Hogmanay

The last day of the year. Should it be happy? There is some debate.

Certainly happy new year!

Happy new year

The last time I was here I was probably talking about leaf structure and sound. Those little shudders and eddies that the foliage makes in the moments between work or thought or even breath. An empty forest. But in fact, goldcrests and siskins invisible but making their own business above.

That's a roundabout way of saying that yes sound is still important to me. But my life has taken a different more regular turn of late with a partner, their children and salary being that little bit more important than before. No more exploring the space between double hedges or sleeping in abandoned sleeping bags for a while then.

So in answer to the questions - my health is good, I am in a solid place and I am still listening. And still trying to understand the shapes of leaves, the pattern of the wood.

Green geometry. Good luck with your own balancing acts.

Open House 2015: The Interpreter's House Poetry Competition

Still time to enter The Interpreter's House competition as the closing date is the 1st February 2015.

This is a great long-lived magazine and a nice competition. Liz Berry is judging. £500 1st prize and the winning poems will feature in Issue 59 of TIH. £4 for single poems; £10 for three poems.

You know you want to!

You can find out all the details here http://www.theinterpretershouse.com/competition

...too late for new year?

There seems to be a new fashion saying that you cannot wish someone a new year after a certain date.

But the new year is a year long...p&g stands up for good wishes and communication! So we say give your greetings for as long as you please...

Happy New Year

There is always a bit of pressure in a new year to get things started, organize yourself and make a lot of lists. We say resist all this.

Think a thought that you had in December. Something that has been nestling there and waiting to get out. And go for a walk. In the country or the town or halfway between the two.

It doesn't really matter. Just walk...

What were you thinking about before you got enmeshed with family and the holiday season?

Whether you remember or not. Write or sing or dictate.

And edit...

Happy New Year!

Darkling darling

New Year's Eve poetry is often ambiguous; what has gone or been let go the year before and only the unknown to come; hard to keep the faith or any faith for that matter.

So let the man of Dorset Thomas Hardy and his hidden joyful thrush wing us into 2014 once more...

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
      When frost was spectre-grey,
And  winter's dregs made desolate
      The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
      Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
      Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
      The century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
      The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
      Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
      Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
      The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
      Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
      In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
      Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
      Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
      Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
      His happy good-night air
Some blessed hope, whereof he knew
      And I was unaware.

December 31st 1900