Our host Ronovanwrite’s said :You may, if you wish, make some kind of link between the Haiku Challenge prompt of (OPEN and Solace). and this Décima Challenge of STAR in the C rhyme line. This means you could write a haiku post using the prompt words. Then do a Décima post using this week’s prompt uniting the two with a common message.
The two challanges are separate but can be combined if you choose to do so.
Again I choose to combine my Haiku and Décima.
Image from Pixabay
We’re all locked up in our houses. All hiding from the unseen foe None of us knowing where to go. Alone or with friends or spouses. Long days full of stress and grouses. Two planets aline like a star Like the one wise men saw afar. All borders closing no solace We all need to turn about face Our home planet we spoil and mar.
Ronovan says : You may, if you wish, make some kind of link between the Haiku Challenge prompt of (CURL and Paw). and this Décima Challenge of KNOCK in the A rhyme line. This means you could write a haiku post using the prompt words. Then do a Décima post using this week’s prompt uniting the two with a common message.
The 2 CHALLENGES are SEPARATE but CANBEcombined if YOU CHOOSE to do so.
Gently she gives my elbow a knock. Her eyes full of love “I need you” I smile back needing her too. She is my foundation and rock. Tells the time better than a clock. When I’m well she’s out running free When I’m not well she clings to me Somehow she knows just what to do. She’ll always guide me good and true. Ruby is my lifesaving prop.
Today I am very excited to have the very talented Jane Dougherty to visit and discuss her latest book. This is a new adventure for Jane as this is a poetry book.
Hello, Willow. Thank you for inviting me to talk about my very first book of poems.
Hi Jane it’s great to have you here do sit down and have a cup of tea, tell me what made you decide to write a book of poems about the elements.
It wasn’t a conscious decision. I write a lot of poems, every day, and although I post many of them, there are still lots left. Some of them I have been keeping because I think they deserve a bit more than to be just one blog post among thousands. A themed chapbook seemed like a good idea. Every time I do some physical sorting, weeding or clearing out, I hurt my back, but sorting poems is a relatively safe activity. When I looked through the scores of poems in the homeless folder, they all seemed to fall into a few main themes, and the first theme I tackled was water.
That makes a lot of sense Jane, I am all for saving my back too. When did you first start writing and was there a specific reason.
I went to a very special primary school—big shout out for Saint Patrick’s in Birstall—with a visionary head teacher. It was founded by Irish immigrants who wanted their children to succeed through education, and the nun who headed the school through the 1960s and 70s until she left to run a war orphanage in Sarajevo, believed in education, not just the three Rs. We learned about the natural world, about physics and how things work, we had an orchestra, learned calligraphy, meteorology, how to wire plugs and make cheese. And we were encouraged in all kinds of creative activity, all kinds of art, and writing; we all wrote poetry from the age of nine or so. I had an ideal environment for developing a taste for creativity and taking it seriously. Having a father who was a poet and sculptor and mother who was an artist and art teacher certainly helped too.
Your school and teachers sound very progressive and you obviously had a varied education. Would you like another cup of tea.
Tell me Jane who most influences your work.
It probably sounds strange, but there aren’t too many poets whose work I read and reread with boundless admiration. There are individual poems I love, but not many whole bodies of work and none remotely contemporary. Yeats is the poet I love the most and whose words, even when I don’t get all the mystical references, inspire and uplift. Francis Ledwidge too is a favourite and John Masefield, Walter de la Mare. All rather old-fashioned sounding now, in their clarity and lack of self-analysis. The poems point outwards rather than inwards, showing us the world as it is all around us, not how it seems at the back of a troubled head.
You mention your parents in the dedication of your book, were they influencal and supportive to your writing.
Both my parents died when I was still in the throes of having babies and bringing up young children. I hadn’t started to write seriously, then, but as I said earlier, they were both artistic and expected that their children would be too. I know they would be proud that I have finally got around to it.
Tell me Jane have childhood memories influenced you much.
I think that a happy childhood has been fundamental to making me what I am. It obviously wasn’t happy every single minute, and there are memories that still make me anxious. Tuesday, for example, will always be music lesson day, when I’d leave school early and walk up the hill to the music teacher’s house with fear oozing from every pore. But it was a country childhood, on farmland at the edge of a small town, and we four children spent most of our time poking about in woodland and along the banks of streams, listening and learning. Although I have enjoyed some of my time living in cities, I have always hankered after trees. Three years ago, we moved from the centre of Bordeaux to the countryside, with a large chunk of land of our own. Too much, really, but sharing a place with trees wildflowers, animal and birdlife, has been a revelation. Who knew there was so much life going on?
Now tell me Jane which do you prefer to write poetry or prose.
I write poetry for pleasure. It’s something that I do in-between doing other things. Often an image will strike me and I jot it down to find that it’s already working itself up into a poem. Poems are short and they can be turned out in hundreds of different ways. I can work with an idea or an image for half an hour and get something that pleases me. A novel is different. If writing a poem is like sketching, or shaping something in clay, a novel is like hacking at a slab of wood or stone. The frame of the story might be tenuous, the characters vague, and all I have to go on might be an opening phrase or an idea from a legend or myth, but it’s there. The hard work is in revealing the story trapped inside and maintaining enough interest in it, because it’s a long job. The two approaches probably complement one another; I write poetic prose and often write stories into poems.
Thanks a lot, Willow, for the opportunity to give some background to what I do and why.
Jane Dougherty has wandered a bit from her Irish origins but still feels close to her roots, especially in the bit of green field where she now lives in southwest France. She writes incessantly, and hopes to continue as long as the ideas keep coming, and the scene beyond the window demands that she take notice.
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I have read Jane’s book, thicker than water. It is full of beautiful poetry. It’s a joy to dip into but I read it from cover to cover unable to stop. I can highly recommend it. Here is my favourite poem .
No Light
All is death and the ache in the breast where the heart is wave-wrought in cold seas or on grey pavement, it whispers in the spray of salt and blood,
There will be no moon this night no petals on the rose
Our Hostess with thmostest Colleen said :”You can choose the Ekphrastic #PhotoPrompt provided by Trent McDonald, or you can choose the #SynonymsOnly challenge using the words “MOVE & MAKE” provided by David Ellis.
OR… You can do both! It’s up to you#
This week I have decided to write a Etheree using Trent MacDonald’s photo and David Ellis‘s words. I used glide, skimming and sailing for move and create and manufacture for make.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA: Milford Pond
I Glide through Life, serene Swanlike skimming Not a ripple seen Sailing through like a dream Nothing betrays the madness Created by my feet beneath Autumn colours also manufacturer A gentle serenity to fool all.
This week, Frank Tassone asks us to , write the haikai poem of your choice (haiku, senryu, haibun, tanka, haiga, renga, etc.) that states or alludes to either Fall foliage or goose (kari)–or both, if you feel so inclined!
Today I am delighted to have Author and friend Geoff Le Pard over for afternoon tea and a chat about his latest book. Which is full of delightful poetry!
Geoff, how are you, do sit down I have got everything ready for us. While you get comfy I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed the book. I love the first half very much always a smile and a barb..The sonnets too very much to my liking, especially the two about the Vet, (I assume) Hand me down, and Loyalty, especially the last lines in both. Also the the guiding hand possibly about the textilist? Here have a cuppa just as you like it I think and tell me was I right? How’s that cake?
Geoff with Buster and Moo
In fact, while hand me down is about Jenni, point of view of a shadow which came to me while doing a poetry prompt a couple of years ago.Originally it had me rhyming ‘shadow’ with ‘saddo’ which grated horribly so I’m pleased with the revision. I can spend hours getting nowhere, revising poetry, finding the right combination of… yes, another slice would be lovely… syllables, rhymes and stresses. Oddly, the thing I notice that most poets fail to appreciate is stress. They’ll nail a rhyme, ensure the right number of syllables but when you read it, the stress you place on the words makes it feel like a bad gear change. I wonder if they read the poem out loud or in their head. The imagination is too forgiving, I find.
On reflection Geoff I have to agree with you on that.
How much did your father’s poetry influence you?
First, he spent so much time honing his work that I am constantly forcing myself to one more read through, to mimic him. Second, he loved finding humour in poetry and I think that can be my driving force. Third, we argued constantly, vigorously and with no holes barred. Thus if I write anything with a political or social angle it will almost certainly reflect my views and equally certainly be 180 degrees contrary to his. He didn’t hold back, he wasn’t shy of voicing his opinion and I often sanitise my attempts so as not to offend. That would have annoyed him mightily, so I try and fight the urge to hide. If you’ve a point to make, make it with conviction; if not, don’t make any point. That comes from him. Mostly though, he enjoyed the process, gained huge satisfaction from a job well done. I’ve learnt that, however hard it is – and it is hard – enjoy it. In a way dad only really expressed his true self, his deepest emotions, via poetry as seen in the love poems he wrote to mum and which he refused to let my brother and I see and which mum only shared after his death. I still think he would be mightily cheesed off and equally secretly pleased with her for doing that.
What made you decide to revamp some of best known poems from the BBC’s collection of British Poets?
Don’t worry about the crumbs, Ruby or Dog will pick them up , they are getting on well aren’t they.
Back to Dad, really. He loved Kipling’s poetry and many of his best efforts use the same rhyming scheme that Kipling favoured in some of his finest works. One day – I think I was walking with a couple of friends – I conjured up a couple of lines of ‘If’ but rewritten to the discussion we were having. Again, memory suggests it was a new take on the couplet ‘if you fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run’. I got a laugh. Later I re-read the poem and some other changes, based on the current Zeitgeist occurred to me and off I went. Once I’d begun, it was a fairly natural progression to try it with others. The sharp eyed readers will see that with my re-imagining of ‘if’ I don’t keep the first line, whereas that became one of the criteria I tried to apply to my re-imaginings. Another cup? Thanks. I’ll have oat milk, as part of a new health kick.
Really, luckily have some oat milk in the fridge, I will just get it . Here you are, just a splash. Would you like another
Tell me why did you pick sonnets for the second half of your book?
My whole love of writing began the summer after Dad died at a summer-school in Wiltshire. July 2006. A year later, at the self same summer-school I took a poetry appreciation course that looked at British poets from Chaucer G to Cope W. In amongst the many marvels were a variety of sonnets, from Shakespeare through Rossetti to Manley Hopkins. That week I wrote two, or at least the first drafts, of the sonnets that appear here – the opening work on the frontispiece and what turned into ‘Only skin deep’ a re-imagined Shakespearean sonnet. After that, I spun out several, I entered a number into some on line magazines and had a few published or won or were placed in competitions. I adore the simplicity, the discipline and the history of the sonnet, hence it is my go to form of choice. Hmm, is that lemon drizzle? Oh al right, just a small slice. No, not that small….
Sorry is that better?
Tell me how different do you find the experience of writing poetry as compared to fiction or flash fiction? Do you find poetry a more difficult discipline to writing prose?
Oh my, chalk and cheese. Give me a word, a picture, a phrase, a theme, a genre and I’ll write you a piece of flash, a short story or a novel, often with the bizarrest, most unlikely take imaginable. But do the same with poetry and you may be lucky one in five times. I’ve tried committing to poetry prompts and sometimes that has led to something part way decent. But mostly it just grates. Poetry = emotion and that’s something I’ve taken from dad; without a core of emotion, of self it’s just clunky prose dressed up as something pretentious and clever sounding.
Can I get you a you anything else, Oh Look Ruby and dog are asleep out in the sun. Let’s have a look at my two choices from your book.
A Dog At Leisure
(Leisure, William Henry Davies) What is this life, if full of care? Go fetch my lead, don’t comb your hair. Don’t give in to untimely sloth I know what fun awaits us both. Let’s try the park; we know it’s free, Full of places for me to pee. Squirrels anxious to play chase, Friends who’ll let me lick their face. Secret corners where I can poo Long lost balls for me to chew. Picnic scraps and chicken bones, Stale crusts and broken scones. These treats and many, many more Are just beyond the bloody door. So find your shoes, tie those laces And I’ll take you now to wondrous places Full of fun, grass and the freshest air And while I play, you’ll stand and stare.
And the beautiful sonnet.
Hand -Me-Down
Still wet from the womb, she flapped a fat hand, A mindless hello that captured my soul. Older, unsteady, like a day old foal, She gripped me so tight, determined to stand. She didn’t let go till the first day at school; Then she wept as I forced her fingers apart. From that betrayal she developed her art; Round her finger I’d twist: her so willing fool. One day, so glorious, and, yes, there were tears I released her hand as I gave her away. I smiled her free, and felt no dismay At the thought of that other hand itwrapped round hers. But it’s only a loan, for when I come to my last She’ll be holding my hand, as I let go life’s grasp.
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Now for your Authors Bio and all your book details.
Geoff Le Pard started writing to entertain in 2006. He hasn’t left his keyboard since. When he’s not churning out novels he writes some maudlin self-indulgent poetry, short fiction and blogs at geofflepard.com. He walks the dog for mutual inspiration and most of his best ideas come out of these strolls. He also cooks with passion if not precision.
Geoff’s books
My Father and Other Liars is a thriller set in the near future and takes its heroes, Maurice and Lori-Ann on a helter-skelter chase across continents.
Dead Flies and Sherry Trifle is a coming of age story. Set in 1976 the hero Harry Spittle is home from university for the holidays. He has three goals: to keep away from his family, earn money and hopefully have sex. Inevitably his summer turns out to be very different to that anticipated.
In this, the second book in the Harry Spittle Sagas, it’s 1981 and Harry is training to be a solicitor. His private life is a bit of a mess and he’s far from convinced the law is for him. Then an old acquaintance from his hotel days appears demanding Harry write his will. When he dies somewhat mysteriously a few days later and leaves Harry in charge of sorting out his affairs, Harry soon realises this will be no ordinary piece of work. After all, his now deceased client inherited a criminal empire and several people are very interested in what is to become of it.
The third instalment of the Harry Spittle Sagas moves on the 1987. Harry is now a senior lawyer with a well-regarded City of London firm, aspiring to a partnership. However, one evening Harry finds the head of the Private Client department dead over his desk, in a very compromising situation. The senior partner offers to sort things out, to avoid Harry embarrassment but soon matters take a sinister turn and Harry is fighting for his career, his freedom and eventually his life as he wrestles with dilemma on dilemma. Will Harry save the day? Will he save himself?
Life in a Grain of Sand is a 30 story anthology covering many genres: fantasy, romance, humour, thriller, espionage, conspiracy theories, MG and indeed something for everyone. All the stories were written during Nano 2015
Salisbury Square is a dark thriller set in present day London where a homeless woman and a Polish man, escaping the police at home, form an unlikely alliance to save themselves.
Buster & Moo is about about two couples and the dog whose ownership passes from one to the other. When the couples meet, via the dog, the previously hidden cracks in their relationships surface and events begin to spiral out of control. If the relationships are to survive there is room for only one hero but who will that be?
Apprenticed To My Mother describes the period after my father died when I thought I was to play the role of dutiful son, while Mum wanted a new, improved version of her husband – a sort of Desmond 2.0. We both had a lot to learn in those five years, with a lot of laughs and a few tears as we went.
Life in a Conversation is an anthology of short and super short fiction that explores connections through humour, speech and everything besides. If you enjoy the funny, the weird and the heart-rending then you’ll be sure to find something here.
When Martin suggests to Pete and Chris that they spend a week walking, the Cotswolds Way, ostensibly it’s to help Chris overcome the loss of his wife, Diane. Each of them, though, has their own agenda and, as the week progresses, cracks in their friendship widen with unseen and horrifying consequences.
Famous poets reimagined, sonnets of all kinds, this poerty selection has something for all tastes, from the funny, to the poignant to the thought-provoking and always written with love and passion.
It’s the first of the month and you know what that means! Poets, choose your own syllabic poetry form, theme, words, images, etc. It’s up to you! So I chose to do an Acrostic Poem September.
Summer is almost gone Evidence of Autumn on its way. Plethora of leaves begin to fall Trees change colours standing tall Embers from bonfires fly Monsters prepare for Halloween Beasts and witches , best you’ve seen. Evenings start to draw in Renewal, harvest feasts with kin.
Welcome to the Décima Poetry Challenge. Each week we’ll be attempting a Décima, also known as an Espinela, poem.
If you don’t know how to write a Décima, click HERE to go to a post on How to Write an Espinela or Décima Poem.
I shall try to incorporate the prompts for this week’s Ronovanwrite’s Weekly Haiku Challenge which were meet and part. Apologies now for the last line.😳
Image from Pixabay
Don’t go we have just met please stay. It is too soon for us to part. If you go now you’ll break my heart. I have been living for this day Now’s not the parting of our way Too much water under the bridge. Don’t abandon me on this ridge. The soul confluence of our lives A force of nature that pulls and drives. Don’t swot my poor heart like midge.
You do blind me With syllables and comely rhymes You do blind me With clever tempo and smart verse You’ve challenged me so many times I join in with Rondelet chimes You do blind me.
This is a poetry form of French origin using a syllable pattern, rhyme pattern, and refrains.
Sounds complicated and confusing? Nope.
It’s kind of like combining the Shi Rensa Haiku with the Décima.
How did that coincidentally happen on my blog of all blogs?
Honestly, I have no idea, because it was not intentional.
So how do you write one? I’ll put the quick version here and maybe have a full post later.
And no, this will not be a new poetry challenge.
TIP: Once you got it, stop reading. I will probably confuse you if you read too much. I have a bad happen of going overboard when I first explain a new poetry form, or anything else new.
There are seven lines.
One line appears three times. In lines 1, 3, and 7. Keep that in mind, because those lines need to make sense throughout the poem. It’s easier than you think. These are what are called refrains (repeats).
RHYME PATTERN:AbAabbA
SYLLABLE PATTERN: 4/8/4/8/8/8/4
Line 1: A—four syllables A rhyme Line 2: b—eight syllables B rhyme Line 3: A—repeat of line one A rhyme Line 4: a—eight syllables A rhyme (I know it’s a small a, but it’s still an a.) Line 5: b—eight syllables B rhyme Line 6: b—eight syllables B rhyme Line 7: A—repeat of line one A rhyme
TIP: Of course write line A first, but then go ahead and put it down two more times. space them out. Put a space between lines 1 and 3. Then skip three lines between 3 and 7. Sounds weird, but it helps. You practically have half the poem done with one line.
