The Bus is now taking passengers

I'll be updating this post in dribs and drabs, between work and other stuff, but
the first of this week's Poetry Bussers are already grabbing their seats.


First up is Jeanne Iris (Talk about prompt! She almost had this poem written before I'd even finished posting!)

And lagging not too far behind is Rachel Fox here

Next up is Carolina at Child of a frosty morning

And Jinksy has two poems for the bus this week. First off, a strangely prescient post here and also a freshly penned poem here

Next up is the Bug here

An owlish poem from the The doc

And a poignant one from  The Weaver of Grass

Next passenger is Niamh at Various Cushions

And lagging not too far behind is NanU here

While Lydia at Writerquake has been doing some serious transforming

And last for now, but certainly not least it's Poetry Bus progenitor Totalfeckineejit here

Some more passengers - Welcome aboard to

Crazy field mouse who's here

And Helen at Poetry Matters here

There's more - 

A big welcome to The Watercats who's also just hopped on board

And Peter at the Stammering Poet has penned a magical poem

Also to King of the camels, who's gone graphic

And to Heather over at Ragged old blogger. Welcome aboard!

Titus the dog has managed to grab a seat just before the bus takes off here

And next up is Poetikat

And last for now, but by no means least, Dominic Rivron at Made out of words here

Hold on! Patteran has just jumped on the bus here

And another latecomer, Karen at Keeping Secrets, is here


Not sure if chiccoreal is hoppping on the bus or not, but what the hell, we'll stick up her link here

I'll  be posting my offering sometime Sunday and getting round to read everyone's hopefully Monday. Meanwhile, keep those poems coming!

TFE'S Poetry Bus is ready to roll

Okay.

The engine’s purring.

The windows have been cleaned.

The empty crisp packets, beer cans and aero bar wrappers have been removed.

The seats have been scrubbed and sprayed with febreze.

The Poetry Bus is read for its next journey.

Have a look at the following poem.

When I Set Out for Lyonnesse

When I set out for Lyonnesse,
A hundred miles away,
The rime was on the spray,
And starlight lit my lonesomeness
When I set out for Lyonnesse
A hundred miles away.

What would bechance at Lyonnesse
While I should sojourn there
No prophet durst declare,
Nor did the wisest wizard guess
What would bechance at Lyonnesse
While I should sojourn there.

When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes,
All marked with mute surmise
My radiance rare and fathomless,
When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes!

Thomas Hardy

Now write a poem about a moment of transformation.
It doesn’t necessarily have to take the form of a journey, like the poem above. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a personal transformation.
It can be about something as simple as freshly laid eggs transformed into a breakfast – A seed transformed into a plant – or a poem about a person transformed by circumstance into something completely new.

Now throw in a recurring line here and there.
And before and after pictures would be nice :)

Call back Friday to catch the Poetry Bus

Just happened to check TFE's place and realised I'm cheduled to drive the Poetry Bus this coming Monday.

I've fallen off the bus pretty spectacularly in the last few months, between work, vegetable garden, rebellious nine-year-old daughters, and other stuff, but I'm hoping to find a spot in the back row this autumn. Meanwhile, I solemnly promise to have the engine purring smoothly by Friday morning (or thereabouts).

Also meanwhile, here's a picture of just some of our spectacularly successful vegetable garden harvest.**

**Please note that the hand on which the pumpkin is placed is an unusually large one.

TFE's Poetry Bus with Dominic Rivron

A little late for the bus, but couldn’t resist Dominic Rivron's  prompt this week.

Weirdly enough, while I was sitting in the kitchen writing the words on the egg (as you do) a small green bird smashed into the window. Maybe it resented the fact that I was only going to mention magpies.

When I got outside it slid to the ground, but as I was going back into the house it was sitting up, looking a bit dazed. Because I want this post to end on a happy note, I will not dwell on the cat, just emerging from his night’s sleep, who hadn’t as yet spotted it.

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.