Going Home

First day of holiday and the kids and I have started the gingerbread house, made our annual Christmas decorations and I've lost my patience with their fighting, but I haven't written a line of poetry or done any editing on my collection. I've done none of my poetry reading either, so no review this week. This impossible balancing act of life and art. Even when work is taken out of the mix, I can't keep on top of it all. Tomorrow, we need to get out of the house, so I need to try and fit in some work in the morning or afterwards. I must get back into the habit.

When my babies were little and we were struggling with their sleep habits I read somewhere that it takes six times as long to break a habit than to make it. It's so easy to not write a poem a day, not squeeze in the time to write or edit around work, but to build up that habit again is more of a struggle. It requires force of willpower to not take the easy route and turn on the telly after the kids go to bed, to not stare at a screen without writing something useful on it. 

So I've cracked open the collection tonight, stepping into the cold Scottish rain again of my poems, the hard gray stone and cups of tea. The images I draw together for the cover. Wool and sand, loch and Glasgow streets. Touching the words I've written again. It's like going home.

I'm looking forward to seeing this chapbook, but there's a sense of regret to finish it, to close the book on things I've been working on for almost two decades. Also to not be publishing the whole collection, though these are my favourite poems from it. And the poems I'm not publishing are more difficult to face just now, stepping back into the muddied waters of my old relationship which I'm happy not to ford just now.

I'm moving slowly back into the words, to find my way through them again.