SMALL STONES....

This month I began with a burst of poetry. First of all I put my name down to do the Month of Poetry , which has been good fun. It hasn't always been easy thinking of something each day to write about. In fact at one stage I jotted down a few ideas for poems I could work on when or if the well of ideas dried up, but so far I haven't written about any of them.

There are so many ideas out there. I've discovered that during the day I will see something, or hear something and out of that seed a poem will be created.

Out of the 24 poems I've written so far, I'm happy with a few. Most are very raw, simply first drafts that have been captured and pinned down. They are still struggling to be free, but I will work on them. Some have great potential....good bones that I need to flesh.

So not only am I writing poems, I also committed to writing small stones..... Which interestingly enough I'm finding harder to do. These are small poems, almost haiku in length, that involve you in really observing the world around you.

I think for me, the hard part is finding the exact phrasing, the exact language that I want to use. In only a few lines the image has to be captured...what I'm trying to say has to be said.

It's been a great challenge and an even better way to start the new year. Beginning with poetry, is for me, so much less daunting than thinking of the novel waiting to be edited. That will come but it was nice to dip my toe into just a few words, not over forty thousand of them.

And it's reinforced the knowledge of how important it is to use the right word in the right place.
As in Jennifer Compton's poem 'In the Alfred Emergency and Trauma Centre' as she struggles for the right word 'a need to write an accurate poem.'

It's been a good month, a month of poetry is always good....now I wonder what February will bring?