One line is all it took

Candle holder (detail)

It seems that the nearer to my goal I get the harder it gets. With just under seven weeks to go before I end my one-a-day-for-a-year poetry challenge, the blank page taunts me. Some days I am throwing words together to get something down.

This morning, however, I was reading about David Jones, artist, in the book Unquiet Landscape by Christopher Neve and one line shot out at me, something Jones had said about a place he stayed in, and I used that line to form a poem.

Isn't it great how the imagination clicks into place? I savour moments like these. Where would I be without them? I quickly dashed off a poem using each verse to describe different elements and their affect on the person (not Jones, particularly, but someone).

I have (apparently like Simon Armatage, so I read), been writing rather a lot of poems about Covid 19, but it is easy to get bogged down with them. I was, before that, bogged down with climate change poetry. It seems that a lot of my poetry this year has been about what has been going on in the world, so it is nice when something else breaks through. I write a lot about nature, the elements, and then there are those I call rather 'off the wall' poems, or a little risque, or indeed the ethereal. I also return to subjects I have written about before as if I am not happy with what I have previously said, and by covering it again I might just get to what I really mean.

I think most creative people do this returning to things. I have written about this before - artists certainly do it. We become obsessed with one particular subject, or several subjects, as if we really need to pin it down. I'm not sure we ever do, but we keep on trying.

Well, having written my poem of the day I now have many hours to fill while staying home. So far, my plans haven't quite worked because the weather has been so beautiful. I have a bench outside the kitchen door (featured a lot in this blog!). It's a suntrap and I have been spending a couple of hours or so there each day reading. I have to make the most of it because the weather is due to turn colder by the weekend. However, I have signed up for an online course, Introduction to Geology with OpenLearn. I have had a fascination for it going back to school days and watching volcanoes on an educational film in the classroom. My science is zilch, much like my maths, but my interest hasn't waned. My favourite fossil is the Trilobite, should you be interested, and tectonic plates fascinate me. So, there you go. I've just completed the first week of four. on that course. Where will all these lead, I wonder? Maybe to some new poems!