I’m feeling a bit like the proverbial full bookshelf. It’s the one where you force another book into it and something falls off the end . . .
I’ve been writing more about coins and medals recently – the three short articles for the Numismatic Society’s Facebook page are the thin end of the wedge, I’m preparing others too – and I seem to have stopped writing poetry, as if it just fell off the end of the shelf. One minute it was there, now it’s gone. I have three unopened poetry magazines and nothing in the pipeline.
This has coincided with doing more reading again (which is a bit like recharging my batteries after so much poetry writing), more research and more retirement planning.
Little Gidding
I’ve just had three poems published, while I’m on the subject. Not sure if I’ve posted the link before (my memory is getting worse). The magazine is Contemporary Haibun Online, which is always worth a read and I am here, here and here. Sorry, I suppose I could be more subtle or inventive with the links, but I’m not.
In themselves, they are a great indicator of time passing. Poetic time is very distorted. One poem actually started five or six years ago. It has changed substantially since I started it, and been rejected four times. Two others were written last autumn after I went to a couple of family funerals. One harks back to a time when I was 16. That is now 50 years ago. That thought is hard to grasp. I have let 50 years slip by and would be hard pressed to tell you anything I have done in that time.
Maybe that’s the theme for my next poem.
It’s poppy time again
Excellent work. I hope that you can find a space to start writing poetry again.
I won’t stop, but for the moment I am going slowly. Things will pick up again.
These are very beautifully written poems, Simon. I am still waiting to see you publish a book of your collected poems. I know you will publish that collection someday. You are a good writer.
Thank you Lavinia. I will get round to it, but as someone said in a discussion on when to publish – a bad poem is easily hidden but a bad book hangs around for a long time. It may eb a couple of years yet.
…. and I wonder, also, whose breather was captured in the process of making glass for a church window. A great image.
Thank you. I used it several times, but it was never accepted until this one. Sometimes you just have to keep trying. 🙂
I like the wasp filling in the time when you had all stopped talking. I’ve been to meetings with friends I hadn’t seen for years when there was nothing left to say.
Yes, you grow apart as time goes on, and I have moved on from being the person many of my old friends think I still am.
This is a really good set of poems evoking the passing of time. Re further writing at this time your muse should guide you while you have so much to think about at the moment
Yes, there’s little point in forcing it. Relax and good things will follow, I hope.