My poems about love actually started with one written years ago about love of life, and what life meant to me. My mother said it was a very good poem and one of my friends said it was the loveliest thing she had ever read! Over the years it expanded in a strange way and…
The Brightest Noise
I left the window open last night because I have a slight cold and was awoken by a very loud dawn chorus. I think the birds must have been sitting on the guttering and in the trees that line the road. It was one of those “I can’t sleep-am still tired- don’t mind though” moments….
Poverty
I was fourteen and in Bombay for the first time in my life. I was on a four week holiday to meet with relatives. My entire childhood I had been brought up in the UK. I only spoke English and that with a received English pronunciation and I was at boarding school. Just started that…
The Colour Of Elephants
Being a writer colours have never played a conscious role in my work. But I recall a story of a blind man telling someone he knew what scarlet looked liked and when they asked him what he said that it looked like trumpets sound. Descriptions are my life and different people’s experience of life only…
Farewell To Books?
When they excavated the library at Herculaneum they found hundreds of scrolls. Mostly stoical philosophy, but to have a library and a country estate two thousand years ago meant the owner had wealth. You can see them looking at the scrolls and after years of collecting knowing where to look for what they wanted to…
Henry 5th and Barbarella
They don’t go together do they. When I was twelve and reaching what the Catholics euphemistically (and ironically) call ‘the age of reason’ we had a small black and white Bush TV and Olivier’s Henry 5th was on one side and Barbarella was on the other. They crossed over and I wanted to see this…
Enjoyment
I have heard people say ‘x takes enjoyment from the little things’ and I have begun to wonder if ‘things’ give joy, are there any that are little? We are very wrapped up in what we as humans consider to be minor and major elements of our society and most of them have to do…
File And Memo
The human brain is an amazing thing. Just when you think you have forgotten something it comes back to you. Just when you wish you had forgotten something is swings into your mind in full colour. And all those childhood memories that lay dormant throughout one’s career grow back with stronger ties as one ages….
People Ask Me
Where my poems come from. I don;t deign my work with the title poetry, I think of them as thoughts I idly write down. I am not a natural poet I was brought up by a natural poet and her work has always filled my mind. So, for those of you who want to know,…
Love Sonnet
Only when I am with you do I have A sense of everything: of possession And possessed, of the liberty in love, Of the frank and easy conversation Dovetailed with the intensity of your Eyes,of the waterfall of your ideas Growing closeness like crystals in the pores Of my skin, of the shadow which appears…