Irish Rural Wedding Breakdown

IRISH RURAL WEDDING BREAKDOWN

Stopped by the telegraph,

shocked at hanging about,

hoists the silver-blue skirt.

White shirt mooches about.

Black suits you. Gardai’s never here

when you need them. I always smoke Carroll’s.

By God.

Vegetable love meanwhile wrenches a sigh

at the edge

of the road.

Are you sure then Declan,

- no petrol?

This is a draft of the poem I have sent off to Ian Parks for his comments. And I am very aware that it needs something else doing with it .... not sure what yet.

Meanwhile I sent off a story to the Calderdale libraries competition so I will have to wait and see whether that gets anywhere. After a great deal of re-thinking and re-drafting over a period of weeks I ended up being pretty pleased with it - at last I am able to get into the swing of writing. Poetry seems to be making more of a mark on my writing - I've just sent off an equally short one to the MsLexia Women's Poetry competition, inspired by notices seen on a train journey, though the collected words and phrases were put to a different purpose. In any case it's a fun thing to do: collect words and phrases from any specific activity, it could be an occupational jargon for instance, and use them for poetry.

My next deadline is the Grey Hen Press poetry competition - for women over 60. And, yes, I do fit the category!

Last, but most important at the moment, I'm waiting to hear if the Lancaster University online writing course will be running - it starts in a few days and I'm really looking forward to getting my teeth into regular writing, and critiquing.

It's hard, writing

Of course I've known that for a long time but when you haven't written every day it's easy to forget just what a struggle it can be. Other times I get really fired up with an idea that I just can't ignore and the writing flows. The last few days I've started to write for the MsLexia Short Story competition and there's no set theme to use as a framework though there are five starters on their website, one of which I have used. But as I write I have to keep digging deeper for the jewels ...

I've decided in the last month to use competitions as deadlines for writing, to keep me fastened to the kitchen table - that's where I write - putting pen to paper. I do word-process as well, it depends how the mood takes me. It would be nice to get a laptop when the money allows.

And this is the cat that always sits on the table whenever I read or write (or eat come to that).