Caught Upon his gaunt and angled frame hung scraps of memories lost She felt a melancholy shame his honour paid the cost There were no words of honeycomb no crystal kiss of hope A bare-branched skeleton crept home his dream a tattered rope For Day 25 of  our prompt was to pen a ballad, generally with […]

I’ve caught up to Day 24 (only six days left!) of  and the prompt is to write a poem inspired by anagrams of your name. I’m just going with my first name, Claire, which has produced a few strange combinations I have to say… From these I’ve selected ‘eclair’, ‘lacier’, ‘a relic’ and ‘clear I’. If […]

     Today is a day of catch-up for Tuesday (apologies) but that being said – Tuesday was a fairly busy day! I will begin with my Day 23 poem for , which asked us to write a triolet – an eight-line poem. ‘All the lines are in iambic tetramenter (for a total of eight syllables per […]

Guardians Sun spills softly onto soil cold and stark Green has gone from here – left the landscape in the dark Rain it brings no hope, no sustenance to see Who on earth’s to blame – is it you? Is it me?   The rays grow ever stronger as protective layers go They said it […]

  On Sunday I travelled back to L’Derry/City of Culture (with fellow north coast writer Jenny) to enjoy a masterclass with author Lynne Raid Banks, as well as an unexpected second masterclass with acclaimed children’s theatre writer and director, Vicky Ireland, who spoke about adapting children’s books for the stage.  Both women can easily be […]

 It is day 19 of my poetry writing extravaganza and it is therefore (according to the powers that be…) the day of the personal ad. (Flip!) Wanted Someone who listens and someone who cares Someone who goes for it – someone who dares Creative and charming, with a heart full of sun Honest and kind […]

In an attempt to convey a slight sense of what yesterday’s lunchtime poetry performance with Lemn Sissay was like, I have decided to compare him to a steam train (bear with me on this!) He began with a loud welcome whistle, at times chugged calmly along, at other times, blew off a little steam (as […]

Hello You look a little lost I wonder where you’ve come from and just how much it cost Your eyes are tinged with sorrow, wrapped up with strings of pain the flecks of hope and love must have burrowed through your brain. Hello Do your memories flood your mind Have you forgotten all you fought […]

Day 16 of NaPoWriMo (yes, that was yesterday… I’m running a little behind!) suggested finding a foreign poem and writing your own piece based on what you thought the words looked like. Of course, I picked Russian, found it indecipherable, tried other languages, found them the same so… it was back to the Russian poet […]

 Day 15 marks the halfway point of NaPoWriMo and today’s prompt suggests writing a ‘pantun’. This apparently consists of rhymed quatrains (abab), with 8-12 syllables per line. (I’m learning a lot about poetry this month!)  As the NaPoWriMo people say… “The first two lines of each quatrain aren’t meant to have a formal, logical link […]