Tag: Poetry

M2 Musings: Frost Smoke and Dragons’ Breath

I know it’s technically still autumn for a good two months, but it was two degrees Celsius on my way to uni this morning, so it feels more like winter than anything else and so this week’s M2 Musings’s a bit more wintery than the seasons might indicate. I like it, though! Time for huge, big scarves, thick gloves and chunky jumpers, hot chocolate, old and familiar book favourites, and curling up under the softest blankets.

If you’re new to my little M2 Musings project, you can click here to read the original post, and here to read the rest of the M2 poems, if you want to!

-Andrea

A late night Winchester Throwback

Originally posted on April 5th:

Before I came to uni, poetry was one of those things I enjoyed reading and listening to, but never did myself. Even though I read the works – and listened to the words – of all these wonderful poets I found online and in the library, writing poetry still seemed like something angsty teenagers did alone in their rooms. Then I got to Winchester, and I attended my first ever Poetry Platform. The Poetry Platform is a great open mic night, where poets from all over Hampshire can come together for a monthly night of wordery (this is a word now). I loved it from the beginning. The vibe of “everything’s okay here”, the little stage that welcomed everyone, how there was always room for one more person.
The entirety of first year was spent watching everyone else perform, while I was trying to build up a portfolio of half-decent poems in the creative writing course’s mandatory poetry lessons. I started loving those lessons too. Seeing poetry so alive,  and workshopping other students’ lines, sentences I could only dream of writing one day, made me fall in love with poetry as a medium. It’s a love affair I hope will last a lifetime.

I don’t call myself a poet. There are way more talented people, those who can express everything they feel so elegantly, who’ve just got words flowing out of their brains in poetic sentences every minute of every day. However, I do love putting together simple, uncomplicated poems, poems that ponder on how we all more or less fumble through life. They’re rarely very deep, they don’t often tackle very heavy subjects, but after a performance the other day, someone told me they thought my writing felt like “a hug in poem form”, something they felt they could relate to, and I loved that. That’s exactly what I want my “art” to be. Something to make people feel nice and warm and good.

Here’s a video of a poem I did on this month’s(April’s) Poetry Platform. I’m still working on the title, but it felt like a fitting poem to do on my (most likely) last performance at the Railway.

(The song is “Har du Fyr” – Hekla Stålstrenga, a beautiful song about your home always being there waiting for you, no matter how far off you venture.)

Edit, September 16th:
It’s all a bit soppy, but as my three-year England adventure came to an end, I felt like I was allowed to be. I’m still quite proud of Winchester, what I challenged myself to do there and what I managed to figure out on my own, and even though this poem is far from all that eloquent, I like it as a snapshot of what I felt like as that chapter of my life was closing.

Well well, my new BA is thankfully just as exciting as the Creative Writing one was, so here’s to another interesting three years!

-Andrea

The M2 Musings Writing Challenge

I like to call myself a writer. I navigate my way through the world in stories and make up characters to people crossing the street, but lately I haven’t been writing at all. A fairytale wedding, the voyage to a new flat past a different fjord, the adventure of getting to know a new home. These are all stories that have gone unwritten. That’s okay, though, not everything has to be documented to be valid or worthwhile.

However, I do miss writing, and I do miss the small snapshots of my everyday that writing used to be, back when I used to write down everything that came to mind, keeping every idea for a possible assignment or could-be-short story. These thoughts, plus the fact that I just stumbled over the expression “micro poetry” the other day, has resulted in this new “series” I want to try out here on the blog; the M2 Musings.

The M2 is the bus I get to the uni every day, a 12 minute ride twice a day. 12 minutes isn’t really enough time to get a book out or to get anything done, so I figured this could be some scheduled writing time.

So, here’s the plan:

Everyday (Monday to friday), I’m going to try and write something, anything, about something on or outside the bus on my way to uni, leave it while I’m in lectures, and then edit it on the bus journey back. There are no rules for what it needs to be; micro poetry, stream-of-consciousness, a few lines of a short story. All it is is a kickstart to make myself write. These bus journeys give me about 24 minutes to spend on any of the “texts”, which won’t really leave any room for overthinking, you kind of just have to go.

So, what do you guys think? Is this a project you could be interested in following? Of course I won’t post these musings daily, that would be a bit much, but maybe I’ll pick a few that ended up okay, about once a week?

Like I said, there’s been way too little writing lately, and perhaps this could be a nice incentive to get back into it, again!

Have a wonderful day,

-Andrea

WWW Wednesday July 11, Poetry On the Beach

Wednesday again! This has been a reading heavy week, but all the books I chose to put in this post were books I brought along to the beach; small book-friends that fit in a beach-bag or in my pocket. There’s been lots of beach reading in between work shifts, and this week’s been pretty poetry heavy, so get ready for some poetry on the beach!

WWW Wednesday is a weekly post hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words, and anyone can join. All you need to do is write a post about your three W’s, and the three W’s are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you just finish reading?
What are you planning on reading next?

I am currently reading:
Our numbered days by Neil Hilborn

Okay, both the “current read” and “recently finished” in this WWW are rereads, but they’re such wonderful books that I find myself reaching for them again and again and again and they deserve to be mentioned here at least once. Our numbered days is a book like that just keeps growing in my hands every time I read it, and this time’s no exception. I feel like raw is such an overused word when it comes to talking about poetry, but Hilborn’s voice is just that, raw and funny and sarcastic and wise, all at the same time.

Blurb:
“When you’re dumb enough for long enough, you’re gonna meet someone too smart to love you, and they’re gonna love you anyway, and it’s gonna go so poorly.”
Neil Hilborn’s debut collection, Our Numbered Days, is funny and mad at itself for being funny. It’s sad, and it thinks that’s also funny. It’s smart, even when it’s calling itself stupid. It says “Love me” while insisting that loving it is a bad idea. Our Numbered Days is like playing mini golf on a first date: it will be embarrassing at first, but, it swears, you’re gonna love it.

I just finished reading:
No Matter the Wreckage by Sarah Kay

This was the first “proper” poetry book I got after moving to England and getting into poetry, and you can see from the somewhat battered cover that it’s been a loyal companion since.I had seen videos of her poems around the internet for a while, but got her book to use as a reference for a poetry essay, and fell madly and desperately in love. This collection has kept me company on many a train journey, and held me through many a homesick night. Like with the last book, I’ll just let the comments from the blurb talk for themselves.

Blurb:
In her powerful debut collection of poetry, Sarah Kay navigates a decade’s worth of writing to present us with a book that combines new poems and beloved favourites. Both fresh and wise, Sarah Kay’s poetry invites us to join her on the journey of discovering herself and the world around her.
“Sarah Kay is a fearsomely open and generous talent. In this collection she will give you moments so intimate and beautifully rendered you will come to know them as your own. An unalloyed joy from beginning to end.” – Lin-Manuel Miranda


Next book on the list:
Helium by Rudy Francisco

I’ve had this book for a couple of months but still not read it, so it’s definitely next on the list now that I’m in this “poetry on the beach”-mindset. I really enjoy the way Rudy Francisco performs his poetry, his voice and how he holds himself in front of an audience, and so I’m excited to see how all of that “translates” onto the page!

Blurb:
“Rudy Francisco’s powerful collection Helium is full of the kind of clear-eyed, hurtful moments that make the best poetry, no matter how difficult they are to render as music: all the merciful questions, all the rejoicing and letdowns that come from family. All of the knots of honesty and near honesty that bump against us with abandon at this time when truth is a thin thing. Helium cracks open what it means to be human and vulnerable in America, when liberty is a pliable and dissapearable thing. These poems should be read and reread like an antidote for now.” -Adrian Matejka

That was my WWW post this week! Better late than never, at least it’s still Wednesday even if it is quarter to 11 in the evening.
If you wanna talk books; please hit me with any sort of book talk in the comments!
Blue was apparently a color theme for me this week, do you find that you tend to react for books in some sort of colour code?
And I know I keep saying this, but I still really enjoy the community feel around these kinds of posts, and so please post your WWW Wednesday post in the comments so I can check it out!

Thanks for reading and have a lovely day!

-Andrea

 

“Grandfather Sea has new eyes now”

The water is a mirror, I’m scared to break the surface,
but our boat just glides through the waves like it owns the place.
On the sea surrounded by sleepy gulls and my grandmother’s handwriting was not where I thought I’d spend my evening, but I’m glad I’m here.
My grandad is steering, like he always is.

Grandfather sea, the saltwater man.
I’ve written poems about him before, said he is like the ocean he grew up next to;
only now do I understand how right I was.

He’s not made of salt water so much as shaped of it,
unpredictable and stormy, wondrous and wild.

I look at how he grips the steering wheel, trained hands that know how to navigate rocks and isles and deep velvet oceans.
It is in his fingers, his eyes, his back,
like riding a bicycle is in my legs.

I used to compare him to the sea;

His heart forceful like the waves, voice quick like sea foam, all excitement and loud words and dark coffee spluttering in a coffee maker.
Now I see the ocean in him, in the pull of the currents towards his home.
I see the sea in how he glides through the ripples, I see the waves in his mind as tension in his hands.

He looks at old horizons with new eyes, navigates charted waters without her telling him where to go.

The water is a mirror, I’m scared I’ll break the surface,
but his surface is one i’m just starting to chip away at.

I went out for a little trip on the fjord with my grandad the other day, and had some time to reflect as we were … driving? We talked about stuff you can only talk about when there is water all around you, and we sat in comfortable silence, silence that felt like home. It all made me think of a poem I wrote about my grandad in my first year of uni, and how both my voice and his focus has changed a lot during the course of those three years, and especially this last year; a year filled with permanent changes that have affected all of us. All of this reflection resulted in this work-in-progress poem! I hope you like it!

Have a wonderful day,

-Andrea