Norwhere Land Norwood, owns a sonic vagueness inside its name, where it’s neither wood, nor something else, an implied other option, a missing word, lost along the way. That said, it was once wood: The Northwood, not of the NORTH of England, but north of Croydon, before you reach the Thames. At some point, the old woods were given…
I began to wonder, what makes a hill? Did all this tarmac count?
Fences, PRIVATE SIGNS, the houses? Were they part hill as well – landscape like the stone and grass? The buzzard overhead, was that part sky, part bird, part hill?
A quick word about Imposter Syndrome.
In which I attempt to mine the gap between what’s thought and what’s spoken, in a cider fuelled conversation about poetry.
I never considered handles before this, never wondered who’d held my borrowed basket last filled it, gripped it tight, placed it back neat or abandoned by checkout, unsettling us in its eerie. Didn’t ask, didn’t wonder what those hands did, who they touched waved slapped caressed, ever so tender. Did they stare at the milk…
…there on the edge of the flat stretching roof
Stood a magpie, a gull and a pigeon
Neatly spaced –
The cast from some terrible joke.
mid-stream on a shit-spattered barge,
cormorants unfold themselves as crosses,
anchored to a Thames, expectant
Let’s say I was there.
For work.
In a hotel near three reservoirs for Wigan.
Let’s say I slipped out back on an unexpected walk,
on a circular path…
Magpie Tales blog invited people to submit a poem or vignette based on this picture. She’ll get you in the end, Stretched out and unaware, Or watchfully expectant, She’ll come, she always does. Unable to resist, you’ll slip Down gradually, gratefully, Allowing sky blue water To do its work. Hag-like at times, she crouches, Opening…
Magpie tales blog asked people to write a poem, or vignette based on this picture: To make it tougher, I gave myself thirty minutes. Here’s my response. Every book is unfinished. The secret’s out. There’s something lacking within, And they squat on the shelves going nowhere. Abandoned on the edge of the road. Mere objects…
We knew it wasn’t ours – considered it on loan,
sliver of old wild earth made common ground,
swallowed by city, only partially digested,
an accidental place, become essential.
And coming down from high moors
I caught a whiff of Whitby,
Through bitching rain, a coastal squall,
Came a smalltown smell so subtle almost dreamt
Richly Evocative 