poetry

Writing Elsewhere

| Sheree

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Since May, I’ve been sharing my writing on Medium. This is a platform I’ve tired a number of times before but for some reason the habit just didn’t stick. I now know this probably had something to do with having nothing really to say. But now I do.

I’ve been contributing to the Binderful Blog, which a small online community of women, started a few years ago, which offers classes to support women questioning their lives. Maybe shaking up the status quo from the kitchen table outwards. I’m due to create a class with Binderful but in the meantime, I’ve been writing on Medium for them.

If you’re interested in checking out what I’ve shared so far then click below to read the articles.

Learning to be Inside

Comfort Reading

Pandemic Food Ways: A Little Sweet Treat

Waiting To Be Allowed In

My Voice is my Weapon

It hurts living on our knees

The Streets are Talking

| Sheree
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Image credit – Clay Banks

The streets are on fire.
Smoke coats our tongues
like iron in our blood.

We walk for our rights
as weedy paths like barbed
wire lacerate our ankles.

God is in our shouts.
Demands for justice pour
forth smelling of lilies.

Winds of hope on the horizon
are felt like cherry blossom,
delicate and beautiful

but not short lived.

 

Becoming in May

| Sheree

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I was attempting to complete my second round of #100daysofblogging while also creating a poem a day for National Poetry Writing Month in April. I was going well. I past the mid-point, and I just ran out of steam. And I also think enjoyment. I wasn’t really inspired with what I was writing. I think I was writing for writing sake. To fulfil the challenges and not my soul. Sometimes this works for me. I know in the past, I’ve created daily words for years and thought nothing about it. But I suppose I’m getting older and wiser and also figuring out what’s important to me and no one else. What my gut has to say about things takes precedent.

I have been writing in other places though during this impasse on the blog. I have a piece over on Medium for the The Binderful Blog titled, ‘Learning to Stay Inside,’ and documents my journey with the Coronavirus. I have also returned to my mixed-media memoir and I’m happy to say we’re in love. We spend a lot of time together getting to know each other again and working out what’s working between us and what’s not. We’re open and honest with other, basing our relationship on our vulnerabilities. I’m more than satisfied with how things are working out between us. I know I have to keep honouring this process by turning up each day and just touching in.

Turning up here today to find some words I needed for the memoir, meant I took the time to read over some past posts. See where I was at different times over the last five years. While reading, I gained a sense of perspective as well as pride for what I have created here. I love my website, because it’s attempt to present me and my process to the world. And it’s not polished or professional but it is real. It gives you a glimpse behind the curtain. It’s honest and vulnerable and it is so me.

So I’m not going to beat myself up for not completing a challenge. And I’m also not going to beat myself up if I miss days, or weeks before coming back here to blog. I’m learning to treat myself with more grace. And how that’s looks it still a work in progress but I do know as Michelle Obama wisely said, it is becoming.

” Becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. It’s forward motion, a mans of evening, a way to reach continuously towards a better self. “

Day 9 – Concrete Poem – being in the moment

| Sheree

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I sit on the bed, cross legged,
window open. Hearing a kid
scream, a car engine revving.
And there, just then, a seagull
flies by carrying bunch of leaf
and twine in its beak. Say you,
what you building?   Stealing?
It’s now I’m aware of the trees
trees outside coming into leaf.
Buds unfurling like green ton-
gues with beard and feathery
flower clusters. What tree are
you? And why do you reach so
to the sky as if all that matters
is to grow and thrive? Zooming
traffic, loud, draw my attention
away from nature, from inside
But that’s usually the case with
modern life: a distancing from
our true nature with incentive
of moving faster, go anywhere,
produce anything of fake worth
as if our life depends upon it.

Day 2 – The Sycamore Gap Tree

| Sheree

Sycamore, sycamore.

Say your name our loud.

Sycamore, sycamore.

A whisper plays

upon the wind.

A spell to conjure

you to life before me.

Between Milecastle 13 and Crag Lough,

at the end of a cliff, on an outcrop of Whin Sill

sandwiched between the Roman Wall,

Sycamore, Sycamore

I come to you.

Once, one of many,

you stand alone

in your splendour.

I come carrying

Hollywood images

of bows and arrows

and thieves. Fake.

Sycamore, sycamore.

I touch your truck.

Reddy-grey fissured bark

and white tender lichen.

I stretch my neck back

to look up and up

onto your foliage.

Magnificent.

Every shade of green

spreads wide.

Shining out from your

everlasting soul.

Sycamore. Sycamore.

Day 1 – NAPoWriMo – In these troubling times, our way of being comes into sharp focus

| Sheree

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April brings with it the challenge of National Poetry Writing Month. One poem per day for the next 30 days. What better way to kick start my next 100 days of blogging if you take up this challenge. So follow along as for the next 30 days , I’ll be sharing a poem I create, sometimes in response to the prompts posted over here, sometimes from other inspirations. But I’ll be hopefully following the theme of Nature for this body of work.

Day 1 – In these troubling times, our way of being comes into sharp focus

Taking out the rubbish

I’m met by a bully of a bird

on our backyard wall.

 

He doesn’t take his leave.

Indolent, he waiters along the bricks

beady eyeing me.

 

Mum used to say things

must be rough at sea

for seagulls to be so far inland.

 

Today, I don’t think this is the case.

I think people are no longer at sea

forcing these scavengers

 

reliant on the discarded chip

or bit of fish to become urban

into backyards where citizens

 

take their recommended

or is it permitted

daily shot of sun while in lockdown.

 

This seagull surveys the scene.

One foot, two foot, two foot, one.

Head jerking alert, yellow sickle beak,

 

hooking the air with it’s call.

Grey wings once settled now stretched

wide with an inkling to take flight

 

but it decides to stay, close.

Two foot, one foot, one foot two.

A shared landscape it’s always been.

 

Perhaps, now, more obvious

how we all have to adapt

to a new way of being

 

which might have us all eating grass yet.

My Sister, My Wound

| Sheree

While the lockdown has been going on, I’ve been leaning into my creativity. One resource which has been helping me with reading and writing is the Social Distancing Writing Retreat hosted by Amanda P Moore.

Each day, there are four parts to each prompt. First there’s a poem to read followed by an essay on craft. Bearing these two in mind, there’s a writing prompt followed by an outlet, a place to publish your creations recommended.

I’m behind in the prompts but I’ve been finding this retreat a rich oasis of inspiration for my writing.

Here is a piece, I’ve redrafted today after following the readings for Day 6.

My Sister, My Wound after Ross Gay

No matter the mauling.

No matter the removal of face awaits.
There is no coming back
from coming to you.

My body betrays me
offering myself just like that.
With arms furred with pollen
like bright things at your feet;

marigold, opal, purple kale.
Biting my tougue, smile open
singing my insides our like an angel,

for you, to you.

I place my head into your mouth
knowing I’ll lose my head,
just like the sky biting down
into my torn flesh.

Moving Forward

| Sheree

I’m nearing the end of #100daysof blogging, my first 100 days project of 2020. Last year I managed to knock out three different 100 day projects and I definitely feel the benefit of such daily practice this year. There is more of a flow to my practice; less friction, more ease.

With this in mind, with about two weeks to go on my blogging challenge, I have decided to continue with the blogging for another 100 days. With April just around the corner, National Poetry Writing Month, I think it would be remiss of me to not pick up this challenge and explore my poetry skills here.

So come the beginning of April, get ready to see 30 days of poetry, based around the theme of nature. I’m excited about this as this has been something I’ve been exploring in my personal and professional lives for the past few years. It’s a pity that my access to the outdoors will be limited for the foreseeable future with the Coronavirus but this could be a way to keep the spark alive; the connection with nature alive and present.

I might even bring back in my practice of creating haibuns. But I definitely want to emulate, ‘ The Country Diary of a Black Women’, something I created years ago after being inspired for Edith Holden’s books and made it my own.