Tag: poetry
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Snowdrops greet Pond Cottage spring in a hard hat
And here they are. Almost incredibly, undaunted by digging and draining and ditching and dumping, the first sharp green shoots have poked through the rubble and hardcore round our cottage. That’s hope for you. Hope in a hard hat.
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Five poems to defy populists
I wrote this for the 2019 election when there was good reason to be fearful. Five years on, we face another election in a turbulent time. And yet. Courageous compassion and conscience are precious human strengths. These five poems defy fear, anger and distrust.
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What’s the story in a Russian passport?
Some passports arouse an obliging smile While others are treated as mud. Vladimir Mayakovski A passport can conceal or reveal, open or close. Who knows how the true-blue British passport will be treated after Brexit, but right now Russian travellers are likely to be attracting more than average scrutiny at border control. And none too…
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Silent greetings from Mars
Women may be from Venus but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the occasional trip to Mars. On a dreary, rain-smeared midsummer night, I land on a sociable planet light years away from Brexit Britain, and find the perfect holiday poem for my husband.
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In praise of the shipping forecast: pure poetry
The North wind doth blow though not very hard. Our windmill acts like a weathervane even when it’s not turning and it is facing resolutely north. We shall have snow.
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Poetry breaks the silence of dementia
Over the Years, a poem about ageing and Alzheimer’s, stirs a sad, sweet memory but also hope. Dementia is part of family life – and loss – for so many of us now and I remember how it silenced my once sociable father. Yet Paula Jennings’ poetry, drawing on her work in a nursing home,…