St Andrew's Day 2025

Things have been rattling on. Winter is upon us, but luckily it's been mostly rain which I can cope with. I don't mind the darkness if I'm not shovelling snow three times a day just to be able to get out my front door. 

With returning to school, I just haven't had the energy to write this blog. To be honest, I haven't felt like I've done much on the writing front to write about. I still write as regularly as I can, mostly on the weekends, but I haven't really been submitting or trying to get published. I've lost my enthusiasm for that. I can't seem to get a book published, so I just cherry-pick the magazines I want to try for and even that I barely look into. 

I missed Scotstober where I usually try to use a Scots word a day to write some poetry. I have the list of words on a post-it, but haven't even tried to use them. I need to on days when I pull them out on days when can't think of how to start my writing practice. 

The highlight of my writing year has been this week and has nothing to do with my own writing. I was invited to the St Andrew's Day Ceilidh hosted by the Scottish Government's Nordic Office, a well-kept little secret. I was invited through my connection with the Finnish Scottish Society who I help out every year with their annual Burns Supper and a ceilidh. We had no idea of what to expect, but it was the most amazing night. The guest stars were former Scotland Makar Jackie Kay and current Edinburgh Makar Michael Pedersen and the presenter and cultural commentator Ally Heather. I thought it might be a formal affair but it was far from that. 

It was introduced as a Highland lock-in with music and poetry and tons and tons of whisky which is exactly what it felt like. Ally welcomed us in and spent the evening wandering around topping up everyone's glasses. All three were delightful to talk to. The musicians and poets on stage kept it casual and fun and joined in with the drinking and chat off. My mate even had to eject a too-drunk Finn during the first session by Scotland's 2025 Young Traditional Musician Ellie Beaton. Had to happen at a Scottish event. Michael and Jackie's performance were fun and full of energy. I've read books by them both this year including Michael's amazing Muckle Flugga which is a rollercoaster of a read. And listening to him perform you understand why. I wish I had taken photos, but to be honest, I was a bit star-struck. Luckily, my friend was thinking on his feet. 

Unfortunately, the lock-in didn't happen, but we decanted to another pub down the road. I couldn't stay as long as I'd like as I had work in the morning and kids waiting at home, but it was an absolute blast. It really made me miss the Scottish literary scene I used to dip my toes into. The mild hangover I took to school the next morning was totally worth it.

The Finnish Scottish Society are my Scottish lifeline here and I was so happy to be able to actually spend some time in a drunken blether with them rather than running around peeling neeps and making pies during an event that we never get to enjoy. We need more events like this that we aren't organising.

On the publication side I've only a few publications since the summer. My poem 'Explode the Monstrous' has been published in The Storms and I read the poem for the accompanying poetry podcast Eat the Storms with many of the other talented contributors. And I'm very excited to have my poems included on Sixty Odd Poets which is such a fun site to explore. 

I can't promise to be any more regular with keeping this blog up during term time, but hopefully I'll manage a new post during the Christmas break. I just need to do something interesting again. 

I hope your winter isn't too dark and cold. 

A Summer Ending

Today is the last day of my holidays and I'm still in my jammies, writing with tea, playing solitaire until my head quiets. I'm blessed with a teacher's holidays in Finland, nine weeks and I have to admit I've done very little. I'll probably feel guilty when I go back to the staff room tomorrow and colleagues ask me what my kids and I did over the break, but there's no changing anything now.

I was selfish and needed to do nothing, couldn't really afford big trips, but didn't even make small ones around the area as I always plan to. Take a boat to Tallinn or Stockholm or go to Turku where I've never been. We didn't even go camping. We stayed at home, visited a couple of beaches, went to a few museums. They spent time with friends who were still around.

Yesterday though, we went to one of the few places in Finland I feel at ease. Just a river and a lake it feeds into. Neither very spectacular or busy, no cafe nearby for ice cream. Just an outhouse toilet and a changing room at the sauna. We can't light fires, nothing interesting, but I didn't even have to fight the kids to get them there. Ususally there's the back lash at turning off the screens, breaking the lack of routine. But they have good memories of the place as well, so we willing to just pack up and go. 

My daughter took her portable paint kit, I took my notebook. We took snacks and lots of towels. The car doesn't have air conditioning, so the windows were open the whole trip. We arrived windblown and sweaty, but everyone was smiling within minutes. The kids forgot whatever niggles they have with each other and threw themselves into the river, talked about music, painted and splashed. We went too late and the sun rolled behind the trees, but we jumped off the diving board and stayed long enough. It's what I needed to finish the summer. 

Today I'm doing laundry and charging my school laptop, chasing up last emails. The kids are back on their devices though I woke them that bit earlier in preparation for next week. I'm sure they'll feel jealous of their friends trips abroad, but I hope they remember the days where we splashed in the woods, ate ice cream, saw snakes and tortoises, cooked sausages and realise it wasn't such a bad summer.

Diving off that board into the lake is a reoccurring image in my poems, like watching the barnacle geese leave in autumn or the first anemones that appear in the forest. I write about them over and over in different variations, trying to capture something that can't quite be put in words. Moments that mean more than just the passing of the seasons, though they carry that weight as well, the years sliding by much too fast. 

Stepping off that creaking board with no glasses and a fear of heights always feels momentous. I don't really like swimming. I feel wobbly and uncertain high above the deep, black water, but desperately want to jump in. Water that changes around me, cold to cool to warm, golden to green to clear as I surface. Water that changes me somehow, every summer. So I keep going back, revisiting it in poems and pictures, expecting nothing new, but finding it as I step off that edge and resurface. 

I enjoy my job and will get back into the swing of things soon enough, but now I don't want summer to end. 

The Blank Page

Less than a month left of my summer holidays and I've been thinking about the blank page . . .

I don't fear it, I fill it with nonsense mostly. Words I collect as I walk and scroll through my day: heavy-hitter verbs, pretty images, notes to myself of where I am and what I need to focus on. 

I write in cafes, on buses, on my couch, sometimes in my phone but mostly on my laptop or notebook. I have files on both the computer and phone that I add notes to, so I don't lose them while doing other things. I've even tried voice notes on my phone when I'm driving alone, but I don't like that medium as well. 

I borrow words or phrases from articles I'm reading, what's going on out the window, the things my kids say:

The ice cream I ate drunk in the rain, being woken by ravens, solstice, imprecision, fears that I'm stuck, losing time, erasure, the poem locked in my brain, a firm handshake, ripe to rotten, runes of birch, flirt in the corner, inherit. 

When nothing clicks I wander again through the pages to find phrases that spark. I restitch them, take the out-of-context further removed. Find connections between my days, the words that caught my eyes. Someday all I do is note and reorganise, but nothing comes together. The next day I start again. 

It's reassuringly simple, no expectation to write a poem or say anything coherent. I can just write and when something starts to gel I'm able to work with it because I'm present, I'm already there at the page. 

I've taken a week to write this post, wandered away for a while. Of the lines I lifted from my notebook above flirt in the corner has become part of a poem. As soon as I wrote it here I saw its potential, the direction is was leaning towards and I followed it. The rest have moved about or become compost on the page, layers that might eventually produce something useful. 

In that week I've written a little every day, maybe a page or just half a dozen lines, but I've only written one poem. And that feels about right. My inspiration of earlier in the year is fading, still there, but it feels gone over too often, I'm too aware of its curves, its voice. I still find comfort in it, but it isn't bursting over me with feelings and ideas, phrases that speak for me. So slowing down with my writing and changing focus is to be expected. 

As the summer break winds down, I'm trying to make the most of the quiet days so I don't feel like I've wasted the writing time I've been gifted. I'm enjoying my play with small details even if I have little to show for it.

Take care.

Midsummer

It's midsummer, when Finnish people turn away from the cities and towards the water and the forest, relax and be themselves. As much as I don't usually like summer, the heat, the beaches, etc, it's the season I like in Finland most of all. Mainly because the rest of the time is the long winter or the lead up to it.  

The weather has finally started to warm up to summer level, over 20C, which makes going to the water bearable. The river is still cold, but it's warm enough to manage a dip. Lakes are better. I won't even attempt the sea this early on. The kids are struggling to get into summer mode, all their friends having left for holidays. We don't have a summer cottage so we're just hanging about the city, doing small things just to slowly immerse ourselves. 

I'm still on my go-slow summer, writing in the morning, working on the house or garden or doing something with the kids in the afternoon. Summer is fresh fruit and thunderstorms, always having dirt under my fingernails no matter how hard I scrub and the window open at night. It's ice cream and sleeping in, museums and cafes, it's writing when I want. Long days, nights without boundaries. I don't want it to end, but I have my summer course in Scotland soon which follows midsummer and starts the descent back into the real world. 

Just like my poems are seasonal, my pictures are. Right now I have lots of poppies and irises from my garden. A Finnish midsummer poem previously published in the Helsinki Writers Group and in Porridge. 

Yötön Yö*

The fluttering ribbon of blue
outwith my window deepens
but holds fast to the birches. 

I welcome a thirst for black cherries
bursting over my hands,
blooded with the waiting abundance.

Beyond, in a rhythm I can’t understand
bonfires blaze on the shores,
fed by a dancing wind of flowers.
The country eases back.
beneath the slow-whirl of the sky.

 

*Finnish ‘nightless night’, Juhannus, mmidsummer.

I'm still writing a bit everyday, poems and fragments. When I go to Scotland I'll do more journaling than creative writing though I hope to keep up the practice of writing everyday. I'll take a new notebook with me as my current one is almost full (the joy of notebooks!!) and write everything there, rather than take my writing notebook and my journal. 

I have ordered a pile of books from the local independent bookstore so will make a short trip there to collect them and hopefully we'll look around some when the group goes to Edinburgh, so I'm looking forward to that. I'm trying not to pack to much so I can fill my suitcase with books on the way back. I'll try to do a review of my purchases when I come back - my Scottish Book Tour review. I always try to buy some Scottish books, though I end up with a very full mixed bag. 

It's been raining quite heavily the past few days (it always takes me a while to write these blogs). Getting me ready for Scotland, I guess. I can't wait. Though it's pretty intense to take a bunch of kids to another country, they are old enough to be pretty responsible and I get to teach about Scottish culture, history and literature, so I always enjoy it. So it's not quite my regular teaching job. There's still a bit of time before I have to think about that. 

Make the most of the summer, rain or shine. Enjoy. 

Lazy Days When No One is Watching

A week into full summer and the kids have been sleeping in late, having stayed up too late again. Menopause has gifted me with mornings, so I read and write all morning. In the afternoon I'll do some things that need doing, but if they don't get done I can do them tomorrow. It's a lovely feeling that I know won't last. I have my summer school trip coming up soon and then my mother is coming to visit, so I'm going to enjoy these next two lazy weeks. 

The pollen count is dropping so I've been working in the garden, mowing the grass, cutting dead branches, planting at the plot. I'm trying to make my allotment easier for my joints, so I've built lots of raised beds and am putting down bark mulch on the paths to try and keep the weeding down. I usually dig up a meter or two of the path at a time, clear the weeds, place down the fabric and the mulch. It's slow going, but I'm seeing the results. A lot of what I try to grow doesn't work or the slugs eat more than the kids and I do, but every year I dig in and plant with hope.

2020 v 2025 - hopefully a lot less digging.

My poetry is going in a similar way at the moment. I still write every day, but am producing less poems. Slow writing, slow editing and I'm barely submitting to magazines or publishers. Little or nothing to show for all my work.

I keep seeing memes about 'would you write if no one ever read your work?' That's what it feels like just now. No one really cares about my allotment, my poems or how I spend my unstructured time, but I've done it anyway. Occasionally my son will enjoy eating some courgette bread from veg I've grown or a distant editor will accept a poem and say some kind things, but for the most part they bring only me happiness. 

I'd like to get one of my collections published of course, but after waiting over 5 years after my last acceptance that was never published, I've become mellow about it. It may never happen. I may leave a trickle of poems published in journals over my lifetime, hundreds of unloved poems and a humongous pile of notebooks behind when I die. So be it.

It doesn't matter that no one is reading me, I will continue, filling my notebooks, writing my life. It gives me joy and purpose which is more than something.

Expressing Big Emotions

The day outside is beautiful, but I'm stuck inside with a pollen allergy that has moved to my chest. It is a struggle to breathe, to even put on a load of laundry, so working in my allotment will need to wait. 

This week was the final week of school. It's such a relief. The teachers are dragging themselves to the finish line of beach days, locker cleaning and class parties. And then the rush of graduation weekend. It's all done in one weekend here in Finland and my eldest son graduated from high school and my younger son from middle school. It's been a bit crazy for a bunch of introverts, so we're tired and looking forward to summer and slowing down.

I'm still writing, but haven't been able to keep up with my poem a day thing. I've done almost every day. Hopefully I will get back into the habit in June.  

My daughter asked to read some of my love poems recently. I tried to find some that were understandable and appropriate for an eleven-year-old. Not surprising that this was difficult, but what did surprise me was that they didn't feel like love poems when I read them, though when I wrote them they felt so overly emotional. 

I struggled to find one that felt a good example of how I write love poems, but I guess they all are. I don't gush or really even praise the other as there is no particular person in mind. I focus on the moment and the whirlwind of emotions I'm feeling. There is often a sense of sadness on the edges, that the flush will fade, that reality will set in. So they don't always feel like the giddy heights of love poems, but maybe the more realistic confusion of love. 

I read a few of my poems out to my daughter and while she didn't get most of them, they're maybe a bit thick linguistically and not aimed at pre-teens so she was ok with that, but it did open a nice conversation for how love is such a big emotion that it's confusing and often leaves us feeling very overwhelmed. How it's important to express how we feel even if it doesn't always make sense to others. It's part of understanding how we fit into the world. If she walked away with that sense of it's ok to express being overwhelmed however and whenever we need to, then I feel pretty good about my poems. 

Few publication notes: Hillfire Press has published three of my poems in their fourth anthology. I had a lovely online launch with them last week. The volume will soon be available. Order a copy, they need support to get it printed. 

Pushing out the Boat has also published a recent issue with one of my poems. It's a brilliant collection of English, Scots and Gaelic writing from Scotland and around the world. I can't wait to see my copy. 

The Brussels Review has also featured my poem on their website and another poem is available in their spring print edition which is also available digitally. I appreciate them publishing my work but also making it available digitally as well as in print as even getting things posted within Europe has become difficult lately. 

My writing, and a large chunk of my days once my chest clears, is shifting out into the garden, so I'm writing about grass overgrown with forget-me-nots and long summer evenings. 

Long live them both. Enjoy. 

A Collector of Scrap and Details

Summer is officially here, though we still are really only in spring in terms of where the weather and plant growth is. My tulips are just blooming, the long days mean the grass is growing at a rate of knots and the birch pollen is trying to kill me. I've started work at the allotment but can only do an hour or so before it becomes too much. Two weeks left of school, so things are starting to ease overall.  

Since the Global Poetry Writing Month finished I've been keeping up my goal of writing every day. I'm trying to put together a small collection and this has been a good way to fill gaps, though I have no idea what I want to say when I sit down everyday or what is missing within the collection. 

This is my current process. I open my journal, write the first word that jumps out at me from whatever I'm reading or looking at. Today the word is pronounced. I don't know why it caught my eye from the screen, but I just go from there. I may not even use the word as I write, but it feels like an anchor to start with. Then I glance around wherever I am or at what I'm reading, scroll Insta or read a few Substack notes and just scribble down any image, phrase or word that appeals. I have no theme or direction, I am just a collector of scraps and details at this point. 

When I have a page or two of notes, I go back and reread them. Sometimes the juxtaposition of phrases together suggests something or they take me in a particular direction. I rewrite phrases together or if nothing sings I go back and write more notes. Some days I get nothing but notes, other times I'm able to string them together into a rough draft or a few lines that I pull into another poem I'm working on. I'm enjoying the unconscious flow of my writing. I do have themes for my collection, my love and aging poems, but sometimes my brain takes me elsewhere. I've circled back for a few poems to my eternal themes of finding home and being lost as a choice, maybe they'll have a place in the collection too.  

This has been pretty much my process and how I've been able to write about 30 poems in 48 days. They may not all be good, but as I mentioned in another post, I'm currently in love with them because they're fresh and speaking from where I am right now. And even if that changes, I still feel this is an accomplishment after a very fallow winter of writing. 

I started this post this morning and it's now after dinner. It has taken me several returns to my notebook and then the computer to have the bones of a poem sketched for today. I don't want to share the whole piece, but I'll show the first stanza. I did use my word in the title. The bold are the notes I wrote in my journal. Not all of them were next to each other, so they were stitched together in this stanza.

I have been pronounced wanting

people ask me to open myself

they peer through 

just window shopping

to discover I am a fraud of dusty shelves

a returned item that didn’t suit

It's a funny little poem that goes from this to a kelpie. This writing process is producing quirky points of view I wouldn't normally take, but I like them as they fit my mood at the moment. I'm owning my awkwardness and that's part of what this poem is about, others find me wanting, but I'm becoming something different from what they see.

I took this photo at the weekend and prompted my note today I am a fraud at sunset because it wasn’t really this vivid, but my phone made it so false. My head is weird. 

We'll see where these poems end up. Right now I'm enjoying the process.

Aging and Love are Involuntary

I had a student this week say he follows me on Insta, Hi I!, but he doesn't read these blog posts which is probably a relief. It got me wondering whether will I share my recent love poems, try to get them published, if I know students, co-workers, family members might read them. At this stage, I'm not sure. 

My poetry is almost always personal, leaving me and my life open to interpretation by strangers as well as people I know. A friend in my writing group once said he feels like he knows my kids because of my poetry even though he hasn't met all of them. 

Normally, this doesn't bother me as my poems are always a step removed from me by either time or rewriting, but these poems are different, closer to the bone. Maybe that will change as time passes, as these feelings pass. I'll remove or edit out the more raw, emotional moments and create that distance I need, but right now I couldn't see sharing some of these poems with the people close to me. I'll maybe try to publish a few individually, that aren't so real and right now, but the others may stay closer to my chest.

The poems I've been working on lately are about love, but also growing older. Loving the person I've become. Aging has never really bothered me, but I can see how the world glances side-eye at me now that I look older, for not dying my graying hair or wearing makeup to hide my wrinkles. I feel as if I'm not allowed to age as I see fit, to be menopausal, hormonal, irrational and maybe in love with all of it. Luckily, I and my poems don't care how the world sees me and though I may complain about the aching joints, I am celebrating my newly crazy middle age.

These themes have also been popping up in my GloPoWriMo poems, the write a poem a day challenge for April. I missed Day 22 going back to work. 

Day 21 the poetry of who I was the past filed away in boxes old photos with a gold wash friends and stories still kent over the decades faces I want to forget hard copies blurred and real can I edit them out

Day 23 inspired by a Finnish song joesta järveen Tuonelan Koivut, Kotiteollisuus I thought the song said love flowed from the river to the lake so finnish so enclosed far from the pull of the tide just a collection of emotions hemmed in but it was tears

Day 24 I stalk the heron the bird is not an omen starving for my questions feeding on my promises but a reflection of what of who is hidden in the nettles and dried stalks

Day 25 grace is not required my midlife crisis needs a midwife as much as a birth to find a way through the cravings and softening skull a hand to hold when facing the feverish heights of hormones and the slow fall to decay aging is involuntary

Day 26 - I do wonder who people will relate to Billie these days (it’s Holliday for me) in the unruly hour in the arms of night I am drowning in blues that ache of wanting and wanting more and that voice petal black is the rain and Billie’s sadness she knew

I share some of my work here and in journals, both about love and growing old. Maybe not warts and all kind of sharing, but hopefully enough for people to relate to what I'm going through. Or to at least understand. That's all we can hope for some days, that people will try to understand us.

Take care. 

The Poetry of Who I am Now

Easter weekend and we got 5 days off school for it. I love the luxury of waking up and thinking, 'not tomorrow' especially when the rain is plashing down like this morning. The return to work will come but it's still not tomorrow, so I'm enjoying the lushness of no plans. 

I went to the allotment yesterday and began work, but the rain has cancelled my plans to return. I always thank the rain however it comes. Everything has suddenly greened as a result; the lawn, the tiny buds on the trees. Last weekend the Easter witches came, so my daughter was making wands and wreaths out of pussy willow catkins which I used to decorate the door after the kids had gone. Safe to say spring is properly here.

GloPoWriMo three weeks in and I'm still going strong here. I'm not able to write a whole poem every day, but every day I'm turning up at the page and trying to write something. 

Some of the poems I've written I really like, but I often feel that about poems early on. They feel so fresh and right, but then I put them aside for a bit and when I go back to them, they feel forced or they're trying too hard to be clever. So I work on them a bit and put them aside for longer, then work on them a bit more until I feel they're done. Then I put them aside for even longer and come back to them with a totally different eye. 

It feels strange to go back and read poems I fell in love with years ago. They aren't the same beasts or maybe I'm not. Sometimes I still love them and they still have a rightness about them. Other times they clash and just don't work or strut too much with their own poetic-ness. My writing style has changed in many ways over time, but it's more that I have changed.

Poetry for me is very much what I want to say right now: my emotions, my obsessions, what I'm looking at and thinking about now. Years down the line I may not see things that way anymore, but the poem is a snapshot of that moment, now gone. And like my teenage journals and blurry pre-digital photos I won't get rid of them just because they're cringe-worthy or not who I am now. I love how they show my growth and development. But, as Billy Connelly said, pay attention because it's all going to change tomorrow.

This was me in the early 1990s.

And this is where I'm at April 2025:

Day 13 

I’ve waited for the other shoe

for the truth to be spit out

knowing it would break open

the foundations where I stood

but I wanted to hear it

dug for it in the muck

that was shoveled high

just to be free of its stench

Day 14

I build a cage of discipline

woven with shoulds and musts

to I trap myself

inside I whittle away at time

Day 15 

slow motion summers where we were never pent up

running to the gold overtones of eight tracks and polaroids

we brought goldenrod, milkweed and violets

to the table of gray alleyways and riversilt

sneaker toes kicking the dirt

Day 16 – inspired by a Finnish female rapper who came to our school.

When?

Speculate to where I could be if I only spoke up.

I am just holding on.

Still holding back

hesitate hes     i       tate.

Never too late.

Feel myself close off. Intimidate.

Bite back.

Permission granted.

Day 17 

there’s no happiness in this

no peace either

yet I keep plunging myself deeper

I confess I felt dead

spiraling into silence into dust

Day 18 

rugby in black and white

bodies rumble into motion

pitch churned to mud

limb wrapping limb

grip bind

Day 19 

unstrung

I string myself along

vibrating synched to the wind

high-strung gutted and burned dry 

and fall like a broken kite

the sea pulling me away

I’m given to distractions

to remember to forget

when did I stop talking 

when he stopped listening

I’ve chosen to ignore

the opinions of the wind

Day 20 

myself in the abstract

the rain pelting down             this is content

I am torn from the page of the unmade bed          this is arrival

a husk of the moon                              longing

morning a word                      sanctuary

crumpled at the bottom of the laundry pile                  expectations 

It's taken me so long to write this post that tomorrow is the day I have to go back to work. But it's been a lovely long weekend. Enjoy what's left of your Easter holidays. 

Look at Everything Twice - Editing

I had a job interview this week. I was struggling getting over a cold, overwhelmed by what I had missed at work while I was out, so I really didn't feel it went well. However, my boss told me afterwards that I undersold myself. I'm pretty sure I sold myself as a babbling idiot, so that's hopefully true. 

When I'm asked a question I'm not totally sure on or not prepared for, I just start talking and then find my brain running behind going, 'What the hell is she on about? Somebody stop her!' Luckily, it was interviewing for the job I've been doing for the past two years on a temp contract, so they know I am not an idiot, though maybe also know I'm prone to babbling. 

This is why I feel comfortable as an editor, especially of my own writing. In writing my poems, I often don't know what I'm saying until I have the meandering mess of it down on paper or screen and can sort it out, clean it up, take out the waffling that isn't needed, the details that are just too off the wall or unclear. 

I do the same thing with emails, write it all out then edit it appropriately. I have, in the past, sent out those in the moment, emotional, unfocussed, unedited emails and it never ends well, so I always try to pull back and look a second time. 

I may have mentioned on this blog before that idea as my best piece of advice every given me, 'Look at everything twice'. It was said to me by a Holocaust survivor I met when I was working in a bookshop in my small university town. She came in some Sundays to buy the big papers and chat. One day as she was leaving, she grasped my arm and said this and it's always stuck with me. 

I've never considered the phrase in terms of my love of editing. I've always just thought of it as take a moment to appreciate what's around you, the small things we overlook. By looking twice at anything, we understand it better and our place in it. We should spend that extra time to consider what we're seeing, doing and saying. 

This applies to our writing as well. Slow down and consider. I need to do that when I speak as well it seems. 

I'm still doing the GloPoWriMo - the Global Poetry Writing Month - write a poem a day challenge. I've had a few days that I've managed to get a good basis for a poem, others were I just have a few stanzas with interesting images, but no connection at the moment. I'll give them second looks after the challenge is over. 

‪Day 12

there is no full retreat

climb out of honesty

and disconnect like an island

I insist that the earth tilts

in my favour for at least one day

Day 11 

i loved you in flannel

before grunge

bookending my school crushes

from first grade to high school

you sketched a perfect circle

without me

Day 10 

this landscape is where I fall to my knees

wishing for more

the season as thin as a line drawing

trailing the marks I leave behind

‪

Day 9 a snippet inspired by a typo on my son’s Shelley essay. 

Explode the Monstrous

Peel back my skin and see

how I’ve tied my sinews into knots over you.

I’ve offered my eyes to the ravens

and cast the bones,

but I cannot give you flesh.

‪Day 8 

the darkness expands

unpacking overheard whispers 

muffling me 

in a heavy blanket

I carve out worm-space

to shoulder myself free

‪Day 7 

hands dancing over desire lines 

of whipcord flesh

pickpocketing the mystery

the awe of you

Some fun ideas in there I'll enjoy playing with later on. How are you getting on with the challenge so far?

Poetry Snippets for GloPoWriMo

It's April (woohoo) and I'm bunged up with a head cold and my birch allergy, so I'm hiding indoors though the weather isn't too cold. Spring always gets started without me when it finally comes along as there is just so many birch trees here. Time for writing, watching rugby and indoor chores. Not too bad a way to spend the weekend. 

April is also time for the write-a-poem-a-day challenge from NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo. I've been posting my attempts on my various social media channels and have managed to keep up the first six days. I don't always manage a full poem, but usually have a start I can play with over the next month or so. I use various sites for inspiration, including the official site listed above, Wendy Pratt's Substack prompts, Todd Dillard's thought-provoking prompts (he has the last few years' threads on Twitter, I think, but I won't link to there) and my Substack feed in general. I'm enjoying the break in my day to come up with some lines or just play with words. 

Here are my first six days. I only post snippets as I may want to publish the finished poems.

Day 6 

my children think I’m mocking them

when I play his song

think I don’t get it

overplayed, it’s become cliched

and I don’t

not how they see it

but I remember watermelon

the sizzle, the splash

too eager

when it’s fresh

Day 5

I present as gifts

my scratches of language

the bookshop receipts 

in suitcase pockets

the curled milkweed pods

nettle stings

on my wrist and ankle to kiss

I never forget the orange glow of the city 

and of the crackling aurora

my compass is the cold sea

and humbling rain

Day 4

beneath the barbed-wire taste 

of a rust sunset

I drag my heels to say goodbye

Day 3

let myself drown 

in the salt and cold timing

between us

waves of decades 

and distance that gnaws

and gnaws at me

I am mortal and I love

Day 2

the braiding of long memory

did not foreshadow this rebirth

I cannot utter regrets

to be so carried away

all sense is burned to fragments

time drones on untuned

as I give in

Day 1

I walk my routine

repetition and longing

to the school door

a portrait of my daily self 

worn down

first bell to last

The Shoulds of Spring

Spring has come early to Finland. The snow is melted and the city is full of dust from the grit they use on the roads. Finns and those non-Finns who have been here for a while are suspicious, knowing it's too early to get our hopes up. That takatalvi is always a possibility, the Finnish return to winter. Takatalvi means a sudden dump of snow or the temps dropping to twenty below zero just when the weather seems to turn towards spring. True spring when you can actually pack your shovels, snow boots and gloves away is always late here, well into April usually.

I should be writing about the light returning as my poems are usually seasonal, but I'm still writing my strange, half-love poems. I'm ignoring a lot of 'shoulds' which is a slight worry, but also very liberating. Nothing vital is being ignored with my kids and my job and whatever else they put me in charge of. I am carving out very specific times where I just don't, unless I want to. And that feels good.

I'm writing again thankfully. Of all the things that slipped away this winter that worried me. I have a pile of unread books I know I will get back to, the dust bunnies will wait, but there was a definite sense of lack in being unable to find a way into writing. So I'm thankful for the rush of hormones or whatever is driving these weird poems. 

The use of the words 'weird' and 'hormones' in the last sentence just took me on a half-hour detour, a quick glance on the internet and then into my writing journal. So I have scribbles on hormones and being a weird sister which might develop into something. Ideas and poems bursting from little seeds feel more like spring to me than cleaning my windows. That is a job which really should be done so I can enjoy the return of the light, but it probably won't be. My spring poems may have a cat nose- and finger- print filter then. 

All of this new writing energy is in good time for April's GloPoWriMo, a challenge to write a poem or some poetry snippets every day, which I will try to do again. I like that sort of should, a gentle demand of 'be creative, take some time in your day for something you love'.

Publications-wise things are also looking up after a very quiet winter though I'm submitting very little. Some new publications of my work:

I've had a poem published in the current issue of The Brussels Review.

And another poem has been accepted for the spring issue of The Broken Spine. It's currently available for free download. 

The Belfast Review has also published one of my poems in their winter issue.

Enjoy your writing time. 

A Change of Appetites

This year so far has been introverted. My minor face surgery for my skin cancer didn't go as well as I and the docs would have liked so I've spent the past two weeks trying to heal from that, staying still and quiet. But even before that, I had escaped to a warm, dark space i had created in my head and curled up there. I have lacked the appetite for other activities, lacked hunger, lacked focus and my mind has just slowed down.

It doesn't feel like a bad thing. I tend to hibernate in the winter anyway as I can't garden and walking or riding my bike is difficult in the frozen Finnish landscape unless you are really keen. So, I just slow down and do indoor things. I'm still writing and reading, but less than usual. I don't want to do anything, really.

Maybe I'm waiting for spring, as I always am, but in a new way, to uncurl and find a new appetite to turn towards. A new sun. 

I sometimes tell myself I'm a fool, an old fool, that life is slipping by. But I know I have so much going on in the reality of my life, my kids' lives, that maybe I need this silence to conserve my energies. 

My writing has also changed. I'm writing love poems to no one, to an invisible someone. I've been single for about 6 years, there's no one on my horizon and until this year my 'love' poems have been angry or happy to be defiantly single. 

Now, what I write is overwhelmed with a different emotion, gazing with love into that dark stillness I've built in my head. I don't know what I see, but the lines that came to me today have that hope of spring in them. 

Maybe I love you

or maybe now

there is the potential in me

to love

Maybe I can find a love for myself, for where I am right now.

Even though my world is still frozen, I have to remind myself that the sun is returning. The world is no longer held by the winter darkness. The sun is there when I go to work and when I return. It holds no warmth but is occasionally bright enough to blind. The true thaw will be months in coming but it reminds you that something good is possible.