The Poetry Bus

I missed Totalfeckineejit’s bus last week, expertly driven by Poetikat, but am determined to catch it this week. Don't Feed the Pixies is the current driver, and one of the prompts posted by DFTP’s was to pick a sign, follow it to its destination, and write a poem about it.

For anyone who doesn’t have Irish, Béal Bán means white mouth, and is the name of the local strand.

Béal Bán

At the end of the road
there is a mouth -
a great white mouth –
that stretches the length
of the parish, cheek to cheek.

This morning it was hungry.

With a great white smile
it swallowed three fence posts
a section of sandy path,
and a nice chunk
of Noely Malone’s field.

It eats most things, apart from seaweed.

But there are some things
it treats with respect,
like the eggs planted firmly
in its shingled gums
by a small ringed bird that hovers, returns
to its nest, glowing with pale blue life.

TFE's Poetry Bus with Jeanne Iris

Jeanne Iris set two great tasks this week for Poetry Bussers over at Revolutionary Revelry.

The first asked us to sit somewhere and just listen for five or ten minutes. I haven't sat alone, doing absolutely nothing, for a while. This morning I managed about 40 seconds before I started fiddling with my phone, checking out the cat, worrying about my vegetables (the wind wooooooooooh the wind!)

The sort of poetry that comes from trying to pin sounds to a page is very different to what I usually write. Some people, like Irish poet Kit Fryatt, have a definite gift for translating pure sounds into words on a page, playing with sound, turning things on their head.
I struggled, and what I came up with is very rushed, but what was great about this task was it made me listen in a new way.

I did try doing the audio, but had terrible arguments with my phone, computer, and audacity.

A song thrush bripp brrripp ping reeeeeep pip
A distant delivery van, shhhhhhh, bump
The wind woooooooooh wish swish wooooh
A song thrush brrrip brrrrip brrrrrip creep pip
A drip drip drip of silence from
an upstairs room.
The wind husssssshhhh, shhhhhh, don’t wish
A songbird, brippp, rirrrrrip, ping ping bleeep
Swish swish swish three cars sail past
on a stretch of road below.

Just back from a writing workshop

Lots of explanations for the long gap since my last post - family hooley, work, family visiting (always involves lots of wine), work, and a writing workshop (and of course, more work).

The writing workshop was in screenwriting, of all things. Why I booked a writing workshop in screenwriting I don't know, seeing as how I write poetry and fiction and have never written a screenplay in my life, but I did, and I went, and I'm still not quite sure what I thought about it, or what I think of the whole writing workshop experience.

I'll be missing the poetry bus again this week (did I mention I'm busy with work??) but definitely plan to be on it next week.

And finally, I've two readings coming up, and am now officially nervous. Any tips gratefully received.