The Best Words in the Best Order

10 Replies

‘I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is prose; words in their best order; – poetry; the best words in the best order.’

S. T. Coleridge

Yesterday I read the words of an editor on the front page of their website. It seems that running a magazine is hard work and takes a lot of time. I had never imagined otherwise. I base this on the fact that I spent yesterday pushing words round paper. By the time I had finished I had taken three unpublishable poems and turned them into one possibly publishable poem and two that were better than when I started on them.

 

Poetry takes time. Lots of time.

I read some background, cogitated, deleted a few words, added a few words, deleted them, went back to the first version, and, in a flash of inspiration, deleted the first verse and the last verse and carried on messing with words.

Then I moved on to the next one . . .

The tricky thing I find, is that it’s surprisingly easy to alter something and make the poem worse.

Sometimes, when I’m in full flow, I can write a whole poem and it doesn’t need altering. I wrote one like that once and it was highly commended in a competition. I need to practice more and try to get back to that.

One of my free verse poems, when edited, turned into a haibun. Not quite sure how it happened, but it just seemed to fall into shape as I edited. It might be similar to what sports coaches call “muscle memory” – I’ve written so many haibun that I can’t write anything else. That’s unfortunate, because, as a previous editor pointed out recently, I can’t write haibun. 🙂

I’ve used pictures of Julia’s woodturning, because it’s very much like poetry. You start off with hope and a battery of skills and, if you are lucky, you end up finding something that is better than you hoped.

Thoughts of New Recipes

6 Replies

We’ve not had pilaff for years and I, personally, haven’t made it for probably 40 years. It just faded out of my repertoire and never made it back. A lot of things are like that. At any one time I probably only use about half a dozen recipes, with a few variations to ensure we don’t eat the same thing too often.

We tend to eat a similar menu most weeks, with just a gradual change as the seasons move on. I have just started cooking quiches again now that summer is here, and vegetable stew has disappeared from the menu as root vegetables don’t seem so appealing in summer. We did have carrot in the coleslaw we had with the quiche earlier in the week, but that’s about it.

I’ve been looking up pilaff recipes today, as they seem to be a useful way of making a rice dish that uses stuff up. It’s a bit like Chinese rice, but over the years I’ve finally begun to get bored with it.

One of the recipes involved exotic mushrooms, dried mushrooms and mushroom powder. Another involved whatever mushrooms you had to hand and a stock cube. Guess which one we are trying next week?

Malta

Part of the problem is that every time I try something new, I fail to adopt it, even if it is nice. It’s much easier just to go into autopilot and make the same old thing, or a version of it, rather than doing something new.

Yes, I did make Chestnut and Mushroom Pie, and enjoyed it, but it involves dried mushrooms and chestnut which I don’t normally have in the cupboard. And the Woolton Pie was good, but the stew version is easier.

I really should try to do better.

But then, I should try to improve my blogging and poetry writing too.  They are both more interesting than filling quiches and steeping dried mushrooms.

Cactus hedge Malta

 

How Do I Do It?

6 Replies

I missed posting today. I’m not sure how. I just got down to work and suddenly, the day was gone. Got up a bit late, correspondence, breakfast and back to work. Julia went out to take a dress for alteration for the coming wedding and I prepared lunch ready for her return.  This included the coleslaw left over from a couple of nights ago, baby tomatoes, olives and the last of Tuesday’s quiche. Back to work (if pushing words round paper can be classed as “work”) then TV quizzes. Cook tea. (Julia is suffering with her back so I am trying to be a good husband). Watched the last episode of Fringe, a sci-fi, time travel, police procedural, and I felt able to relax. Left to myself I would probably not have carried on past episode 2 or 3 but Julia liked it and it began to make more sense. Then it introduced the parallel dimension, then the time travel and at that point It stopped making sense again. I struggled to the end as Julia liked it but feel it would have been better with a run half as long.

Then we started watching The Marlow Murder Club. We’ve been waiting to start it. I look on it as a reward for sitting through Fringe. I’m much happier with this – small town in UK, murders that don’t include melting faces or alien animals, good quality detective plots and time progresses in a linear fashion.

It’s not ground-breaking or cutting edge and it merges with many similar programmes, but it’s a nice relaxing watch with a lot of good actors.

Photos are from Julia’s 2018 visit to Malta when she and No 2 Son went to visit No 1 Son, who was working there. A hand holding a small bird is an ironic image for a Mediterranean island famous for slaughtering migrating birds in great numbers.

Unseemly Seriousness

18 Replies

Stained Glass Museum – Ely

Did you know that there is such a thing as Information Warfare? You probably did, but you just didn’t know it had a name.

I was listening to the radio yesterday and the subject cropped up. That’s BBC Radio 4 in case you might be under the misapprehension that any other station is worth listening to. I listen to it for the 15-30 minutes it takes me to queue in traffic jams after dropping Julia off at woodturning. Otherwise, noise does not feature greatly in my life. I don’t need it to function and if I want to listen to the inane chattering of barely evolved humanoids (sometimes called DJs, presenters or, for phone-in purposes, “listeners” I can go and listen to monkeys in a zoo).

Sometimes I listen to music on You Tube, in case you are thinking I completely lack culture, but mainly, I don’t. I also like the words more than the music. And I like them to be English so I can understand them, so that cuts out classical music and opera. I suppose that’s why I’m a poet rather than a musician. Being tone deaf also plays a part.

Anyway, I digress. I have two ways to go now. One is to carry on discussing “malign influence” and the undeclared war between Russia and Europe. The other is to discuss the picture in my head, which is J D Vance as a monkey. I don’t really know why.

I’ll go with malign influence. It’s about the propaganda war between Russia and some of its neighbours, specifically Finland and Sweden. The Finn’s developed a policy of teaching their young people to distinguish between truth and misinformation by showing them how to evaluate information. Of course, we would never do it in this country because it might teach the population to think for themselves and spot political chancers.

It was part of a group of reports about how some countries are making progress in the modern world – updating medical systems, looking after the elderly in a more cost-effective way (or simply just looking after them at all), building better social housing and (in the case of Finland and Sweden) accepting that we are at war with Russia and that young people need to be taught to resist unreliable information.

That, of course, gets me onto one of my favourite subjects. Countries with low levels of raw materials and industry (like the UK, these days) have traditionally been big on education.

I’d like to see the UK getting to grips with educating people. I’d also like to see them teaching them how to use social media properly. That’s not by banning them from using it. How will you learn if you can’t use something. All you will learn is that there are ways of getting round things and that you don’t need to obey the law.

That’s not helping build a responsible and progressive world.

Sorry, I will try to avoid unseemly seriousness in future posts.

Angel with Spear, 1860s. By N H J Westlake or J M Allen. St Michael’s and All Angels, Derby

Feeling Pleased with Myself

18 Replies

I am sitting here, and I admit that I am feeling smug, I have just sent off a first free verse poem since spring 2023. In some ways it isn’t a long time, but it was long enough for me to lose the knack and it has taken a couple of months to get back into the swing of it.

I must have spent a month or so wondering if the skill was ever going to come back. But if you keep writing, even if it is rubbish, you eventually get back to something usable.

This, however, is as far as it goes for now. There is a lot more competition for space in traditional poetry magazines than there is in the word of haibun and tanka and it could be some time before I see anything in print. At least I’m pushing up my number of submissions for the year.

It’s important to submit as part of the process of learning to do better. As I have said in earlier posts, I am poor at writing haiku. I’ve always struggled and although I don’t particularly like it as a form, I feel I should practice haiku to improve myself, and to improve my haibun. You don’t improve at anything by only doing the easy bits.

This one is The Prince and the Orange Toad. I have two characters in mind. One will be a handsome Prince, willowy and thin. The other will be squatter, and with an immense self-satisfied grin. I’m not sure how it’s going to progress yet, but that doesn’t matter, because we all know I talk about more projects than I ever begin.

Finally, three views of a small bowl that Julia has done using a piece of wood that somebody gave her.  It’s her first bowl, it’s quite small and it is designed for putting rings in at night. It has turned out to have a very interesting grain pattern, and the inside reminds me of the Time Tunnel.

 

Writing and Watching the Time Pass

14 Replies

Despite being very erratic over the last week or two I have mainly kept to the plan, though a post a day has actually meant “averaging” a post a day. Or nothing some days and two or three on others, if I’m honest. I’m currently on 117 posts in 117 days. It is good, but I need this one to keep up.

Stones at Carsington Water

That’s how people do the Buson 100. That’s ten haiku a day for 100 days. I’ve tried three times, completed it twice, failed once. That’s life. However, I’m driven by the hope of improvement rather than the fear of failure so, though I’m not happy to have failed, I’m not going to let it ruin my life. I achieved some improvement in my haiku, then I let it fall away again. I’m not, in truth, greatly enthused by haiku and write them bacause they are necessary if you want to write haibun. The article I first read about it indicated that you could catch up if you got behind, as long as you ended up with 1,000 haiku at the end of it. The link in the post that I have just linked to is no longer available, but this one is very good too.

Stone head – Rufford Abbey

Yosa Buson, an eighteenth century poet and artist, after whom the Buson 100 is named, tried to write ten haiku a day for a hundred days twice and as I recall he didn’t finish either one. He did, however have a lot of other things to do, and he did die in the middle of the second one. He was 68, which will be my age soon – probably an indicator that I should look after myself better and write faster.

It is tempting to set myself a poetry target, but I don’t think it would help. Keeping up with the current regime of one blog post a day and one numismatic article a week are hard enough as it is.

Detail from gravestone – Crowland

Notes from a Small City

17 Replies

 

Blossom at Wilford

Got up, cooked breakfast, discovered I have ordered the wrong bacon this week, had coffee from the cafetiere (made by No 1 Son, who is a coffee aficionado), sat, redundant, while he and his mother muttered about wedding plans and played with their phones. Nobody holds conversations anymore.

It took 13 minutes to get to the station, as there were no hold-ups and 19 minutes to get back using a longer route as I try to relearn the geography of the area. If I’m being picky, it actually took 19 minutes to get there, but six of them were spent on the drive waiting as Julia discovered a couple of last minute jobs which, of course, took priority over punctuality.

Blossom at Wilford

There are no trains to Norwich due to work on the tracks so it is down to the good old “replacement bus service”.  Today’s “bus” is a luxury coach, so it isn’t too bad.

It is a pleasant morning, with a plentiful, and varied, supply of blossom and a variety of birds, including a pied wagtail, several lustrous blackbirds and the usual magpies and pigeons. It’s he sort of morning that makes you think you should write a poem. Later, I probably will.

I was reading some William Carlos Williams last night. They are quite short poems and I could probably write a lot of poems that length. I just need to have a range of suitable subjects and something interesting to say about them. That might be more difficult. As I’ve said before, there are plenty of words, and they aren’t the problem. Learning to put he right words in the right order is the skill, and that only be learned by laying down a lot of poorly selected words in the wrong order.

Try this for a poem about plums.

Reflected Plums – Victoria

I’d better get on with that now. Half an hour of poetry followed by getting lunch made for Julia before she goes to work in the tea room, and I will have several hours more to write before she returns home.

Sotheby’s Surrealist Auction Sale

17 Replies

Sorry I’m so late. I wrote some poems, cooked a massive pasta bake, read some poetry, did some research, engaged in small talk with No 1 Son and my sister and generally lost my grip on the day.

So the poetry I mentioned did not get posted and when I go back to yesterday’s post I will have to add a note to say I was late.

Here it is, first published in Quail Eggs Issue 3 December 2025.

If you have a few minutes go and have a look. It is a pleasant, peaceful place. Just in case you are like me – click on he bars o the left of the title and everything opens up. I confess it took me a while to work it out.

Sotheby’s Surrealist Auction Sale

Blue, orange, yellow, red – Warhol’s copy of The Scream. I could do that. Make a copy, steal his inspiration, expending no imagination. Was there a class at art school called Copy Campbells Cans and Make a Mint? The road to Hell is paved with good imitations.

Warhol’s version has an auction estimate of £2 – £3 million. Mine, I expect, would do to line a budgie cage or two. I can see it now, a captive canary – they are easier to paint than budgies – with my copy of The Scream and melting pocket watches draped around the place. Collectors with fortunes bid on a print of a stolen idea. Sensing value in something mere mortals cannot see.

The bidding dies, a new Lot is announced. A porter shows off an empty coat hanger.

“Lot 164,” the auctioneer intones – “The Emperor’s New Clothes . . .”

as a child
I wondered if my blue
was the same as
other people saw
sometimes I still do

More Speed than Usual

7 Replies

Flying Scotsman at NVR

10.45. This is the crossroads of the day. Yesterday I chose to research and write articles, interspersed with reading blogs and replying to comments.  A poetry book arrived, which I skimmed and found to be good. I collected Number One Son from the station – we had tea and watched TV and caught up. At midnight I found myself lacking a blog post. Such are the choices we make. However, I did find time to read some articles on writing haibun. I have made notes as part of my new self-education attempt.

Unfortunately Mallard is not at NVR.

Today I have choices to make again. Julia and No 1 Son have gone off to town. They are travelling by steam railway, as the NVR passes within a few hundred yards of the house and goes all the way to Peterborough.


Photograph is borrowed from Country Life magazine website and Courtesy of The Estate of Steve McQueen/ Sotheby’s.

So, do I fritter my time away or do I set to work and produce something useful? Whilst searching for the NVR site I already browsed and found some new information. Checking the link for the book I noted a couple of openings for poetry submissions. Then I noticed that Sotheby’s are holding a sale of important watches. They don’t seem that important, though they are all well beyond my budget. One, worn by Steve McQueen in Le Mans, comes with a filing box of correspondence and provenance and the upper estimate is $1,000,000. That’s a lot of money just to tell the time. And it’s a lot of money for an undeniably ugly watch.

However, as a piece of film history, and part of the story of a 20th Century icon, it is also a priceless relic. Pricing, as we always said in the antiques trade, is as much art as science. Well, I did, I’m not sure about the rest of them.

Give me a million dollars and I’d be happy to go on a round the world cruise with a £10 watch. The cruise would be so much more relaxing if I didn’t have to worry about losing my watch or having it stolen.

The next post of the day will be a haibun on the subject of auction sales. (Sorry, the day got away from me and it was posted in the early hours of toady, which would have been “tomorrow” when I originally posted about “The next post of the day.)

Photograph is borrowed from Country Life magazine website and Courtesy of The Estate of Steve McQueen/ Sotheby’s.

A Pottering Sort of Day

16 Replies

I completed my research on Friendly Societies of the 19th Century today and tidied up my piece on the 1882 Preston Guild Medal worn by members of the Independent United Order of Mechanics. They were prone to schisms, sometimes over doctrine, sometimes over money, and a government report of the time says, with the air of a disappointed parent “it is very difficult to distinguish the different orders of Mechanics”. Tell that, I thought, to the members of the Free and Independent United Order of Mechanics, who were mainly based in the Lake District. Is it me, or are the words “Judean People’s Front” drifting in you mind now?

When I say “completed”, I mean completed it enough for the purposes of writing an article about a medallion. The full story of the Friendly Societies will probably never be known.

I’m now researching the 1914  medal issued by the town of Northampton to the children who had fathers serving in the Army or Navy. It’s associated with the Poor Children’s Dinner Fund and I’m having trouble disentangling the two things. They made 3,100 medallions for distribution, but they were lost by the railway company and not given out until mid-January.  There were 2,914 children who qualified, including 80 who, by 1914, had fathers who were either dead or “missing”. Considering that many of the early recruits were unmarried, this is a lot of kids. It would, of course, get considerably worse.

There were 879 Christmas hampers for the Fund to distribute in 1914, about 500 less than in 1913. The boot trade (Northampton’s main trade) had picked up in 1914 due to the need for military boots, so there were fewer poor people needing help. Seventy percent of British Army boots used in 1914-18 were made in Northampton, with one manufacturer doubling in output and many women involved in the wartime trade. they also made boots for the Russian Army.

This is a multi-purpose article, as it will do, with slightly different slants, for several different places. I’ve already used it to fill half a blog post. It will go on the Numismatic Society Facebook Page as an example of a medallion and on the research page of the Peterborough Military History Group. Peterborough was in Northamptonshire in 1914.