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.