Unfinished
I must finish some poems. A few months ago I counted my way through the heap. There were seventy. Next time I count, I thought, I will reach a different number. I have just counted, and I have. Eighty.
Of course, I have serious reasons for falling behind: my parents' death, my daughter's wedding. (I spent most of last Saturday in a sunlit garden near Bath.) But there are less weighty reasons. Spring tugs me into my small garden. The yellow deadnettles have keeled over, blighted by unseasonable sun and all-too-seasonable greenfly. The sparrows need feeding. The old unaffordable pony needs riding more often, so the rich new shoots of grass do not poison her feet. What will be next? Ninety?
Sometimes, in that unnatural sun, I have a new sense: that we are heading for a world so changed, so hard, that poems will not survive in the easy and plentiful way of my libraried youth, but only in the corners of lives, and heads. But that does not (yet) stop me writing. Ninety-five.
And then there is MySpace (although that occupies a space in my life that should not be used for writing, but sleeping). If you would like to see a rather different set of my poems, please look at
www.myspace.com/alisonbrackenbury
For more cat poems, with Shadow resplendent in pictures, please see
www.myspace.com/shadowthepoetrycat
For the old handsome pony (in semi-animation) and her horse poems, please see
www.myspace.com/woodyshorsepoems
A hundred.
Thanks to MySpace, and a very enterprising student called Alex Pryce, I may soon be going off to record some poems, (to appear on the Web) during my holiday week. In between getting a new saddle, wrenching down the musk rose and finishing the accounts-
A hundred and ten?
But at least I can read, on the train, some of my tottering pile of magazines, and books, of poems which people have - somehow - finished.
Of course, I have serious reasons for falling behind: my parents' death, my daughter's wedding. (I spent most of last Saturday in a sunlit garden near Bath.) But there are less weighty reasons. Spring tugs me into my small garden. The yellow deadnettles have keeled over, blighted by unseasonable sun and all-too-seasonable greenfly. The sparrows need feeding. The old unaffordable pony needs riding more often, so the rich new shoots of grass do not poison her feet. What will be next? Ninety?
Sometimes, in that unnatural sun, I have a new sense: that we are heading for a world so changed, so hard, that poems will not survive in the easy and plentiful way of my libraried youth, but only in the corners of lives, and heads. But that does not (yet) stop me writing. Ninety-five.
And then there is MySpace (although that occupies a space in my life that should not be used for writing, but sleeping). If you would like to see a rather different set of my poems, please look at
www.myspace.com/alisonbrackenbury
For more cat poems, with Shadow resplendent in pictures, please see
www.myspace.com/shadowthepoetrycat
For the old handsome pony (in semi-animation) and her horse poems, please see
www.myspace.com/woodyshorsepoems
A hundred.
Thanks to MySpace, and a very enterprising student called Alex Pryce, I may soon be going off to record some poems, (to appear on the Web) during my holiday week. In between getting a new saddle, wrenching down the musk rose and finishing the accounts-
A hundred and ten?
But at least I can read, on the train, some of my tottering pile of magazines, and books, of poems which people have - somehow - finished.
2 Comments:
Love your Myspace page, Alison. At last, a meaningful and interesting page to read on Myspace. Do you get much feedback?
Yes. There are new readers for poems on MySpace, which is very rewarding. (Cat is ahead of pony on this one so far!) There are also some very interesting writers I had not encountered before. Most of them (perhaps encouragingly) are a good deal younger than me, and seem very inventive in promoting poetry. This is inspiring.. though we could probably all do with a bit more sleep!
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