Blog Tour

A very fine poet, Paul, a master with words and imagery, invited me along on a blog tour. I’m chuffed to bits that he reads my blog and makes lovely comments.

Now, I also feel a bit guilty because Ali invited me on a blog tour a wee while back and I agreed and then didn’t follow through on my side of the tour. My bad. But, here I make it up to her and, hopefully, send lots of new readers to these two wonderful bloggers. Both write fabulously well, leave me standing at the starting gate, so to speak. So I’m delighted that they each extended the invite and urge you to check them out.

This is my absolute favourite of Paul’s. I had to read it over and over again and eventually made a reading of it for my own pleasure. It’s a wonderful piece of work.

Ali’s writing is so often full of humour and this one appeals to the teacher in me and the love of a fine anecdote expressed just so.

 

The three questions I am to consider are these.

Why do I write what I do?

How does my writing process work?

How does my work differ from other genres?

 These questions  certainly got me thinking about how and why I write and when it all began. So I penned this. With a pen!

 

Poetic infancy, I guess,

began with a doodle,

a scribble on page,

just a mark

till letters’ formations

revealed their delight,

their sensory quality,

their spark.

 

Like moth to the flame

of the pencil and pad,

to the ink draining

out from the pen,

I scribbled and drew,

no clue what to do

but still the flow

raptured and then

 

I found out in books,

those worlds in the pages,

what magic

an author creates,

I gloried in them,

hid out in my den

while kids danced and larked.

My fate

 

was to wonder at words,

their meanings, their source,

to be spellbound

by even their spelling,

to capture each one

how they’d become,

connotations,

their secrets concealing

 

in Latin, in Greek, all the words that we speak,

in the French, in my own mother tongue,

I found that one word

may erupt as I think,

while feelings

course from

my lifeblood

to ink.

 

In angst of my teens,

I defined all my dreams

in writing,

who I was, the why of existence.

Years charted of life,

senses refined,

thoughts penned, but

only for my own subsistence,

 

to reveal who I am,

what I feel, what I think

how my mind

plays tricks in the light,

I wrote for myself,

filed the pads on the shelves,

opened new,

wrote into the night.

 

Till one day in June,

of two thousand thirteen,

at behest of my brother,

I clicked

on WP’s pages,

typed up some old stuff,

and haven’t looked back.

What a dick!

 

I now feel to have been

so shy to reveal

with the family of all

who love words

my offerings today,

as I make my own way,

not in forms recognised

but in floods

 

of joy that I’ve found

in expressing myself,

in floating, eyes gazed

to the sky,

that nothing is worse

than a tongue if it’s cursed

to a silence

that tells its own lie.

 

Now you’ll be sorry you asked

for a blog tour from me

‘cos bugger!

I just don’t do brief

but that’s just my style,

I’ve tried haiku and twitter

but syllable/character counts

feel like thieves,

 

reducing outpourings,

that I have to confess,

just splurge like

waterfall’d blurbs,

all the A’s and the B’s

right through to the Z’s –

no process –

just a huge love of words.

 

And pens and paper.

A bit of a fetish actually!

 

 

Why do I write what I do? Because I have to, always have.

How does my writing process work? Like a waterfall.

How does my work differ from other genres? Not a bloody clue! And don’t, frankly, care. They’re all words.

 

I’d like to invite a few others to this blog tour whose work I admire.

Cole, whose eloquence in words and thoughts on life and meaning entrance me.

http://colemining.wordpress.com/2014/06/03/poets-priests-and-politicians/#comments

She’s coming to Glasgow in September so we’re going to have a good old natter about politics and music and life. Over a couple of glasses of vino, of course. Looking forward to it, Cole!

I only came across this blogger recently and he has quite a distinct style that I really must try in that his poetry is prose is poetry.

Daniel at

http://danielswearingen.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/merle/

Now there are so many more I could mention whose blogs and words I love. But I figure you’ll have more than enough marvellous reading material when you visit Paul, Ali, Cole and Daniel.

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