Sunday Summary, 2nd February
Posted: February 2, 2014 Filed under: Photography, Poetry, Sunday Summary | Tags: Books, Daily Prompt, Open University, Poetry, Prompts, Reading, Sunday Summary, Tax Returns, Writing Leave a commentMost of the week has been taken up with sorting out my tax return at about as last a moment as I have had to do so. It was pleasing this year as I have finally made a profit after three years of putting myself out there.
I have made loads of notes and ideas on how to be more organised next year, which I know I will reiterate come January 30th 2015.
A lot of the rest of the week I’ve been reading and writing for my assignment with the Open University, so though I haven’t written much for my own goals I have still been doing a lot of writing.
Today whilst writing the assignment itself I discovered that writing poetry when I was having a break really helped focus when I came back to writing my assignment, started at 0 words today and finished with 1500 crafted words out of 3000.
Writing done:
Three poems, one was a Haiku one was a Landays and the last was a reflection on heartbreak.
Books read:
Glass Gods by Kate Griffin
Writing Flash Fiction by Khalid Al Hariri
Books started:
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Prompts responded to:
I used a photograph to respond to a Daily Prompt, the theme was Age.
Three poems
Posted: February 2, 2014 Filed under: Poetry | Tags: Haiku, Landays, Poetry, Romance, Scribophile, Writing Leave a commentAs a break from writing my assignment for the Open University I thought I would join in at Scribophile in the poetry group I’m part of.
The first poem is an entry to the Valentine Day competition
February
That look,
There,
In your eyes.
Those words,
There,
From your lips.
Your goodbye,
Here,
Knife in my heart.
The second is a Haiku in response to the Frantic Friday Weekly Prompt thread.
Blue haze distant hill
Evening falls stars awake
Bright night smiling moon
I had got the prompt wrong though through not reading good…
The current prompt was to write a Landays, a traditional poem form of Pashtun women of Afghanistan and Pakistan. There was a linked article http://www.poetryfoundation.org/media/landays.html and after reading that article I felt shamed that I was going to use such a strong part of their culture as a writing exercise and initially thought that I wasn’t going to write one but here is mine as a response to that feeling:
Bearded or not, the men take and hold
Steal the hearts, souls and bodies, give hate in return
Villanelle
Posted: January 21, 2014 Filed under: Poetry | Tags: Definitions, Information, Poetry, Villanelle 2 Comments
Ferdinand Chaigneau – Troupeau de moutons
I was reading an article on poetry yesterday when I came across the word ‘villanelle’ which was used with no explanations or clarifications and as always I wondered what it meant.
I decided to keep all these definitions of words connected to the art world together here so I can refer back to them.
A villanelle (also known as villanesque) is a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain. There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third line of the first tercet repeated alternately until the last stanza, which includes both repeated lines. The villanelle is an example of a fixed verse form. The word derives from Latin, then Italian, and is related to the initial subject of the form being the pastoral.
The villanelle consists of five stanzas of three lines (tercets) followed by a single stanza of four lines (a quatrain) for a total of nineteen lines. It is structured by two repeating rhymes and two refrains: the first line of the first stanza serves as the last line of the second and fourth stanzas, and the third line of the first stanza serves as the last line of the third and fifth stanzas. The rhyme-and-refrain pattern of the villanelle can be schematized as A1bA2 abA1 abA2 abA1 abA2 abA1A2 where letters (“a” and “b”) indicate the two rhyme sounds, upper case indicates a refrain (“A”), and superscript numerals (1 and 2) indicate Refrain 1 and Refrain 2.
Love the amount of information available on the Internet.
Ugo Columbo
Posted: January 21, 2014 Filed under: Found, Poetry | Tags: Found Poetry, Poetry, Spam, Writing Leave a commentHusband Jonathan would not like to see you so pale,
It rises during the closing ceremony,
at the moment when stagecraft fades
and the simplest of uman acts begins.
The athletes walk in.
the emperor’s palace.
A conversation between the author
and a Good Heavens!
Is marriage so demoralizing as that?
That’s it: They walk into some stadium,
as they did again Sunday evening at Vancouver’s B.C.
Place to end the 2010 Winter Games,
and the clearest picture of what the Olympics means emerges.
Young people who have spent the months
serving as civic heroes, national symbols,
stand-ins for millions,
become young again.
Unlike the opening ceremony tradition
of marching in national delegations in strict order,
under a flag, at the closing men and women
who have sweated against each other for weeks
sometimes years, walk out in an easy jumble,
and soon mix, stand and dance
until all national colors and flags become irrelevant.
fobs;
they were two large slits cut into the top of his middle
Oh, it is hard to think of it, and I cannot understand
1984
Posted: January 9, 2014 Filed under: Poetry, Writing Prompts | Tags: 365, Daily Task, e-book, Poetry, postaday, Prompts, The Daily Post, Writing 2 CommentsYou’re locked in a room with your greatest fear. Describe what’s in the room.
Nothing,
That is my greatest fear.
Being locked in a room that is bare,
All my usual distractions gone.
All the shells built up over the years.
All thoughts and feelings laid bare.
I would then have to face that internal dialogue,
With nothing to pause, distract or dampen it.
No coping mechanisms, no fancy games to play,
Just emotions.
Raw.
Call Me Ishmael
Posted: January 5, 2014 Filed under: Poetry, Writing Prompts | Tags: 365, Daily Task, e-book, Poetry, postaday, Prompts, The Daily Post, Writing 1 Comment“Take the first sentence from your favorite book and make it the first sentence of your post.”
The sky above the port was the color of television
tuned to a dead channel.
Gulls wheeling in time to the wind
Blowing through the ships rigging.
Slowly tipping over the horizon was my love,
and the light of day.
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
first line of Neuromancer by William Gibson
Wicked Words 