Leftfield Questions
How is a badger like a kettle?
What mundane task would a living badgerdo in a home?
How would a kettle be rewilded?
Uncategorized
NationalGriefAwarenessWeek Day Two. Please join Daniel O’Grady an I in marking this week every day. I will feature your draft published/unpublished poetry/short prose/artworks about grief. Please include a short third person bio.
A Bad Year
A whole year has passed since I held my dad’s hand and talked to him, told him how much I love him, kissed him on his cool and smooth forehead, said goodbye. I’ve wept pints of tears and looked for traces of his existence in the woods, paths and spaces he enjoyed. My grief feels pitiful alongside my mums own loss of her life partner, her friend and companion.
The awful period while he was suffering the effects of Myeloma and the treatment still casts its shadow on our memories. Even though during this period there were islands of smiles and happiness, the tide of despair rose higher up until what remained were the jagged rocks. Pleading looks from a face asking for help, to be taken out of the hospital ward and home. Home to die in more peaceful and comfortingly familiar surroundings. A wish we couldn’t grant.
Dad was, is, my hero, it sounds cliched but he is and always will be. My inspiration. Encouraging us to do things that make us happy, because if we’re not happy then how do we provide happiness for the people we love and cherish?
In whatever I did I wanted to make him proud and give back some of the love and happiness he and mum, gave me.
I continue to look for him in my landscape. In the local countryside he wandered through so much. In the places further afield in which we shared time. In the activities we did together and in parallel.
As we all do, I miss him every day, but can enjoy the time I spend with him when dreaming.
-Daniel O’Grady
Bio 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.
Drop in by Paul Waring
I have great pleasure in inviting Paul Waring to drop in today, a poet whom I have admired for some time.
Thank you Nigel for inviting me to drop in and write about Melt, a poemfrom my latest collection Muckle Anima, a Dreich 2022 ‘Classic Chapbook’ competition winner.
I wrote my first poem in 1990. Before this, I spent much of the 1980’s writing lyrics and singing in a number of Liverpool bands. Between 1996-2016 I wrote almost no poetry, largely due to my work commitments as a clinical psychologist.
Melt started out as a title and a broad idea to depict the sense of madness that falling in love can induce; the state that can result in us being almost oblivious to everything else in our lives. Writing this drop-in for Nigel brought to mind a song I wrote in the early 1980’s – also about…
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Re-wild the mundane day 2
In answer to Paul Brookes’ hedgehog and tea towel questions which you can see here (WP can feck off with it’s stupid questions).
Once were tea towels
smart-checked and striped,
holes now united by threadbare,
unravelled warp and weft,
linted and loose-threaded,
shoe-cleaners, floor-wipers,
the unnameable rags
that line forgotten places.
~Not all forgotten, not by all~
a hedgehog home, deep in the pile
of cracked roof tiles and bricks,
beam splinters ancient plaster,
is lined with linen, embroidered with oak leaves,
spiked and span, gathered by prickles,
wind holes filled with moss,
a winter sleep away from spring.
Join me every day this December. #RewildTheMundane and/or #ReMundaneTheWild. Second Day. NOTE: NO WILD THINGS MUST DIE IN THESE SCENARIOS. I look forward to your draft poetry/short fiction/visual images. Go leftfield and imagine a teatowel as a wild animal or plant, imagine a wild animal or plant as a teatowel, or other domestic object, or task. Email me or add your contribution to this link.
Leftfield Questions
How is a hedgehog like a teatowel?
What mundane task would a living hedgehog do in a home?
How would a teatowel be rewilded?
Once were tea towels
smart-checked and striped,
holes now united by threadbare,
unravelled warp and weft,
linted and loose-threaded,
shoe-cleaners, floor-wipers,
the unnameable rags
that line forgotten places.
~Not all forgotten, not by all~
a hedgehog home, deep in the pile
of cracked roof tiles and bricks,
beam splinters ancient plaster,
is lined with linen, embroidered with oak leaves,
spiked and span, gathered by prickles,
wind holes filled with moss,
a winter sleep away from spring.
-Jane Dougherty
Night warden
A poem for Paul Brookes’ challenge to re-wild the mundane and/or re-mundane the wild. Today we’re dealing with foxes (or toasters). If you’d like the join in, the details are here.
I’d like to add that most of the elements of this story are true.
Franz Marc provided the illustration.
Night warden
Where the kitchen stove glows
still warm, cats dream,
and mice dance with stray crumbs,
nudge loose-fitting lids,
chew holes in the mesh
of the food safe.
Padding soft, almost silent,
the fox in the attic descends
the cold stairs, grey-ghost,
in search of fat mice,
where cats stretch in sleep,
in the stove-glow,
their dreams full of tiny squeals.
Join me every day this December. #RewildTheMundane and/or #ReMundaneTheWild. First Day. NOTE: NO WILD THINGS MUST DIE IN THESE SCENARIOS. I look forward to your draft poetry/short fiction/visual images. Go leftfield and imagine a toaster as a wild animal or plant, imagine a wild animal or plant as a toaster, or other domestic object, or task. Email me or add your contribution to this link.
Leftfield Questions
How is a fox like a toaster?
What mundane task would a living fox do in a home?
How would a toaster be rewilded?
Night warden
Where the kitchen stove glows
still warm, cats dream,
and mice dance with stray crumbs,
nudge loose-fitting lids,
chew holes in the mesh
of the food safe.
Padding soft, almost silent,
the fox in the attic descends
the cold stairs, grey-ghost,
in search of fat mice,
where cats stretch in sleep,
in the stove-glow,
their dreams full of tiny squeals.
-Jane Dougherty
I found a fox in the crumb tray of my toaster once.
My friend found kippers in a bank deposit drawer.
One of these is true.
Life, stranger than fiction. Poetry, stranger than both.
Ivor Daniel
Proud and red
the toaster
on his forages
stands aloof,
looking down
on cold plates
He accepts another
outstretched slice
of bread, takes care
to avoid a stand off
with a knife or fork,
then warms to his task
before he merges,
ears flattened,
unseen, by a den
of cupboards,
on the look out
for supper.
-Val Bowen
As humans yawn inside the house
The toaster lurks behind the shed
When all is dark it hunts for crumbs
And pounces on a slice of bread
The bagels roll in frantic haste
Baguettes pretend to be a post
For each one knows that if it’s caught
All hope is gone and they’ll be toast
-Jennifer Thomas
Cloudshapes day 30
Final day of the clouds challenge. Thank you Paul Brookes, Gaynor Kane and Julian Day for your wonderfully inspiring photography. It has been a pleasure finding adequate words to accompany it. You can see the last set of photos here.
Worlds in the sky
All worlds are there, here,
just out of reach, above birds,
borne on their wings,
wind-patterned,
fashioned by snow and sand
from desert oceans, ice fields,
forests of cloud-trees, frost ferns.
Night and day are cradled there,
the stars, moonlight silver and sun-gold.
We reach up to mould malleable cloud
to our fancies, our fears,
never touching their self-creation.
Feet tethered by unseen currents
to clay and the rippling pelt of the earth,
we yearn for weightlessness,
to overcome the mockery of birds.
Perhaps we should learn to love
what we have, the green, the blue,
the flower-carpet, the columned cathedral-treed,
the river-running and ocean-lapping.
Before…
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“Created Responses To This Day” Chaucer Cameron responds to one of my This Day images. I would love to feature your responses too.
The Takeaway
Savoury or sweet, hearing footsteps
on repeat, chilli caught between the teeth
ice cold larger in its can,
grip the railings with one hand
steady on your going to trip
plastic walls or maybe brick
and the tiger in its cage
pushed so hard against the bars
hearing footstep
on repeat – sick to death of steps like this
such a shame the parrot’s squawk
she was fast tracked, walked the walk.
-Chaucer Cameron
Bio and Links
Chaucer’s poetry has been published in journals, magazines and anthologies. Chaucer is creator of Wild Whispers (2018) an international poetry film project, and regularly curates and presents poetry film at events and festivals. Co-editor of the online magazine Poetry Film Live.
- Poetry films screened in UK and internationally.
- Contributor to Moving Poems: the best poetry videos on the web.
- Poetry and monologues performed at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham.
- Founder member of Poetry Factory, a critical poetry collective.
- Poetry film workshop facilitator with Swindon Poetry.
- MA in Creative writing from University of Gloucestershire.
#CloudWriter #Cloudshapes. Day Thirty. Final Day. Congratulations to our marvellous photographers Gaynor and Julian, and to Jane who now has a collection of cloud poems. What shapes can you see? What stories are developing in these cloud photos by Julian Day, Gaynor Kane and I? You may contribute your own cloud photos and/or videos as inspiration. Writers and artworkers have been fascinated by clouds and what they see in them for centuries. This challenge features three different cloud shapes a day for thirty days. You may respond to one, two or all three photos. Could you write on the day you saw the photos and email your drafts to me, with a short, third person bio?
KANE30
JD30
PB30
The Wombwell Rainbow 