I don’t see a reblog button, so I’m sharing Rebecca Budd’s interview with me this way. I had such a delightful time talking with her
and reading my poetry. You can listen to the “Season 4 Episode 45: Merril D Smith on A Poet’s Voice” here. Thank you so much, Rebecca!
It’s a great pleasure to introduce Rosemary Gemmell to Patricia’s Pen. Rosemary not only writes brilliant novels for adults, but is also a fantastic story writer for children. Today Rosemary has come to blog about her children’s books. Without further ado, it’s over to Rosemary.
Rosemary Gemmell
Thank you very much, Patricia, for inviting me to guest on your interesting blog.
It’s a bit of a departure, and pleasure, for me to chat about my children’s writing for a change; on social media I tend to focus more on writing for adults. However, I’ve written three books and several shorter stories for various young ages.
Thinking about this reminded me that the first children’s story I wrote and submitted to a Scottish competition was before I began writing articles and stories for magazines! I was amazed and delighted to win that first competition with a story…
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Leftfield Questions
How is a knife block like a toad?
What mundane task would a living toad in a home?
How would a knife block be rewilded?
03/10/2019
I think of you more when I’m tired
When my day hasn’t gone quite to plan
When I just want to talk of my problems
With the greatest example of man
I search for your smile in the sunlight
But the weak autumn sun makes it tough
Cold days make it hard to get started
And fond memories just aren’t enough
I search for your voice in the wind rush
Some meaningful truth to impart
But the fact is it’s not quite that simple
So I search for your voice in my heart
Well, my point is I hope you can hear me
my point is I want you to know
That I’m living on now for your memory
So your pride in my life always grows
-Daniel O’Grady
-Fidel Hogan Walsh
Bios and Links
-Daniel O’Grady
is a Plant Manager at a Chemical Manufacturing site who enjoys writing about whatever comes to mind each day, capturing his thoughts for future reference.
He draws his inspiration from the semi rural environment he lives and works in, the woodland he wanders through and the lanes where he enjoys running and cycling.
He also enjoys photography where he tries to share the beauty of the world as he sees it. His ambition is to write a fictional story based on his path through grief, maybe retirement will allow more time, maybe it won’t.
-Fidel Hogan Walsh
Fidel has written and performed her poetry to a wide audience.
Her work has appeared in Poethead, Pendanic, UCD Archives,
Poetry Ireland – Poetry Town Pocket Poems booklet, The Irish
Times, The Storms Journal and on The Eat the Storms podcast
numerous times. Fidel has three short stories and two poems in
Thrice Remembered – An Anthology of Cavan Writings 2022.
Fidel’s first collection of poems ‘Living with Love’
launched in 2020.
Her second collection of poetry in collaboration with
photographer, Julie Corcoran, launched Culture Night 2020.
‘Time‘ is the fruit of a lockdown project undertaken between March and June 2020.
The fifteen poems and sixteen images reflect on the human condition
during unprecedented times.
‘Time’ was named in the top 10 non-fiction of 2020 by Dublin City Libraries.
Fidel collaborates from time to time with other artists
Green tales and changing skies
These changing skies above, we walk the trees
And tread the path of fallen poplar leaves,
Brown-turning as the gold of summer fails.
As slow as heron-flight, the bright time flees
With gentle grace, so nothing truly grieves,
Though cold is rising in dusk’s misty veils.
There is green still, just look. Beneath the growing grey,
Green grows rosette-creep, root-tangle that weaves
Carpet-patterns, dabbed with sun, and exhales
Such light, whispering, as night slips into day,
Earth tales.
How did it go?
I enjoy writing to strict meter and rhyme. Not sure about the abrupt ending as a substitute for the volta of a traditional sonnet, but it’s the part of Pied Beauty I like least too. One injunction to praise God in a poem is more than enough as far as I’m concerned.
-Jane Dougherty
Christmas
Cold withers us and skies grow heavy grey;
the nights draw dark and winter’s hand takes hold
of children in their fleecy coats and gloves
who long for time to pass ’til Christmas Day.
They play their parts with gifts of scents and gold
in stories from the Holy Land relived.
But do these stories have a message now?
A planet torn by war, our conscience cold?
How can a deity who sits above
convince all people that they must allow
capacity for love?
How Did It Go?
I found this one a lot easier than some of the others. I’ve written quite a few full sonnets but never a shortened one. The last line is the trickiest part.
-Tim Fellows
Bios and Links
-Jane Dougherty
lives and works in southwest France. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, the Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry, ink sweat and tears, Gleam, Nightingale & Sparrow, Green Ink and Brilliant Flash Fiction. She blogs at https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/ Her poetry chapbooks, thicker than water and birds and other feathers were published in October and November 2020.
=Tim Fellows
is a poet and writer from Chesterfield whose poetry is heavily influenced by his background in the Derbyshire coalfields – family, mining, politics, and that mix of industry and countryside that so many mining areas had.
For Paul Brookes’ December challenge.
Tree works
A tree holds many worlds,
beneath-bark galleried,
leaf-sheltered insect hatcheries,
architecture of bird and squirrel
homes, held tight in forks,
scooped out within.
A tree grows its own tools
to climb, expand, increase,
spreads deep foundations
to gather up hillsides and valleys.
I gather a handful of acorns,
watch a child
with a spoon,
planting.
Leftfield Questions
How is a tree ike a cutlery drawer?
What mundane task would a living tree do in a home?
How would a cutlery drawer be rewilded?
Red in tooth and cutlery drawer.
The cutlery drawer is a bird box
where a charming family of blue tits
disturbs spoons
to warn off magpies
who covet the glint of stainless steel.
The neighbour’s cat is the carving knife.
-Ivor Daniel
An Unwelcome Visitor
I’m glad I made it almost to the age of 40 before I caught a glimpse of Grief. I spied Grief looking in through our front room window. An unwelcome intrusion into our home, I stared coldly back until It casually turned away and wandered off down the street. But Grief knew me from that moment on. It would wait around a bend in the road to ambush my drive to work. Morphing through the windscreen and sliding into the passenger seat beside me. A frigid, silent, bothering of my thoughts. After our initial acquaintance, it could sometimes be weeks between “botherings”, but as time passed the frequency increased. I’d fear those bends in the road, the kinks and corners in the path. It was inevitable that I would rush headlong into Griefs smothering embrace, gasping and struggling to get away, uncertain how to find my balance as It kicked my legs from beneath me. Now, many years on, I have partially healed from the beating Grief gave me. The scars are there and the threat remains. I know Grief will kick seven shades out of me again before the other stalker, Death, pays me attention but it makes me grateful for the 39.6 years of innocence. I can’t control Grief, It will take what It wants from me time and time again, but in between I will feel the warmth of the sun on my face and smile. In this way I will not be controlled by Grief, It will try and bully me but I will turn away and look for Joy and Fun with the help of Love’s companionship.
-Daniel O’Grady
Bios and Links
-Daniel O’Grady
is a Plant Manager at a Chemical Manufacturing site who enjoys writing about whatever comes to mind each day, capturing his thoughts for future reference.
He draws his inspiration from the semi rural environment he lives and works in, the woodland he wanders through and the lanes where he enjoys running and cycling.
He also enjoys photography where he tries to share the beauty of the world as he sees it. His ambition is to write a fictional story based on his path through grief, maybe retirement will allow more time, maybe it won’t.
A cervical vertebra asks
At this water’s edge
Where sandpipers tweezer larvae
And tiny shrimps while stitching past, where
Gulls pass over on their way to sleep
My vertebrae are signposts —
Iguanagon; do you follow?
Or can you stand
And salvage my world
From the boneyard?
—————
-Dave Garbutt
Bios and Links
Dave Garbutt has been writing poems since he was 17 and has still not learned to give up. His poems have been published in The Brown Envelope Anthology, and magazines (Horizon, Writers & Readers) most recently on XRcreative and forthcoming in the Deronda review. His poem ‘ripped’ was long listed in the Rialto Nature & Place competition 2021. In August 2021 he took part in the Postcard Poetry Festival and the chap book that came from that is available at the postcard festival website. https://ppf.cascadiapoeticslab.org/2021/11/08/dave-garbutt-interview/.
He was born less than a mile from where Keats lived in N London and sometimes describes himself as ‘a failed biologist, like Keats’, in the 70’s he moved to Reading until till moving to Switzerland (in 1994), where he still lives. He has found the time since the pandemic very productive as many workshops and groups opened up to non-locals as they moved to Zoom.
Dave retired from the science and IT world in 2016 and he is active on Twitter, FaceBook, Medium.com, Flickr (he had a solo exhibition of his photographs in March 2017). He leads monthly bird walks around the Birs river in NW Switzerland. His tag is @DavGar51.
Aching with longing
I ache and ache and ache to hold onto my Dad’s little finger. Feel my small hand grasp onto what then filled my grip as we walked along an autumn lane. Forty plus years passed since that afternoon and I only now remember it with this longing to return. All my teen and adult years, I had no need to miss it. He still held my hand with advice or just an ear for me to fill with hopes and future plans. But now those links are lost. Grief has scarred me deeply, changed my approach to the world, crippled my confidence and hunted me though my dreams. I was Pat’s son. My kind, gentle, socially conscious Dad was undefeated heavy weight champion of my world.
-Daniel O’Grady
Bios and Links
-Daniel O’Grady
is a Plant Manager at a Chemical Manufacturing site who enjoys writing about whatever comes to mind each day, capturing his thoughts for future reference.
He draws his inspiration from the semi rural environment he lives and works in, the woodland he wanders through and the lanes where he enjoys running and cycling.
He also enjoys photography where he tries to share the beauty of the world as he sees it. His ambition is to write a fictional story based on his path through grief, maybe retirement will allow more time, maybe it won’t.
The Wombwell Rainbow 