Early Harvest - a poem for Apple Day

In the Blushing Golden sunlight of autumn

they gather in the Parkland of the Garden Royale for the Gala.

Captain Kidd, master of ceremonies, conducts

Edith Smith, the Duchess's Favourite

as she plays Jazz interpretations of Greensleeves

and Lady in Red, enjoying her time in the Limelight

while a Jester juggles in the Grove.

Cardinal von Galen appears in his Flamboyant robes

to pray to the Saints Edmund and Everard

shadowed by Reverend Morgan his long standing Rival.

Doctor Harvey is close by in case of accidents

(the Flamenco and Polka can lead to collisions!)

and keeps a wary eye on his daughter

Annie Elizabeth, Sweet Sixteen, in a Silken gown

who's enjoying a Waltz with Johnny Voun.

After the dance, the young man gives Annie

a Red Bouquet as a Keepsake (oh what a Surprise!)

and is thanked by her sweet Maiden's Blush.

Karmyn de Sonnaville wanders round, nose in the air

and Pink Pearls in her hair, followed

by the Beauties of Albany, Sutton and Hampshire

all wearing sweet scented Garlands.

“This Porter's Perfection!” says James Grieve,

the Bedfordshire Foundling, who's Tickled Pink

as he lies by the Wayside and feasts

(as he so rarely can) on Scotch Dumpling with Cinnamon Spice.

They dance until the Rosy Glow of Sunset,

then watch the Splendour of the Northern Lights come out

and Saturn and Jupiter fall into alignment.

It could have been a State Fair! A Holiday! The Diamond Jubilee or even Christmas!

They agree as they go home. Everyone speaks in dulcet tones

and dares to hope for a Bright Future, Good Fortune and ultimate Victory!

Can we then think beyond Golden Delicious

and organise a Revival?

a poem for Apple Day.

and here's the website where I found all the names of the heritage apple varieties I used in the poem.  

 

You may also be interested in Apples and People, a website devoted to the global story of apples. 

Book Spine Poetry

The prompt today on NaPoWriMo is to write some book spine poetry, so here are two I put together:

Oracle Bones

Out in the Midday Sun

When God was a Rabbit

Making Silent Stones Speak. 

What I talk about when I talk about running / Calum's Road -

travels in hyperreality -

the accidental / beautiful losers

This kind of poetry is fun and easy and can be slightly addictive....

Floral poetics

NaPoWriMo asked us to write about flowers today. I may write something more serious eventually, but for now, here are some hastily written rhyming couplets, inspired by flowers around Corstorphine Hill this lunchtime. 

the honey bee performs her chores

among the blossoms of the gorse

how pretty is the heather

no matter what the weather

look up, oh can you see

little flowers in the cypress tree?

Plus, can you see the baby bunnies in the bramble patch below? There are at least three, but I don't think any of them show in the photo.

haiku

sun emerges
from behind the clouds
skylarksong

for NaPoWriMo

***
There are still places available on the eight week, Wednesday evening Creative Writing for Beginners course I'm teaching at Leith Academy next term. You can find out more here. 

National Poetry Writing Month! NaPoWriMo is here!

It's National Poetry Writing Month! I've spent the last eight weeks encouraging people in the poetry class I've been teaching to take part in NaPoWriMo so I can hardly not take part myself this year!

I've not officially signed up though and won't be sharing all my poems here or on social media. That would make them 'published' and would mean that I couldn't get them published elsewhere, which is what I may well want to do.

The idea is to write a poem a day during April. You don't need to share the poems though you are encouraged to do so. Mostly it's a way of generating a lot of drafts that you can then work on and make into well formed poems. It's an inspiration and motivation tool! If you want to take part, then there are three sites I know of that are sharing daily poetry prompts to inspire NaPoWriMo participants:

The NaPoWriMo website.

Poetry Superhighway.

Found Poetry Review. 

There are more helpful sites listed on Trish Hopkinson's blog here.

If you don't want to have to write any poetry, you can still take part, there are some suggestions here on the website of the Academy of American Poets.

The first poetry prompt on the NaPoWriMo site is to write a lune, which is a variant on the haiku (three lines with 5 / 3/ 5 syllables). So here's my lune, written in response to this morning's sunrise:

morning sky on fire
blackbirdsong
in the city streets

Update on my novel

I sort of made a New Year's Resolution that I would get my novel to a stage of being ready to be sent out by June at the latest. In fact I'm well ahead of schedule! I finished the final edit last week and will write the synopsis this week and then send it out into the world.

As a poet whose favourite form is the haiku, I was fascinated to find out that I actually could write (and enjoy writing) something that might resemble a novel, though admittedly it is on the short size (personally I prefer short novels anyway). I started the novel in NaNoWriMo a couple of years ago and it was pretty poor at the end of that month, but I have worked hard on it since and hopefully it may have a chance of getting somewhere.

A brief outline of the novel:

Noa and her mother are part of a community that has been refugees since their Pacific Island disappeared under the seas at the end of the Age of Technology. The newly independent Hebrides have offered the refugees an island to live on. After their long voyage across the world, the refugees have to learn to live alongside the Hebridean islanders. Meanwhile Sheena, a Hebridean woman is studying in New Lanark where the University's high tech campus hides some unpalatable truths. Sheena works with Noa and others to create a field studies centre on the island to conserve what is left of nature and to help bring jobs to the refugees. 

I've no intention of writing another novel unless this one is successful or I get an idea that just needs to be another novel.

I'll keep everyone up to date with the novel's successes, though I'll be quiet about its failures.

Tree Following Plus NaPoWriMo

I'm following a larch tree in Colinton Dell by the Water of Leith for Tree Following.  The tree has its own number, given to it by Edinburgh City Council. 

You can read more about how the council looks after its trees here.

 The larch is getting greener and its flowers are well past their best now, though still in bloom.

I was delighted, after waiting for a little while, to see the two long tailed tits fluttering around, seemingly catching small insects and then popping into the nest. They're very speedy little birds and that, combined with the poor light conditions, made getting a photo of them impossible.

The larch stands very close to the site of the old Bog's Mill, which is currently being made into a wildflower meadow by the Water of Leith Conservation Trust. I was delighted to see cowslips here for the first time today! (Though it will be a while before they're as prolific here as they are in Blackleach Country Park, near where my parents live!).

****

Well, NaPoWriMo has come to an end. I've written a poem almost every day this month, most of them very rough first drafts. My intention in taking part in the project was to try to make sure I capture moments of inspiration and make them into poetry rather than just putting them in a blog post or a Facebook status or a tweet. I think I succeeded in that. Given the number of haiku I wrote during the month, I think in future, I'll take part in NaHaiWriMo instead!

The other thing I did during NaPoWriMo was to produce an updated version of my first poetry chapbook Bougainvillea Dancing, which is now available in the Crafty Green Poet Etsy shop or you can order it directly from me and pay via Paypal or with a UK cheque. I'm hoping to have the book available on other platforms in the near future. Plus I'm still working on the giveaway I promised before I visited my parents!

Jewellery display board

I got this lovely, but slightly worn piece of macrame work from a friend who was clearing out her Mum's house. I immediately thought of using it as an earring display board so I went searching in second hand shops and eventually found this frame that was going cheap as it had no back and no glass, ideal for my purposes. I soaked the macrame in a warm solution of salt and baking soda to remove the slight yellowness. I then cut a piece of contrasting red cardboard to fit behind the macrame and here you are, an eye-catching earring display board! The earrings themselves are notable too, as they're made from recycled plastic and they look very nice, but are too lightweight to wear on a windy day! The only problem with this type of earring display board is the earrings are liable to get more dusty than if they're kept in a jewellery box, which is where they've been so far. So I'm not sure whether to use this for earrings or find an alternative use for it.... (Suggestions for alternative uses welcome.....).


A season of change

buds bursting into bloom
birds coming out of hiding to sing
and lay eggs that hatch into chicks

Mixing and matching
things that are discarded
to make something new

a cycle continues.

for NaPoWriMo

***
Meanwhile I've added another digital photo download to the new nature photography section of the Crafty Green Poet Etsy shop. 

In an Edinburgh Garden

Under sun speckled pond weed

water writhes with tadpoles.

Suddenly a frog emerges, 

head draped in weed 

watching.

for NaPoWriMo

in Crafty Green Boyfriend's Mum's garden, yesterday

By the River Almond

Walking to Edinburgh Airport may not sound like the most appealing of Easter walks, but if you choose the River Almond Walkway to get there, it really is a wonderful walk. Specially at this time of year.

The river is beautiful and surrounded by lots of trees, opening out to fields further upstream. 

 The spring flowers are blooming everywhere, lots of wood anemone as in the photo below.

 The photo below shows bluebells, wild leeks and a celandine.

The birds were singing everywhere too, including blackcaps, chiffchaffs, robins and wrens in the woodland and skylarks above the fields. The sand martins were flying about above the river near their colony of  holes in a sandbank and we had a wonderful view of a kingfisher as it flew past us downstream. We were delighted to see two brown hares, distant views of just their ears sticking out above the grass, but still, lovely to see them at Easter! Plus there were a lot of butterflies about. Crafty Green Boyfriend took this photo of two peacocks

and this of a small tortoiseshell

though we didn't manage to get any photos of the orange tip butterflies, which weren't as numerous as they normally are on this walk.

heat haze -
a swallow dips down
to the river.

for NaPoWriMo

swans

 mute swans on the River Esk, Musselburgh

piano music

from an open window -

swans on the river

for NaPoWriMo

Baby Goats are Growing up!

I was at Gorgie City Farm this afternoon for the last of the current series of Pet Lodge Lectures. Dr Kieren Curran of University of Edinburgh gave a talk "Run, Run Reynard" on the fox and popular song and we listened to some of the songs he spoke about. 

As the weather was lovely (and the greenhouse too crowded!) we sat outside for the talk. As well as the invited animal guests of guinea pigs and a bearded lizard, we were visited by several of the farm's free-range chickens. The sheep and several species of bird (including a song thrush, great tits and wrens) joined in the singing. 

I also took the opportunity to catch up with the goat kids that I'd photographed last week when they were only 13 minutes old. This week they're looking more grown up already and have been joined by more kids! They were all very energetic!

***

And not at all related to the rest of the blogpost, today's poem for NaPoWriMo


View

I imagine the view from the windows of these cottages
when they were first built by the side of a then countryside road

fields and more fields over to the mountains 
and the occasional cyclist or horse drawn cart 

Now it's a busy road and the traffic roars past
through what has become a suburb

The cottages face rows of sheds in a industrial estate
and the only field in the neighbourhood is now 

a 'Prime Site for Development'. 

***

In other poetry news, I'm updating my 2002 self published poetry pamphlet 'Bougainvillea Dancing' (adding new poems!) and it will hopefully be available as a pdf to download from the Crafty Green Poet Etsy shop in the near future. 

Tree Following - the larch turns green

Even from a distance today I noticed that the larch is now starting to look quite green

Close to, you can see the new green needles. Lovely that the flowers are still out. Having only just noticed them for the first time this year I want to enjoy them for as long as possible!

I noticed today that this tree has a wound (or a growth or a canker?), which is oozing sap

Meanwhile, the celandines are in full bloom under the larch

and in fact everywhere, I don't think I've ever seen such amazing carpets of celandines

and though I've often seen celandines growing in trees, never before have I seen them as high up as this! 

for Tree Following.


Yellow

Constellations of celandines cloak the ground
under the birch tree whose ochre catkins
echo the bright line in the head of the goldcrest.

Daffodils trumpet on the slopes
and the blackbird's orange beak opens
in glorious song.

for NaPoWriMo.

Dragonfly Gate

I love this gate by the side of the Union Canal towpath. 

for Shadow Shot Sunday.

dragonflies
in wrought iron and shadows -
none on the water.


for NaPoWriMo.

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Wester Craiglockart Hill

It was quite blustery today but the birds were singing at full volume on Wester Craiglockart Hill. We explored some new paths and found some new views.

There are small areas of important acid grassland on this hill, but they officially need more rabbits for them to be kept in perfect condition. There seemed to be plenty of rabbits there today!

***

Chiffchaffs proclaim their name
sometimes getting it wrong
in their keenness to display

chiff-chaff chaff-chiff chiff

the blackcap's fluid warble hides
among the blackbird's melodies
and the tiny wren's loud rattle

everywhere is birdsong


and I would rather go deaf
before the birds themselves disappear
taking their songs with them

this music lost forever.

see this article: Songbirds in decline – a tragedy for Britain's culture, as well as its environment in Guardian Environment

for NaPoWriMo.

Giraffe by J M Ledgard and a poem for NaPoWriMo

In 1975, secret police dressed in chemical warfare suits sealed off a zoo in a small Czechslovakian town and ordered the destruction of the largest captive herd of giraffes in the world.

J M Ledgard's novel follows the story of these giraffes from their capture in Africa and their travels to reach Czechslovakia. Part of the story is told in the voice of Snehurka, a beautiful young giraffe with a snow white belly. Also adding their voices to the tale are Emil, a zoologist who studies blood flow and Amina, a sleepwalker in the village who becomes fascinated by the giraffes.

The novel shines a light on the stress the giraffes were put under in their capture and transport to the zoo. Their welfare was totally disregarded to preserve the local domestic animals against a disease there seemed to be no proof the giraffes were suffering from. The last long section of the novel focuses on the slaughter of the giraffes and is very difficult to read.

The novel is also very interesting in terms of the insights it offers into how communism operated in rural Czechslovakia.

Giraffe by J M Ledgard published by Jonathan Cape. 


***

Zoo

We steal these animals from their homes
and destroy the rainforests
build on the plains and poison the waters

then we imprison the animals
if they're lucky in a recreated forest
sometimes just on concrete behind bars

where they pace from side to side
until we either let them free
or kill them because we have

no further use for them.

For NaPoWriMo

I have to admit to having mixed feelings about zoos. We shouldn't need zoos, but given what we've done to the natural world, surely it's better that the animals still live somewhere, even if it is in captivity? Plus a lot of zoos, do work for conservation and do return animals to the wild.

As ever, red text in this post links to other webpages where you can find out more.


 

Unfolding buds

 Norway maple flowers unfolding in Princes Street Gardens

sharing

another secret -

unfolding buds

for NaPoWriMo

New Life at Gorgie City Farm

I arrived at Gorgie City Farm today just 13 minutes after these adorable goat kids had been born

Just amazing.

I also checked up on the lambs which are now about two weeks old

not forgetting the sensible teenage lamb

I was at the farm for the third in the Pet Lodge Lectures Series, which today was a fascinating presentation on companion animals in Renaissance Italy, from Dr Sarah Cockram of the University of Edinburgh. Joining us at the lecture were several tiny chicks.

Sunshine pours into the greenhouse,
a chick flutters its eyelids,
twitters softly and snuggles down
in the warmth of my hand.

Chicks in hand,
the audience settles to listen
to a lecture on lap dogs
and ladies who keep kittens
in their sleeves.

A break in the talk while one restive chick
is removed to its heat box
where it cheeps and cheeps
until the other chicks are gathered together
and back by its side.

Write an essay on the importance of touch and warmth
in the human - companion animal relationship. 

My hands were too busy with the chick to take notes.


for NaPoWriMo and co-incidentally fitting the Twitter prompt of the day from Toasted Cheese. 

***

My poem Wild Otter Chase was recently published on Misty Mountain Review and Influential Poets was recently added to my page on the Verse Wrights website.

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Tree Following: the Larch 5

Today I thought I'd look at what's growing underneath the larch that I've chosen to study for Tree Following.

Here's what it looks like as you approach it

quite a nice green undergrowth, though as you get closer, you can see there are patches of bare earth, covered only with fallen needles

there are sone celandines growing in the undergrowth, along with ivy, nettles, at least one species of umbellifer and a small leafy plant that remains a mystery to me, but I'm sure I'll recognise it when it comes into flower.

Also in the shade of the larch, there's a young sycamore tree and a couple of other trees too. 

There was no sign of the long tailed tits that I watched building a nest in the tree a couple of weeks ago, but a chaffinch was perched nearby with a mouth full of either nesting material or food for a nestling.

for Tree Following. 

Here's a clearer photo of some celandines, growing in the hollow of another tree in the Dells to give you a better idea of what they look like

Meanwhile it was wonderful to hear and see the first blackcaps, arrived back from their winter in Africa. One of my favourite bird songs. Some blackcaps spend the summer in the UK and winter in Africa, others spend summer in Scandanavia and winter in the UK. Some may even be resident in the UK.....

Lovely also to see blue tits checking out the nest boxes that I helped the Water of Leith Conservation Trust put up in the Dells last year.

and finally from today's walk:

the old dog's grave -
newly scattered ashes
and fresh flowers.

for NaPoWriMo

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Stars

Lost Stars

We have lost the stars
behind neon orange clouds

so we carry the sign of the star
in our hands

hoping it will guide us
through the gathering night. 

For NaPoWriMo

***
This poem was inspired by the design of my latest craft project, details below.

***
This scrap of beige faux fur just fits my wrist and as soon as I saw it I knew I'd make it into a wrist cuff. However, it took me months to come up with the design for the finished product! Then suddenly I realised it would look nice combined with this nylon lace from a repurposed vintage robe and the buttons and star just fell into place too. Quite a nice item to wear for a party or other night out!

It was surprisingly quick to make and I think it turned out quite nicely. It's very definitely one of a kind as although I have more of the fabrics and the buttons, I don't have more of the stars. I've listed this piece in the Crafty Green Poet Etsy shop.