General Chat

Bridget, I haven't received so will PM you with my email :)
xx

Teresa
Thanks for the message, I have sent it to all the email addresses I have. I am actually quite excited now and yet very apprehensive

Good luck everyone

Bridget

Bridget, send it round in an email. We've found because we all use different programmes, it's better to just copy and past it into an email.

It's been a big step for many of us, sharing our work for the first time, so you're not alone.

I have written my piece, do I post it on here or send it to everyone on an email. This is the first item I have evr written to share with anyone so please remember this is a big step for me and is true story.

Thanks Bridget

PS Can I attach it to heare or would I have to write it out again? Oh dear I do feel dim today

Thanks for all that Rose, that's really helpful.

I think I might have to dig out last years' writing magazines and read the sections on poetry, give myself a quick course and see what it produces at the end of it :-))

I will have a go, it's just not something I've felt inclined to do, possibly because I'm very direct in my language use, and have a tendency not to flower it up and embellish it too much. Poetry to me demands a lot more of that, though having read Stella's love poem, I see that's not necessarily the case.

So I may be spending most of the day in the bedroom which is the only quiet place in the flat, giving it my full attention, and send it round later....

Awww I didn't know that Joy, just having a google

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=122

there's a quote from him

"If I didn't write poetry I think I'd explode"

I find that quite true lol...you can get a lot out of your system in a poem ;)

Charles Causley is buried next to his mother's grave in the St. Thomas Churchyard, Launceston, Cornwall. (Barely 100 yards from where he was born).
http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/causley.htm

and this that rhymes on first and second line, then again on third and fourth.

'Timothy Winters' Charles Causley

Timothy Winters comes to school
With eyes as wide as a football-pool,
Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters:
A blitz of a boy is Timothy Winters.

His belly is white, his neck is dark,
And his hair is an exclamation-mark.
His clothes are enough to scare a crow
And through his britches the blue winds blow.

When teacher talks he won't hear a word
And he shoots down dead the arithmetic-bird,
He licks the pattern off his plate
And he's not even heard of the Welfare State.

Timothy Winters has bloody feet
And he lives in a house on Suez Street,
He sleeps in a sack on the kithen floor
And they say there aren't boys like him anymore.

Old Man Winters likes his beer
And his missus ran off with a bombardier,
Grandma sits in the grate with a gin
And Timothy's dosed with an aspirin.

The welfare Worker lies awake
But the law's as tricky as a ten-foot snake,
So Timothy Winters drinks his cup
And slowly goes on growing up.

At Morning Prayers the Master helves
for children less fortunate than ourselves,
And the loudest response in the room is when
Timothy Winters roars "Amen!"

So come one angel, come on ten
Timothy Winters says "Amen
Amen amen amen amen."
Timothy Winters, Lord. Amen

Charles Causley

and this one that rhymes on 2nd and fourth line


Walter De la Mare. 1873–

90. Nod

SOFTLY along the road of evening,
In a twilight dim with rose,
Wrinkled with age, and drenched with dew
Old Nod, the shepherd, goes.

His drowsy flock streams on before him,
Their fleeces charged with gold,
To where the sun's last beam leans low
On Nod the shepherd's fold.

The hedge is quick and green with briar,
From their sand the conies creep;
And all the birds that fly in heaven
Flock singing home to sleep.

His lambs outnumber a noon's roses,
Yet, when night's shadows fall,
His blind old sheep-dog, Slumber-soon,
Misses not one of all.

His are the quiet steeps of dreamland,
The waters of no-more-pain;
His ram's bell rings 'neath an arch of stars,
"Rest, rest, and rest again."

poems do not have to rhyme..most of mine are freeform

just write from your heart and let it flow into phrases.. then you will have a poem

xx

( that's what i do anyway)

Teresa, forget the technicalities until after you write some...and even then they aren't necessarily any help.

I can absolutely reccommend "Stephen Fry's book, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within, is a guide to writing poetry."

It tackles all the compexities of 'iambic pentameter' rhyme, free verse etc...and also shows that a lot of the great poetry ignores the rules or 'bends' them :)

Look at any anthology and you will find poems that don't look like poems.... I like poems that rhyme usually, but my favourite is a non -rhyming one, 'Fern Hill ' by Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas - Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heyday of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it, was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

I have to admit I do have one that sort of rhymes but I dug it out from some time back, an attempt I made for poets pot (remember that?) The others do not rhyme and are probably technically rubbish but I have not got a clue. (They are not long!)

I haven't attempted poetry yet, I can think of words that rhyme, but forming them into a half decent poem is another matter. I don't understand the technicalities of poetry enough to write it.

Tomorrow maybe if I pluck up courage, willing to receive guidance.

Look forward to seeing them Ann (that's if GR lets me post this reply lol...2nd try)
xx

Well I seem to have been writing a few short poems but I am not terribly pleased with them. I like to read poetry but not sure about writing it, way out of my comfort zone.

I have never written anything except for a record of my time in Greece as a Nanny when I was 18 ,leaving home for the first time.I wish I knew what happened to my 'book'.It is too long ago now to be able to write things from the heart.I will just keep those memories in my head lol.

Thank-you Teresa, I will try and get hold of it.

I have been writing since I was achild, my most famous being a steamy teenage novel at school, lol, that kept my friends amused for a whole term!!!! I had a few letters published in magazine years ago.

Seriously, it's been something I've wanted to get into again for about the last 10 years or so but the tricky bit is getting started, isn't it? So this group seems like a good idea to help dust off the cobwebs!

I'm 51 and live near Tenterden in Kent.

About 15 years ago I wrote loads of stuff, I couldn't stop, stories and poetry (the latter very bad!) and thoroughly enjoyed it. But then I stopped and haven't written anything for a long time. This is a great opportunity to start off again and I am really enjoying the different styles of everyone.

i started writing for the first time in Sept 2008 when i couldn't get on to my usual art course. i enrolled at my local college in a class on Wednesday mornings , but you would not believe how much i learned, how to write in different genres, plays for stage or tv ,poems, novels, excercises.. we crammed it all in and did lots of homework resulting in us all attaining level 2 OCN
I wanted to do level 3 last year but the college didn't have a tutor for that level and i though OU would be a bit stressful to keep with, so i joined my art class again last September and a local writing group of about 12 of us..which i enjoy as it is a social evening out as well..