. create three fresh metaphors in the first three lines, BUT use the following opening phrase instead:

Life waits inside us…

Write well.
Lynne
x

April's Prize Poem

2009-05-08T13:37:00.003+02:00

Taking a look back at the prompts I posted in April, they seem to reflect my own emotional state during the month more than I realised.

There's a lot in there about hope and love, explicitly and implicitly, and these have been the two things upmost in my mind since Tony, my husband, cut his hand badly at the end of March, which meant a lot of time spent in French hospitals for micro-surgery and skin-grafts and the subsequent care.

Nearly six weeks later, the worse is over and while there'll be some permanent nerve damage, he'll be able to use the hand fully in time. Given he's an artist and musician, he's relieved to know that. As I am.

So reading your poems this month has been a delight for me, not only to have a break from the reality of life here, but to read the joy and deeply felt emotion in them.

My aplogies for digressing but my contributions felt a little underweight last month and I wanted to explain why.

And now onto April's Prize Poem. The prompt in response to the Merwin poem was a difficult one, I think. Being restrained by someone else's words can feel frustrating, but both Keith Wallis and Fran Hill managed to make another poem from Merwin's words.

It was a close call, but I've chosen Fran's poem because of the astounding way she manipulated the syntax and wove her own words between Merwin's lines and created some wonderfully effective linebreaks at the same time, e.g. the strainings of/ The heart, which, for me, increases the emotional impact with its hesitance after the preposition before reading on to the next line.

There's one suggestion I'd make with regard to the close of the poem though, and that would be to cut the last two words 'to weep'. The image of silk slipping from a hand is a powerful one, and I'd prefer to let that do its work, rather than direct the reader too explicitly.

You might remember that Fran won last month's Prize too, so many congratulations again, Fran. I'll place your prize in the post next week.

Here's Fran's poem for you to enjoy again.

They know so much more now. About
My longings, though, nothing. The strainings of
The heart. We are told: ‘But the world
Is for laughter.’ Yes, but the sullen clouds
Still seem to come, one at a time,
Hanging above my bent head. I think:
One day, one year, one season, and here
Will come floating blossoms for me. After all,
It is spring once more with its birds,
And I see that the tulips stand strong. I, though,
Nesting in the holes in the walls
Of my hiddenness, do not see that
It’s morning. Finding the first time
For joy – ah! – a long, long search for
Its light. Pretending not to move
In case it wants to come silently, as
Always. Beginning, as it goes
Slipping from my touch again, like silk, to weep.

Fran Hill

April Poetry Prompt 2

2009-04-25T11:25:00.003+02:00

Dreams and regrets.
Hopes and fears.
Passions.

Write a poem that begins with: One day I will...

Free writing, at length, first might help you unlock some deeper thoughts and ideas.

Write well.
Lynne
x

April Poetry Prompt: To This May... you add your own poem.

2009-04-18T17:30:00.005+02:00

To This May

They know so much more now about
the heart we are told but the world
still seems to come one at a time
one day one year one season and here
it is spring once more with its birds
nesting in the holes in the walls
its morning finding the first time
its light pretending not to move
always beginning as it goes

W.S. Merwin
Present Company
Copper Canyon Press, 2007

There's something so gentle and rhythmical and profound about WS Merwin's poem. I hope you enjoy it. And once you have, try the following exercise:

1. Write out the poem leaving a free line between each one.
2. Write your own lines between each of Merwin's lines, and one at the end, that link to the one before and the one after. You might have to change some syntax, fiddle with tenses etc.
3. You should end up with an 18 line poem that makes some kind of sense!
4. Leave it to one side for a few days before looking back over it to see if you think there's a poem worth keeping. Or a poem that's asking to be released.

Write well.
Lynne

March Prize Poem

2009-04-08T12:07:00.003+02:00

Last month’s posted poems were the strongest selection I’ve read since I started this blog. When we write about something that really matters to us, something we feel a strong connection with, then that authenticity travels with our words into the reader’s mind and imagination. Many thanks to everyone for the stories and incidents and reflections – I feel my life is richer for having read them all.

So, there was a lot of competition for the prize-poem slot but in the end I chose Fran Hill’s poem ‘Tree’ for its wonderful recreation of a scene and a time that, I’m sure, so many people will be able to relate to.

I love how the names anchor this poem to a real world, and the way in which the kids, probably young teenagers, interact with each other is completely convincing. There’s still an innocence here – ‘picking at grass’, ‘Opal Fruits’, making ‘faces from the broad leaves’ – yet the adult world and its responsibilities are not that far away: ‘the carpet factory’ and the women working there that they can see through the windows.

The poem ends abruptly, perhaps too abruptly for some, yet, for me, that reinforces the world of these carefree teenagers who all wave and yell at Carol’s mother but then instantly forget about her and return to the far more interesting present of Opal Fruits and snog stories.

If a poem can transport you to another world it has worked his magic. It took me to the summer of 1973, Rimmel eye-gloss, Dial-a Disc in the red phonebox on the corner, and a boy who kissed me in the bedroom of a ruined house, the old wallpaper still on the wall - pale pink roses trailing from baskets.

Congratulations, Fran. If you email me your postal address - lynne@lynnerees.co.uk - I’ll put your prize in the post.

Tree

We could fit four on that branch
if we kind of leaned against each other,
then everyone else sat underneath
picking at the grass
while we learned new words off Tony.
We could see across to the carpet factory
where women in blue overalls
walked past the windows.

Carol Price always had a snog story
and Bernard pulled Opal Fruits out of his pockets.
I’d make faces from the broad leaves
punching out eyes and mouth and spiky hair
with my long fingernails. No-one else could do it.
And holding them to my face like a mask.

We argued about how to tell the age of a tree.
Bernard said ask it
so we did and Ben fell off the branch laughing.
He landed on Simone. We all said ooooooooh,
so he snapped off a long piece of bark
and stabbed at all our hanging legs
like a madman.

We practised all Tony’s new words on him.
Then Carol spotted her mum
in the carpet factory window
and we all waved and yelled hello
but she didn’t see.

Bernard gave out more Opal Fruits.

Fran Hill

Life happens...

2009-04-05T13:41:00.003+02:00

and throws us all about sometimes. So I'll be a little late making a decision on last month's prize poem. Please bear with me. And in the meantime here are some short prompts for free writing, and possible poems:

Enter Here

Because we were small...

Things I carry

Stop this nonsense...

Something is sick...

Lynne
x

March Poetry Prompt 2 - What we didn't know then

2009-03-16T18:31:00.004+01:00

For the second of this month's writing prompts I thought we could stay with childhood, or at least locate ourselves at a specific time in our past.

This is an exercise in stages. It's probably best to attempt each stage as you read it, rather than reading ahead, but not to worry if you can't do that.

Imagine a photograph of yourself when you were much younger.

Take your time to let it appear clearly in your mind. Take a good look at it.

Begin with the phrase: In this one I am...

1.
Describe what you can SEE in the photo e.g. what you’re wearing, what you’re doing, who’s next to you, what the weather’s like, what’s behind you, anything in scene.

2.
Now describe what happened just before the photo was taken, or even earlier in the day, perhaps what you were doing, or what someone else was doing.

3.
Now use the phrase I don’t know yet... and describe something/s that will happen later in your life, that you have no knowledge of at the time of the photo.

Follow whatever comes up in your memory. If something leads you away from the photo/scene that has a lot of energy then follow it.

When you've finished writing, put your draft away for a few days before reading back over it and seeing if it can be shaped into a poem.

Good luck.

March Poetry Prompt 1 - Playtime

2009-03-09T15:27:00.003+01:00

The Writer's Almanac posted this piece of news today:

It was 50 years ago on this day, in 1959, that the Barbie doll first appeared, at the American International Toy Fair in New York City. A woman named Ruth Handler noticed that when her daughter, Barbara, played with dolls, she liked to give them adult roles. At the time, most dolls were baby dolls, and only paper dolls were made to look like adults. Ruth's husband, Elliot, was the co-founder of a small toy manufacturer named Mattel, and Ruth suggested to her husband that Mattel make an adult doll for children to play with, but he thought it would be a failure. Then, on a trip to Germany, Ruth found exactly what she had imagined: a doll called the Lilli doll. Ruth didn't realize that Lilli was based on a prostitute in a cartoon, and had been created as a toy for adults. She bought three Lilli dolls, brought them back to America, and Mattel changed the doll's design, renamed it Barbie (after Ruth's daughter), and debuted it on this day in 1959. In the last 50 years, Mattel has sold more than 1 billion Barbie dolls.

I was a Sindy girl myself. What about you? What were the toys and games of your childhood? The ones you loved (that the blue teddy with the split in his armpit, marbles, Cluedo) and the ones you disliked (Pinky & Perky wooden puppets, clackers).

Write a poem about a toy or toys, a game, or your childhood play in general.

Write well.
Lynne

February Prize Poem

2009-03-07T11:57:00.003+01:00

Thank you, everyone, for posting your poems last month, and also over the last year or so. I don't always have the time to acknowledge every post, and make individual comments, but I want you to know that I do enjoy reading them all. In retrospect it seems obvious, but I hadn't fully appreciated the difference moving to a non-english speaking country would make to me, both on a day to day basis, and as a writer. So, to open AppleHouse Poetry and read poems in english, by people I know, or am getting to know, is a joy. Really.

And now, on to last month's prize poem...

I laughed out loud at John Kenny's 'camel risen from the dead/ to haunt you in your room'! And Martin Cordrey's list of imperative verbs to extinguish the past had an accumulative energy and the interesting effect of actually reinforcing all those past events. But it's Annie Clarkson's prose poem, 'After the Accident', that I've chosen this month.

The title contributes so much to this poem: we read the poem in a very different light, aware of the narrator's need to recover, or settle, or find some kind of peace.

Despite being a list of commands, the force of the imperative is softened by the imagery in the poem, e.g. sit' and the movement of sunflowers in the wind and light, 'listen' and the sound of leaves and birdsong.

But the most surprising (and satisfying) thing about this poem, for me, was how it defied my expectations at the end with the instruction:

Imagine freeing the sunflowers from their tethers so they can experience all their sadness and pain and be truly free to move.

Poets often use Nature as a balm, as a way to comfort ourselves in the face of the harsh realities of life. And this poem begins that way, asking us to notice the natural environment and, by inference, take comfort from it. But the close of the poem turns us back onto ourselves, and asks us to recognise the need to experience 'sadness and pain' in order to be 'truly free'.

It's a beautiful and powerful poem, Annie. Congratulations. I'll put your prize in the post.

The first prompt for March will be up in a couple of days.

Lynne

After the accident

Sit in a garden chair and stare at the sunflowers all day. Notice how they bend in the wind, how they lean away from the wall, straining to escape from the string that fastens them there.

Sit outside all day and watch the way light shifts. Follow the sunflowers’ shadows as they dance on the garden wall. Learn their complex movements so you can improvise your own flamenco: an intricate dance that matches the sunflower’s passion, the emotional turn of its head in the wind.

Listen to a cante libre in the rustle of leaves and birdsong, click imaginary castanets as you stare, stare, stare at gypsy flowers expressing all the emotions you feel inside.

Imagine walking across the grass. Imagine freeing the sunflowers from their tethers so they can experience all their sadness and pain and be truly free to move.

Annie Clarkson

For more about Annie, and to read more of her poems, go to her page at Poetry pf

February Free Write...

2009-02-20T09:53:00.006+01:00

... around any, or all, of the following. Use the words or phrases as your starting points, or let them springboard you into a memory, image, or phrase of your own. But whichever you choose, try and write freely:

Keep your pen moving (even if you have to write - I don't know what to write, or What I really want to say is...)

Don't stop to change, edit or correct.

Go with what arises, even if it feels poor, ridiculous, or anxious.

Write for at least 10 minutes, 20 minutes if you have the time.

Don't read back over your writing. Not for a few days.

Perhaps you'll find the seeds of a poem when you do read it. Perhaps not. But you will feel better for having written deeply.

Prompts:

Remember the time when...

Perfect...

These are the lies I have told...

Once upon a time...

Old bones...

When I die I will...

Keys...

Write well.
Lynne x

February Poetry Prompt 1 - Imperative

2009-02-08T17:31:00.006+01:00

Prose poems are not easy to write, though there are one or two poets who have the gift of making them seem effortless. Patricia Debney is one of those poets.

How Not to Be a Woodlouse

Avoid damp, dark places. Try not to hide. Your shell is for protection only.

Seek sunshine, dry weather, fresh flowers. Develop a taste for clean, clear water, and the smooth, pungent skin of just-picked fruit.

Celebrate the lightness of your touch, the way your feathery caress holds people still.

Remember, that, like you, the world is not black and white, but made up of delicate shades of grey.

Patricia Debney
from How to be a Dragonfly
Smith Doorstop 2005

Buy now from The Book Depository

However, what I'd like to explore during this prompt is not how to write a prose poem. although the option is there, but how we might use the imperative.

The imperative is the verbal form that expresses command, entreaty, advice, exhortation, and generally exists in the 2nd person (Pick up the book - literally 'you' pick up the book) or the 1st person plural (Let's catch a train.)

We use imperatives from day to day for different reasons, e.g.
telling people what to do: Close the window.
giving instructions: Put the coin in the slot and press the red button; Add 3 oz of sugar.
giving advice: See the doctor - it's the best thing.
making recommendations: Have the fish, it’s always good here.
making offers: Have a bit more wine.

There’s an idea of authority behind the use of the imperative, but its use doesn’t imply that the addressee will succumb to the suggested authority of the speaker.

Patricia Debney's poem is a list of instructions that takes the form of an extended metaphor: we realise that these actions and insights translate to the human condition. This is persuasive, gentle advice (to the poet herself, to a specific person, or to a more general audience) that transcends any one individual's experience and addresses a collective consciousness. The use of the imperative is an essential part of the poem's effect on the reader.

However, the imperative can also be aggressive, accusatory, judgemental. It can express anger, fear. It can exhort, and even suggest hopelessness. Think of Dylan Thomas's 'Do not go gentle into that good night/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light' - a poem that asks for the impossible, that is without authority to change anything.

Flick through an anthology and look for poems that use the imperative. Try and identify:

1.the effect of the imperative (tone, mood, theme)
2. who’s speaking to whom
3. the degree of authority

and then try writing your own poem that uses the imperative either as a principal shaping tool, or at some point in the poem for a particular effect.

I look forward to reading your poems, and in the meantime here's one of mine from my collection, Learning How to Fall:

The Path

What woke you last night –
screech of owls,
the moon smothered by clouds?
This morning a fracture
of tail-feathers on the path,
wind scouring the glen,
your own breath sucked in
through clenched teeth,
and this bush choked by holly –
green berries hard as stone.
Don’t touch them. Don’t stray
into the tangled woods
with your gift of fruit,
your feet twisting in hollows.
Don’t look up
through the cracked
kaleidoscope of leaves
to see what that cawing is,
the world tipping, your heart
unsure where it belongs.
Go back.
...........At the place
you started from, an open door,
heat, a man and woman
laughing – voices
you will begin to recognise.

Lynne Rees

January Prize Poem

2009-02-06T18:09:00.003+01:00

Well, you certainly had fun with the Fibonacci poems! I loved reading them... tricky little things to make interesting though, aren’t they?

One of the difficulties I encountered was giving each line enough ‘weight’ i.e. making it interesting enough... always a problem when a line only has one word.

There’s also the issue of fluidity. Does the line break help or hinder the flow of the poem? Is it just an exercise in counting syllables or have we used the line breaks to contribute more to the poem e.g. hesitation, suspense, dramatic development?

I thought Martin Cordrey’s:

I
feel
as if
someone has
moved the horizon
and I can nibble the moon

made good use of the line breaks (the hesitations feel appropriate to the emotional mood in the first 3 lines - even if the last line is one syllable short) as did Charlotte Segaller’s:

What
flies
skywards
falls back down,
like the hilltown's sighs
in that soft grey column of rain.

The image accumulates in the first 3 lines, taking us higher, before the fall contained in the 4th line with its thump of three one syllable words.

But the poem I’ve chosen this month is Annie Clarkson’s ‘Recovery’:

Recovery

Here is a chicken coop with no hens.

A burnt out caravan, a tin of gasoline,
a rusting tap, three empty barrels,

standing by a corrugated shed.
Where I can hear a radio

an old transistor’s crackle and hiss.
Nobody is listening.

Cold mug of tea. Worn armchair
Pair of slippers with nobody to wear them.

I sit in the shed and stare out
at nothing, no life that I can see.

Brown furrows where there should be
leeks or carrots or beets.

Not even prickled bushes or squat trees.
Dried earth for miles. Grey sky.

Then, at the edge of my vision-
a dash of colour, a wingbeat.

It’s hard for me to see, but for a moment
on the rotting handle of a spade,

almost breathless, it flits from spade
to rusting tap to the edge of the door,

darts towards me and rests
this fleeting sign of life

on the arm of my chair.

Annie Clarkson

One of the things I enjoyed so much about this poem was the reward of returning to the title and it feeling so absolutely, perfectly chosen. Because of the length of the poem, and the accumulation of imagery, I’d actually forgotten about it until I reached the end and glanced back. And then came the ‘Yes!’ that we all want our readers to say and feel in response to our work.

The dash of colour, the wingbeat is nudging the narrator towards recovery, away from the emptiness, the brokenness, and the absence suggested by the powerful imagery in the poem. This is more than hope, this feels like promise.

Many congratulations, Annie. If you email me with your postal address, I’ll put your ‘prize’ in the post.

January Poetry Prompt 2 - Fibonacci Poems

2009-01-25T15:53:00.004+01:00

Science isn't my strong point (I'm still in awe of the fact that music can emerge from a thin silver disc...) so it's probably better that I direct you to the Wikipedia article on Fibonacci numbers.

Not that you have to read it to write a Fibonacci poem though. Here are the basics:

The first number of the sequence is 0, the second number is 1, and each subsequent number is equal to the sum of the previous two numbers of the sequence itself, yielding the sequence 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc.

So a Fibonnaci poem is made up of 6 lines as follows:

1 syllable
1 syllable
2 syllable
3 syllable
5 syllable
8 syllable

And what's the point, you might ask?

Well, with any strict form, it gives the left-hand side of the brain something to fuss over (order) while the right-hand side of the brain can play a little.

I played with this:

All
night
a storm
shakes the house.
This morning sunlight
through the palm crowns like a blessing.

Maybe it's not enough... too much description, not enough significance? But it's a good exercise to encourage you to choose words that really matter, words that have to try and carry as much weight and information as possible.

And I'm sure you'll come up with some better ones.

Lynne
x

January Poetry Prompt 1 - Wonderful Surprise

2009-01-14T12:25:00.004+01:00

Well, here's the first prompt for 2009. I hope you enjoy this and the ones to come during the rest of the year, and enjoy exploring what you want to say, or need to say, or even discover what you never thought you could or would say!

It might be useful if you write in response to each of these instructions before scrolling down to read the poem the exercise is inspired by. That way you'll have your own, imaginative draft to work with during your editing processes.

You don't have to restrict yourself to concrete images, but they will help a reader 'feel' the scenes you create, so think about including things you can see, touch, hear, taste, smell, as well as making direct statements. But most of all, let your imagination run riot.

1. Imagine you are standing in the middle of emptinesss.
2. Fill it with something so it is no longer empty.
3. Now start walking and see what you filled the emptiness with everywhere else you go.
4. Keep walking and seeing it around you in different locations.
5. How long will you keep on walking and seeing it?
6. You will find something else, something that creates a vivid contrast - describe it.

Here's a poem by Kelly Cherry:

Song of the Wonderful Surprise

Start with the fact of space; fill it up
with snow. There will be snow in the sky,
snow on the ground, snow in the mysterious courtyards.
You taste snow's tang, smell snow, feel snow on your face.
If you walk forever, you will not come to a place with no snow,
but one day, looking around, you will find
a green apple hanging from a spray of snow.

Kelly Cherry
from God's Loud Hand
Louisiana State University, 1993

Write well. I look forward to reading your poems.
Lynne

December Prize Poem

2009-01-09T14:22:00.005+01:00

Many congratulations to John Kenny for his sonnet, 'Peeking'.

Peeking

You always used to cheat at hide and seek,
peek between your fingers, count in tens.
I'd scuttle up the stairs, avoid the creak
on the third step, under the bed and then
wait, not giggling, stifling a cough,
not breathing even, wait to see your feet.
You'd bounce upon the bed to squash me, laugh,
then drag me by the ankles from beneath.

We haven't played that game in many years.
You hid from me, I never thought to peek.
I'd peek now, but I can't see for the tears.
I'm counting now, in years, I'll find you soon.
This is our final game of hide and seek.
You have but slipped into another room.

John Kenny

The sonnet is an ideal form for containing ‘emotion’. The control of the metre and the rhyme scheme can act as a restraint and add a sense of dignity to what is being said. Having said that, the octave in John’s sonnet is quite a light-hearted account of a childhood game, the playfulness of which is communicated through the sounds of words like peek, and giggling and squash.

But at the sonnet’s turn, as it enters the sextet, the mood changes with a simple declarative sentence that brings us up to the present day. We pause there at the line’s end, and the sentence’s end, before reading the remainder of the poem, which uses the same language from the game, yet now we’re very aware of the adult resonances, what hiding and seeking and counting mean to us as the years pass and we lose people we love.

The final line draws on a sermon given by Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918) after the death of Edward VII, and this ‘intertextuality’ serves to remind us that the human emotional experience does not change.

Congratulations, John, on a superbly constructed sonnet that carries its powerful message simply and honestly.

Send me an email with your postal address and I’ll put your ‘prize’ in the post.

Happy New Year

2009-01-02T10:45:00.003+01:00

I hope 2009 brings you everything you need for a creative year. I'm reading the December poems over the weekend so here's a little interlude for you to enjoy.

Denmark, Kangaroo, Orange

Pick a number from one to ten. Okay, now multiply that number
by nine. You will have a two-digit number. Add those two digits.
Now subtract five from that number. Take that number and find
its corresponding letter in the alphabet (1=A, 2=B, etc.). Now
think of a country that begins with that letter. Now name an
animal that begins with the last letter of the country. Finally, name
a fruit that begins with the last letter of that animal.

Kevin Griffith
from Denmark, Kangaroo, Orange
Pearl Editions 2007

I'm sure there's a logical explanation but... it's more fun not knowing!

Have a Wonderful Christmas Holiday and New Year

2008-12-20T14:05:00.002+01:00

Just a brief note to say I'm off to Chamonix in the French Alps and will be back at the end of the month. Looking forward to log fires, lovely food and wine and cosy chats, and trying to ignore the mounting hysteria as I think about ski-ing for the first time in 22 years!

Wishing you all kinds of warmth.
Lynne
x

Rewarding the Reader

2008-12-14T16:16:00.006+01:00

The main post for December is rather more open ended than you've been used to. Take a look at the following:

... a willingness to trust is the one thing the reader may give the writer for free, and it is based on nothing the writer has done but on the reader’s whole relationship with literature. But the dark side of the willingness to trust is suspicion. If the poet does not reward this trust in the first few moments of the poem, he or she is in trouble, because the longer the poet takes to reward it, then the harder it will be to keep it. Stephen Dobyns, from Best Words, Best Order

Readers tend to access poems in stages, however small and fleeting, and, at times, unconscious.

1. They notice the size and shape of the poem without reading the actual words.
2. They estimate the effort required to read it.
3. They consider the title.
4. They read the first few words, the first line.
5. They enter the whole of the poem.

It's probably after 3. that a reader begins to be nudged forward in a willingness to trust the poem and the poet, or grows more suspicious.

So what is it that a reader looks for, or expects from a poem? Here's a list of points I've identified, and how and where they might be located in a poem:

to feel: the presence of emotion
to think: the presence of ideas
to feel anchored: the physical setting
communication: language and image
music: rhythm, rhyme, patterns
tension: the form, the dramatic development, pacing

The degree that a poem is successful is the degree to which some, or all, or these elements are made important to the reader, and if we want to reward a reader, and encourage them to 'stay', then at least one must be made important as soon as possible, either in the shape on the page, or the title, or in the first line or two. Although the balance between rewarding the reader but not answering their questions too easily is sometimes difficult to find. We want to satisfy them, in some way, but also make them want more.

When you post your poems in response, perhaps you could add some brief notes about how you feel you've attempted to reward the reader, the things you consciously considered.

I'm sure you all have poems in process that you can work on but if you need a fresh start then here are some ideas:

Write about the last day of your life.
Write a poem that starts in one place and ends in another - physical, emotional, intellectual.
Write about 'home'.

November Prize Poem

2008-12-08T19:53:00.004+01:00

What I'm enjoying so much while reading your poems each month is becoming more and more familiar with your individual voices. It's difficult to say definitely and precisely what a poet's voice is, what ingredients go towards identifying and differentiating one poet from another, but the personal choices we make with regard to all of the following play a part:

language
syntax
rhythm
rhyme
form
subject matter

And it's rhythm and rhyme that, for me, are a major part of one poet's work, rhythm and rhyme that always feel well chosen for the subject matter and form and drive the poem forward without ever dominating it. It's not a formal use of a metre or rhyme scheme, more an organic development that adds a wonderful musicality to the poem and increases the reader's enjoyment. Congratulations, Linda W, for:

November rain

Fireworks soon fizzled and the month set in
to unrelenting gloom. Lights on at four pm
in library and living room. Black-bellied clouds
ached for relief, and then the rain
began, slanted stripes turning to angry spots
on window panes.

People in the street leaned
into umbrellas, coat collars a makeshift screen,
while their feet pulped wet leaves and water seeped
into the crevices of shoes,
set them shivering
soaked them through

from toes to hair. But some
recalled the fetid air and scorching sun
of long dry days, when with upturned faces
they prayed for the bliss
of cooling, healing rain
like a lover’s kiss.

Linda W

There's so much to enjoy about this poem but a few things that struck me as particularly strong were the rhythm and weight of 'unrelenting gloom', the break at the end of this line: People in the street leaned/, and the long syllables and assonance in:

while their feet pulped wet leaves and water seeped

Al Alvarez says, in his book The Writer's Voice, '... feelings - not the grand emotions aspired to, but the altogether subtler sense of being emotionally awakened - are expressed less in imagery than in movement, in the inner rhythm of the language.'

This isn't something I've fully explored in my own writing, but I 'feel' it here in Linda's poem and I'm sure other readers will too.

Congratulations again, Linda. Please email me with your postal address and I'll send you your prize, this lovely Desk Calendar, 'Une Année en Provence', for 2009.

Thinking Christmas Presents?

2008-12-08T14:30:00.003+01:00

Or even a poetry treat for yourself? Then I can really recommend this desk Haiku Calendar for 2009 from Snapshot Press.

Here's one of the haiku published in it:

autumn rain
a baseball card softens
in the bicycle spokes

Chad Lee Robinson

I can just hear the 'clatter' as a boy goes past on his bike, but that was the summer and now the season has changed.

And on top of having a daily dose of poetry you'll be supporting a small publisher whose books are of outstanding quality.

Just checking in...

2008-12-03T17:59:00.003+01:00

...to say I'm reading the November poems and will be posting the Prize Poem soon.

Does anyone else feel surprised that it's December already?! Where did the year go? Or is that just me sounding old? No need to answer that question :-)

To keep you going until the next prompt, try some free writing starting with the following phrases:

This time last year...

This time next year...

And, of course, please post any poems that emerge.
I'll see you soon.
Lynne x

November - Poetry Prompt 2

2008-11-20T11:02:00.009+01:00

January

......A sealed stillness
––only the stream moves,
tremor and furl of water
under dead leaves.

......In silence
the wood declares itself:
angles and arabesques of darkness,
branch, bramble,
tussocks of ghost grass
––under my heel
ice shivers
frail blue as sky
between the runes of trees.

......Far up
rooks, crows
flail home.

Frances Horovitz
Collected Poems
Bloodaxe Books 1985

Frances Horovitz's poem precisely captures a scene, a moment, a season through well chosen concrete imagery. The poet is only just present (my heel) yet the poem still feels suffused with the human emotional experience: tremor, declares, ghost, shivers, frail, flail home. It could be the last word that 'saves' the poem from bleakness - the comfort we associate with 'home'.

You could use any month, but why not start with November? You'll be able to go out and witness first hand the world around you: what you can see and hear, how those things make you feel. But try and avoid directly stating what you feel. Let your language choices suggest that.

November - Poetry Prompt 1

2008-11-08T13:36:00.001+01:00

Often I don't know what I want to write until I start writing, and occasionally I'm surprised by what I discover. Here's a writing exercise in stages that might take you to a place, or encourage you to make connections, you hadn't though of.

1.
Write a list of constants in the world that are general, universal: e.g. the sun rises, tides ebb and flow, politicians keep on lying... be specific and aim for about 10 to 12.

2.
Write another list of constants in your own life: trivial and profound, silly and serious. Again be specific, e.g. I cry at sad films, I wash clothes that get dirty and I have to wash them again, I visit my parents.

3a. Choose one of these personal constants, one that involves some kind of activity/process and explore and expand on it, fill in the concrete details of what happens, what you have to do, what it feels like physically, etc. Start with the line: Perhaps this is how everything will always be…

3b. When you come to the end of this activity/process, look beyond yourself, physically and/or imaginatively and write down what you find, what is there, what you can see, what you feel.

4. Read back over your writing and identify the dominant emotional tone. Does the form (the shape of the poem on the page) support that? Do your line breaks add tension, or comfort? Think about what effect you want the shape of your poem to have on your reader.

Here’s a rough draft of a poem I wrote while creating this exercise. It’s very unfinished but I feel it has the core of something I want to say... though the theme isn’t quite clear enough yet, I don’t think. I’ll have to work on it some more.

Looking forward to reading your poems.

Perhaps this is how everything will always be

I leave my mother’s house
turn left along the sweep of Silver Avenue
and cross the road towards the sea,
over the crazed tarmac on the prom
where the sweetshops used to be
and down the concrete steps
where the tide is in, or out.
And if it’s in I sit and listen
to the waves breaking,
and if it’s out I walk
the flat plain of damp sand
to reach the shore,
my face sticky with salt.
And beyond the horizon someone else
leaves their mother’s house
walks towards another sea
wanting to believe this
is how everything will always be.

October Prize Poem

2008-11-03T13:19:00.002+01:00

Good poetry is often paradoxical. It can be direct, but also oblique. It can show and at the same time hide. It can state and suggest.

Stephen Fryer’s poem, ‘Fish’, succeeds in all these areas:
• it speaks directly about one thing in order to point to another
• it describes one situation but another is masked
• it states the narrator’s specific feeling towards the aquarium which suggests so much about the narrator’s relationship with ‘darling.

Congratulations, Stephen. If you email me with your postal address I’ll put your ‘prize’ in the post this week.

I’ll post the first prompt for November before the end of the week, and don’t forget to take a look at the daily writing prompts at www.yourmessages.org too.

Fish

I’ve been watching the fish in the aquarium.
It’s an oblong box and it sits in the corner of the living room,
full of brooding water. I hate it.
I think that they would hate it too
if they knew the alternatives, or even
that there were any alternatives.
But they don’t,
do they darling?

Stephen Fryer

Free Writing Idea

2008-10-28T16:43:00.002+01:00

I hold a beast, an angel and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, downthrow and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression. Dylan Thomas

I'm biased of course, being welsh too, but I love the poetic construction of this sentence as much as the theatre of it: and my enquiry is... and my problem us... and my effort is...

We all write for reasons but often don't take the time to articulate them. Free write for 10 minutes, starting with the phrase:

My enquiry is...

Daily Writing Prompts

2008-10-24T15:09:00.005+02:00

During the month of November there's another opportunity to be part of the 'Your Messages' collaborative writing project that took place during November 2007. The format is slightly different this year and you can check out the details by clicking on the link below.

Your Messages is Back!

While all the prompts will be in prose, but only 30 words long this time as opposed to the 300 word pieces from the original book, Messages, there's nothing to say that you can't write a 30 word poem in response, or a poem of any length that you can post on this blog.

Someone has already commented that this is a great way to deal with a dreary November, so why not make a committment to write 30 (or 300) words every day, whether you post them online or not?

Hope to read your work at Your Messages and here at AppleHouse too.

October Poetry Prompt 2 - Islands

2008-10-20T18:16:00.006+02:00

I spent last weekend at the Poetry on the Lake Festival at Orta San Giulio in Italy, a place to fall in love with. Here's a shot of the Isla San Giulio in the middle of Lake Orta:

taken from the Piazza Motta:

where you can sit and eat and drink and people watch from the time you get up to the time you go to bed. Just my kind of place!

The island's a very short ferry ride away and the ferry captains take you around the tiny island before landing at the steps leading to the Basilica. There are currently seventy nuns living on the island which made me think how islands are often thought of as places of retreat. On the other hand, islands can also be places of abandonment.

What does the word 'island' mean to you? Brainstorm for associations, ideas and references and see what arises. The challenge is to write a poem that makes some kind of reference to an island, literally or metaphorically.

Good luck.

October Poetry Prompt 1 - Signs

2008-10-09T11:29:00.004+02:00

Hummingbirds

Now five have come to dine
off the steady banquet of pink geranium;
the only sound is the whir of their wings.
Soon it will be autumn.

One is a window washer on scaffolding;
it pauses as though to sigh
before cleaning the next section.

But something, as always,
will abruptly reel up the ropes of summer.

Ann Iverson

from Come Now to the Window
© Laurel Poetry Collective 2003

This collection is unavailable in the UK, but take a look at the Laurel Poetry Collective site, above, and check The Book Depository for her recent collection, Definite Space : Poems (Holy Cow! Press 2007)

We all find signs in our lives. Ann Iverson understands that summer will end soon when she watches the hummingbirds. I like the way she parallels the actions of one bird with that of a window cleaner, and that comparison leads us into the wonderful metaphor that closes the poem. And isn’t the line break after sigh/ just so good? We also pause for breath to before moving on to the next section. I also admire the way the poem 'diminishes' in size, from a four line stanza, to three lines, to a closing couplet, so the form itself suggests a drawing to a close.

Can you write a poem that parallels the world of flora or fauna with the human experience, and which also marks or explores the end of something? It doesn’t have to be a season. It could be a relationship, a journey, a way of thinking… there are endless possibilities.

I look forward to reading your insights.

Lynne
x