Mumblings and musings.

A month of journaling (thanks to a couple of free courses and 'retreats' with Writers HQ  https://writershq.co.uk/ and reconnecting with Tania Kndersley - https://www.facebook.com/writingexpert67/ and the write 😉 timing - has revitalised my approach to creative writing, and focused me in on what I love to write.

Sometimes it is stories, from flash, through short to full length novel ideas.  The BIG stuff.
But I know that most of my output comes in the form of brain dump - positively labelled as journaling.  Often nature inspired, from walks or from the garden.  I propose to focus on this aspect of writing, though keeping open all options and seeing where the activity, the daily writing takes me.  I have a short story on the go for a competition.  I will complete and submit it. 

So, this old dog is once again, re-launching this old blog, and I thought I might start with sharing a couple of poems.  Both are in the public domain but under my copywriter as the author.

The first, actually originally penned over a year ago, in April 2019, has been re-worked and shared on local facebook pages. 

The second was a substantially cut down version of a 98 line sequence that helped to gain me a 'Distinction' on an OU Creative Writing Module in 2018/19.  The Hugh Miller Writing Competition, 2019/20, asking for submissions based in or written around one of the 51 most important geological places in Scotland, offered an opportunity to put a much shorter, revised 'version' out there.

I was delighted to learn that it received a 'Highly Commended' position, second only to the stunning 1st placed poem.  All of the winning and placed submissions across many categories can be found on the Hugh Miller Writing Competition section of https://www.scottishgeology.com/

Fade to Yellow

The yellow isn’t only on the broom: the genista

or gorse. It’s on the daffodils; dogs tooth violets

crimson throated euphorbia bracts.

It’s on flashes of yellowhammer in the

brambles and goldfinch on the feeder.

On winter jasmine, softly dropping

her last scented blooms; on primula and pansy

purple splashed faces winking in the sun.

And on your shirt, on the line, buttery pale, the one

with cuffs that are awful to iron.

It’s on the forsythia, the vicious spiked leaves

of foaming mahonia, dandelions, creeping

buttercup, cornus stems, illuminate in

the shade of the ivy clad geans.

It’s on oil seed rape flower heads

emergent on soft wispy green stems, threatening

those with compromised airways.

And on the bruise, fading 

on my cheek.

N.B.  The observations are based on reality, the poetic framing is entirely fictional. 

A Stone’s Throw from Easdale                                                                     

Crossing the Atlantic Bridge, its south side awash

with fairy foxglove, the call is strong.  A lifetime ago

a minibus re-fuelled opposite the Tigh

an Truish.  You ate plastic toasties, drank warm lager.

Then, you sought to read the rocks; indigo foliated slates twinkling

with millennia of micrometric mica.  Weeks of mapping, skimming

plotting; a bucket of stones, a dusty rock hammer your spoils.                                 

Discarded, one by one, as you grew, moved, changed,

lost, contracted. Just one remains.  In your hand, it tells the

human stories of people and place.  Formed in 

Palaeozoic pressures; split by erupting fault lines,

raging subterranean currents; torn along fragile

grinding tectonic plates; scree wind lashed into silicate

and clay – until Rodinia ruptured.  Rains raised Ancient Iapetus;

shores re-shaped by volatile cycles: collisions; divisions; melting;

freezing and melding.  Morph in claymation. Formed, re-formed, bent

but not quite broken. 

                                                                                                                                     

In ’45, the Campbells, Netherlorn men, came. Not for princes

or crowns, but rock cleavage and silver pounds.

Castles consolidated with borrowed brides and ransom spoils.

They paid for honest toil, modernised and mechanised.

500 men quarried, split, napped; wedged in watery clefts 

on denuded crags, creaking joints engorged as they hewed out

five million princess and duchess-cut tiles, roofing castles

and cathedrals in worlds old and new, building communities. 

Spoil filled causeways melded island to island.                                                        

One stormy night, its defences breached, core sucked, dreams

submerged, livelihoods cleared by nature’s rage, returns declined,

meagre livings scraped. A few endured. Heart still beats to a new tempo.                                                                                       

Now coaches cross the old stone bridge daily. Disgorged tourists

savour tasty fare, buy postcards not petrol, try on the kilt,

giggle in Highland Arts.  Plinkety-plink pipes and fiddles

tweed, tartan tat, tablet, warm shortbread and impotent art.

They bounce in fast boats to exhilarating whirlpools, cheer

World Stone Skimming Championships, wheel possessions

in colourful barrows from the tiny quayside.

A bowl of seafood, glass of Chablis, white-washed

holiday lets at your back, you caress the stone one last time

then skim it back into its inky womb.

                               ***  

I plan to blog weekly, and would be delighted if friends want to follow, comment and share.   

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