Changes

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...

... 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'

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

...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

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