Rhymes well, rhyming well, a rhyming well.

A few weeks of being away from writing anything that I can publish on my own blog as I'm collating work for a submission to my tutor - how strange that still sounds!

The inspiration for a poem about poets.

So, why have I not created 'stuff' that I am not considering for my poetry submissions and just publishing here? Well the simple answer is that I am so het-up about achieving good marks that I dare not let anything go until I'm past this latest hurdle and back into the world of preparing some other narrative forms for submission. How crazy is that? (She sighs theatrically)

This week the course has been about rhymes, half rhymes, non-rhyming poetry forms - much-heated debate about how 'well' a thing in these categories rhymes or if indeed it's a poem at all - and the wonderful world of the rhyming well.

What, you may be asking, is a rhyming well? If you imagine a stone (or in our case a word) dropped into a well, and the associated (rhyming words) rippling out with lessening force (or nearness in rhyme) as they reach the outer rings of the plop! This has brought up some delicious words and I've loved the experimentation in sounds and associations but for others it has been.... trying. 

My personal tastes in poetry are like my music tastes - eclectic so perhaps it was easier for me to be flexible about the poetry diet of the past few weeks. I enjoy things that rhyme well, include half/slant/ etc. rhyme or no rhyme at all, and I've even shared some of my more experimental poetry on my tutor group forum. 

The experimental item I'm thinking of uses the page as both white space and dynamic space. In it the words fall down the page - why wouldn't they? There is no need for them to travel only in one direction. Why would I control my words when they want to be free? In another I use a more formal repetitious format that doesn't have a name that I am aware of but it felt right and I used it. Expect to see examples of my poems creeping back here again when the coast is clear. 

What's in a name?

Would a rose by any other name really smell as sweet? 

Would the rose, if we called it 'stink weed' become a wry observation or would the rose wither under the onslaught of our imposed title? 

Today I read an interesting piece about titles – poetry titles, but it set me to thinking about titles in a broader sense. I remembered a friend from when I was a professional dancer who decided to rewrite herself, to start herself anew and to do this she gave herself a title, a new name. Her chosen first name was Natasha; rather a topical one considering the recent adaptation of War and Peace, her surname will remain a secret for the obvious reason. She rewrote herself, and gave herself the new title and became that person, who she and other people thought she was in response to that name.

I have had a few other friends who have also done this and although critics could say that they were the same person inside so nothing had really altered I’d have to disagree. It was suggested that there are two types of poetry title: descriptive, evocative and that some may, in fact, masquerade as the other or be an amalgamation of the two. So how would this work with humans I ask myself?

I had a friend who called herself ‘Red’, dyed her hair scarlet and became ‘red’ in character. Fantastic! But what of me? What of my hatred of my own name? What colour would I become? Violet? Blue? Chartreuse? Do I feel inclined to change a name given to me by someone I feel no need to appease by keeping it? Well, yes, actually, I do. However, the ramifications of a name change – legally executed – would be an issue these days. My qualifications, legal documents, hell, even my drivers license not to mention all my friends are used to thinking of me in terms of a name I do not relate to so…. All I can do is conjecture.

Who would I be? What would I call myself? I can think of many names that could describe me if people knew what they meant and many that I could make an enigmatic point with but in all probability, I shall remain Karen.  And what of you? Who would you be? If you were a poem, what would be your enigmatic or descriptive title?

No blogging for me for literally weeks now, and the reason? I have been engaged in the creation of a new website dedicated to all things poetic, visiting various museums and galleries in an effort to engage in some much-needed research for my own poetry and writing for my Open University course.

I will be taking part the launching of the new poetry ezine in January and can't wait to tell the world about it and my involvement but until I get the go-ahead I'll just say that it will be a fantastic home for students of poetry and I can't wait to get started.

Apart from these fantastic, time-consuming events I have at long last found my beetle glasses chain so expect some creepy images of me writing with beetles climbing up to take a peep through my eyes. Well, someone has to do it and if the Mexicans can get away with live beetle jewellery then why not shake things up with a beetle chain?

Last Words and New Beginnings

Not exactly an elephant in the room but let's be honest... I haven't posted for a while.

I've been away in wonderful Yorkshire, back and finishing an assignment, taking part in NaNoWriMo, and then taking on the launching of a new web-based poetry magazine. This latter is taking up a lot of time, as you'd expect, but is a fantastic project to be involved in as it is a subject dear to my heart - obviously.

I have been writing too, and taking copious photos to inspire and fill up my computers dwindling memory. I've also realised that I have a bit of a thing for two particular programmes on radio 4 and that they inspire quite a number of my poems so from this week onwards I'll be posting my responses to the wonderful radio programme called Last Words. This isn't a programme in celebration of Words as such but an obituary on the air waves. Call me morbid - and I'm sure you will - but hearing about the inspirational, comical, intriguing lives of others is captivating and inspires a weekly flurry of research or poetry or both.

This is one that I scribbled into my note book as I was listening to the programme on iPlayer whilst out power walking and it was the one that finally got me to admit I was hooked:

A Pattern for Life

Professor Lisa Jardine 

ascending and transcending she grabbed

at history and made it

with wisdom unconfined by convention,

the small voice or fitting a mould

she wore her defiance gladly, like a rebel teen

transforming her outer shell

shared her anarchic wisdom, inner armour worn

beneath clothing, beneath skulls

knitted her philosophy into endless endeavours

like a jumper that could be read

tales of a woman’s ascent, projecting her fearless voice 

or leaving the room when she’s done with it

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06kh66d#play

This week I've been mostly.... driving around the country and writing poetry from various hotel rooms, in the car or at a salon as they try to rectify a disastrous home dye jobby.

This was my first experience of being a students rep for the South West UK region - yes, a pretty large region to cover - at the senate and I wanted to ensure all went smoothly so I did a dry run last Sunday and tested a free to  download sat nav for my iPad. The latter was a disaster as it told me to take the fifth exit from roundabouts with only two exits and so on. However, my fantastic partner wrote out all instructions, I supplemented them with a different download and all went well - even though I ignored some written instructions preferring to keep my eyes on the road instead.

So here are two of the many haikus created on my journeys to Milton Keynes and Gloucestershire. The first was inspired by my breakfast scene from the somewhat grubby window at the Premier Inn (yes, really!) and the other was dreamt up while walking to the hair salon in Cheltenham. Did I tell you that a flood in the house had caused me to leave a hair dye on my head for too long resulting in a strip of black roots and a Cruella De Ville hairstyle? No? Surely an oversight on my part. Anyway, it now looks less Cruella or Bride of Frankenstein so I shan't be walking around scaring young children.

Mists rise with the sun.
Swans converge, above, below.
Ripples fill the lake.

Colours explode on

Pine scented walks, muffle steps

With fallen beauty.

and because there has been a lot of talk about copyright issues I now have the heeby-jeebies about not putting a copyright message on everything despite questioning who would want to nick my stuff anyway. So this morning I have found out that holding down the Option / Alt key and pressing 'G' creates a © for me. I shall share this knowledge on the A215 forum as it seems like a sensible thing to share amongst fellow writers.

© Karen Downs-Barton

Should We Stretch Our Boundaries?

Yesterday, Sunday, a wonderful person who shall remain nameless used the whole of his Sunday to be supportive in stretching my boundaries.

I mention this because I think that it is worthy of mention due to the fact that (1) it was a human kindness I want to acknowledge and (2) it was done in an effort to help me stretch my boundaries and I want to quickly question how much I'm stretching them and if this is a good thing.

The 'selfless Sunday' action was driving all the way from the depths of Wiltshire to Milton Keynes and back. Not a huge deal perhaps but this selfless act was performed to give me an idea of the route that I will be driving tomorrow to take part in a Senate meeting with the Open University and without this kindness I may well have headed off full of nerves and trusting a satnav app on my iPad. The latter proved itself to be wholly wrong on every prompt it gave on the trial run ('take the 5th exit' on roundabouts containing 2 or 'bear left then take the next left' on a dual carriageway without a single exit visible except through trees or over a bridge taking me over the motorway - really!) and had I not known this beforehand I would have trusted its madness and ended up God only knows where. In trouble no doubt.

The boundaries I'm stretching are those of not only driving to Milton Keynes on my own - something I would have done years ago but somehow got out of the habit of doing - but that of taking part in a large and time-consuming two-year role as a student representative whilst studying for my degree. I have taken part in two other consultative committees, a regional one that has informed some of the decision-making behind the present Senate subject matter, another concerning disabled students within the university; but this is a larger and far more demanding role. The paperwork involved was something of a shocker and how anyone reads it through whilst studying I have no idea but I'm going to try.... overnight and in the morning after I arrive and try to unwind.

So, what I'm going to ask is this: Why, are roles on the student representative body still unfilled and not being flagged up to others stretching boundaries for the sake of their university and their own experience?

Personally I think its a shame that other students aren't aware that the roles exist, or that they still need filling.

Okay, those are my musings for the day and now I'm going to stretch my boundaries in the direction of a glass noodle soup that is a glorified cup-a-soup and what with the thought that I have a chair that has fallen to pieces and needs me to stretch myself to mending it.

Before I forget to mention it I'd better add that I'm still writing lots of haiku and am now seriously thinking that this has become an addiction. Once I've posted a few on my student forum I'll post others here as there are self-plagiarism issues apparently if I post in both places using the same haiku.

It's Officially a Real Monday!

Getty Images

I'm not saying that I hate Mondays, actually I don't usually, but today has just proved that there is either a very angry God out there or everyone else was right to hate this particular day of the week!

The day-from-hell actually started out quite well. Okay, I have the whole of a spare bedroom crammed into my own bedroom due to a carpenter arriving tomorrow morning to fit a new floor and yes, I bumped my shins quite badly when trying to navigate my way around the various pieces of furniture, piles of 'stuff' etc. in an attempt to find foot space that would allow me to exit the room to have a pee but... that's all part of life isn't it? To get sniffy about real life impacting is just daft and shows a lack of understanding that real life is apt to happen so one had better gird one's loins or other 'bits' and just get on with it. No, none of that was a problem for me and I even managed to get through all my days OU stuff before I forget to add that, no it was the other stuff, the unadulteratedly disastrous stuff that I object to.

Let me explain the few threads that came together to tie up and make life less than peachy today. Firstly, I have to hold my hand up to trying to penny pinch and perhaps that has added to my own downfall. I thought that as I have a very important set of meetings next week and a few grey hairs had started to show themselves I would buy a home dye kit and remedy this without losing a day to the hairdressers or a sizeable whack from my monthly budget. I did the usual thing of guessing the colour that my hair was, opted for a decent make in the local Boots store and started applying it this morning. That was thread 1.

Thread 2 in this set of unmitigated disasters that made my day was the weather. The torrential rain that has been plaguing Wiltshire off and on all day really hit my little patch of the county after I'd applied the hair dye and I was somewhat alarmed to find it not only soaking the garden but, due to thread 3 - a dam-like structure built inadvertently by my other half as he shifted gravel in the garden - all the rain was channeled into the house and I ended with a flood. As luck would have it I had a stack of newspapers from Waitrose, freebie items too, that were stacked not too far away and that could be used to mop the muddy floodwater up.

This should really have been the end of it and I could have walked away from what will from now on be known as 'Black Monday' but no, it didn't end there. Just when I was getting myself together I noticed that there was a strange beeping noise from the living room. It turned out to be the alarm on my iPad and it was trying to alert me to the fact the hair dye needed removing. I have no idea when it had gone off because I was at the other end of the house moping and sloping and quietly going from a perfectly acceptable hair colour to a more than hideous black and white stripe that is permanent. I have almost jet black root area and sort of normal pale brown / dark blond rest of hair. I look like a sort of startled skunk!

As if that wasn't enough - yes, did you really think I'd finished? Really? - the rain came down again with gusto and the stream that was previously coming through the back door changed to a river and there was nothing I could do but head outside, grab a shovel and start to demolish the dam. This task was carried out on the spur of the moment as the last of the newspaper had been used, so I had no shoes on and was still in the towel that I'd wrapped around me after getting out of the after-dye-fiasco. Towels in a rain storm are obviously not the best thing to wear as firstly they soak up the rain water and secondly they fall down.

So, picture if you can this sight - a woman of a certain age, in a rainstorm, in a garden overlooked by a school, shovelling gravel whilst trying to hold up a towel and topping it all a skunk-like hairstyle.

Mondays! I rest my case for why I'm joining the haters of Mondays.