Camden Town

This weekend I went to Camden with my two friends Ruth and Rachel. It was about a decade since I had last been to Camden. There was a lot which reassuringly was still the same but also quite a lot that has changed. Gentrification is creeping into Camden, which is a real shame. As the woman in the piercing place said to me "You don't come to Camden to buy artisan bread, there's plenty of places to buy artisan bread now in London but there's only one Camden."

After our visit I have written a series of haiku about Camden. I liked the fact that haiku are like little snap shots of a time or place. Camden being even busier than I remember, I thought the haiku could capture those fleeting glimpses you get of the quirky and classic Camden as you mill about through the vast crowds.

Camden Haiku Octet 

Shadows amongst the 

London grime, goths slink seeking

Fancy frills and thrills

Grizzled punk's hair spikes

Skyward in parrot feathered

Breath taking colours

Nirvana is a

White slash across the back of

A middle aged Dad

Indian silk bed-

Spread, patchouli scented, burnt 

Orange elephants

Food from a thousand

Cultures entice the weary 

Tourists to devour

Your future laid out

In intricate cards: your life 

A patchwork of myths

The canal's flank churned

To mud for money feeding

Gentrification 

How long a haven

For hippy, indie kids and

Joyful subversion? 

My first poem selected for publication

I've been posting a lot more of my creative writing on my blog in the last few months. Mainly poems but also this short story I wrote for Halloween. Then earlier this month I submitted  this poem  to the online (and print) Exceptions journal  and it was accepted. I was over the moon. It is my first poem chosen for publication, on their online journal for now but I have asked for it to be considered for the print publication as well, so fingers crossed.

So I thought it might be interesting to write a bit about writing. When I was growing up I had two dream careers, one was to be an actor the other a writer. I ended up teaching drama and English! Woody Allen's droll line "Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, teach Phys Ed" was always at the back of mind. But I didn't stay long in teaching.

I started writing regularly for pleasure (not just school assignments) at age 12. I wrote poems (back then they resembled pop lyrics) and I wrote romances which I would share with my friends at school. One lunch time when I was busy writing the next instalment to my Emi-Sue romance, in a class room which still had old fashioned wooden desks with lift up lids and holes for ink wells, a boy caught hold of my story. He read bits of it out loud to the others in the class who fell about laughing. In a fit of pique I snatched the pages off him and threw them in the bin. Something I have regretted ever since. My confidence was well and truly dented. I carried on writing though just not in school.

As a teenager I started to write "protest poetry" one rather memorable example, for all the wrong reasons, was written about climate change where I criticised George Bush Snr; I described him as a "hater of broccoli" and then realised I couldn't find anything to rhyme with broccoli. It wasn't long after that that I gave up on rhyme. I was also studying different poets at school like Philip Larkin, Wilfred Owen, Gerard Manly Hopkins and Sylvia Plath. My poetry as a result became more gothic in description and more streamlined in style.

I was still writing stories as well but now they were about the super natural or sic-fi. I didn't share my stories with anyone but I did share my poetry with my friend Lorraine and through out my late teens and early 20s Lorraine and I would have regular poetry writing sessions together over tea or beer, brilliant bursts of creativity.

I never shared my writing with anyone other than Lorraine and a couple of other close friends though.

I stopped writing almost completely for about 10 years. I was always very busy at work and actually writing a lot of reports and guidance for my job. It was something that troubled me a lot, as I had always found writing creatively a cathartic experience. I also started blogging in 2008 and took up photography which seemed the fill that creative gap somewhat.

Then in 2010, I attended a mental health recovery group, which encouraged me to use creative writing as a way to understand and manage my mental health. It was life changing. Within months of taking the course Jase and I had moved from London and I was running my own business, working part time. I started writing again. At first just story ideas and fragments of poetry. Then in 2013, I joined a challenge to write a poem every day. I haven't looked back since.

It is true, I think that writing is viewed differently by society than other creative pursuits. I was very much involved with photography and received no end of encouragement. I had no intention of doing photography professionally. I had no desire to have my photographs published. Though in fact they have been in RNIB publications at work! Similarly I have plenty of friends who are musicians and artists who aren't aspiring to do either professionally. (I also have friends who do want to do this professionally.) But if I say I enjoy creative writing to people they always ask if I have anything published. It's like if someone says "I play the guitar a bit" and you immediately asked them if they have had a top 40 hit yet. Or if someone says "I paint a bit" and you ask when they last had an exhibition at the Tate.

It's harder to share creative writing with an audience as well I think. The internet has made sharing easier particularly in areas like fan fiction. But I've looked, and locally we have no writers groups. I'd need to travel to Cambridge or London to take part in a regular writers group. (To be fair Bedford might have something but that's far harder for me to travel to than either Cambridge or London and yet it's closer! Thanks to crappy public transport in Bedfordshire.)

Anyway all this made me realise that I needed to write for myself, then see if there were any journals or online groups that might be interested in publishing my work. But first and foremost I would write for fun, for me. So that's what I am doing.

I'm hoping to start attending a writers group and course for women in Camden later in the year and I am writing more and more in my spare time both poetry, short stories and I am working on a novel. I find writing lowers my blood pressure which is a plus. So expect more creative writing on here and hopefully a few more of my pieces will be chosen for publication. I'm also following a creative writing course book and trying to be more disciplined, diverse and experimental with what I write. I am filling up note books fast and to paraphrase Virginia Wolf I am searching for the pearls within all the writing within them!

Mental health poetry

As I've mentioned before I am taking part in a challenge to write a poem or something creative every day during 2016. I post what I write on a small Facebook group for friends also taking part in the challenge to write more.  

Over the last month or so (actually since the beginning of December really) I've been struggling with my mental health again.  Amongst the poems I've drafted about nature or train journeys I've written about my mental health. I thought this sequence of poems might be useful to share to show the stages of my mental health. 

Mindfulness 

Empty your mind

They say as if

I could just break

Open its shell

Fragile casing

And pour out its

Meagre contents

Like cracking an egg. 

Brittle fragments

White sharp shards of

Memory and

Matter mixing

With the mess of

Thought impression,

Leaving nothing

Behind but a void. 

Ambushed

Ambushed, my memories wrenched from me

Leaving behind jagged shards and bright splinters

Like glimpses of my past through shattered mirrors 

Half an eye or a lip all that remain of a face. 

Flickers and fragments of chaotic scenes:

Grown men weeping

The arch of a flaming branch swinging

A motorbike roaring down a school corridor.

Disjointed but not unrelated,

Scattered leaves before a bonfire, yet to catch light.

Facebook On This Day

Washing stagnates in the belly of the machine

No longer rocking queasily 

Dirty dishes heaped in squalid piles, offerings 

To the gods of procrastination

A walk to the post box and arctic expedition

So I stay at home 

Facebook's Never Miss A Menory, tells me of

Nine Februaries spent like this 

Black Dog

When the black dog comes

I can not make a simple choice

When the black dog comes

I can not perform the simplest chore

When the black dog comes

In the smallest things I find no joy

When the black dog comes

I am a tree petrified to the core

When the black dog barks

He drowns out all sound

When the black dog barks 

I cower for cover

When the black dog barks 

I can not be found

When the black dog barks 

I have become another

When the black dog leaves

Which he always will

When the black dog leaves

I struggle free

When the black dog leaves

My senses fill

When the black dog leaves

My life unfreezes. 

New Day

Rain washed morning streets

Fresh light on an old scene

Paving as reflective as mirror

Inverts the brightening sky 

So the gulls reel at my feet, 

Their cries a scree of sound, 

Fragments falling from the clouds 

Raining on the park birds' song. 

Walking as far as the light house,

Looming sentinel of saltiness 

It's eye blank never blinking 

Blind to the sea's gleam and glitter, 

I notice on my way but not when coming back

An abandoned sodden bobble hat

Strewn like a bloated sea urchin 

In an expanse of inky Carpark. 

Wishing I'd brought a coat 

In a dress smothered in poppies

I shiver towards the memorial

Where a lone man reverently reads 

The names of all of the fallen

I'm so grateful for this journey 

And chance to see new places

And think of the old things differently.  

This is something I couldn't do last week

Sit back, eyes closed listening 

To rain peppering the roof 

Of this train platform shelter

To the flourishes of bird song 

The scurrying sound of nature 

To the industrial roar of the 

High and low speed trains 

To smell my freesia and pear

Perfume, a rare luxury 

To drink scolding creamy coffee

Savouring the flavour 

And just enjoy the experience

For what it is: being alive.  

Inspiring women

I'm currently working my way through a creative writing course work book and being challenged to write about different things. The challenge a couple of weeks ago was to find news stories to spark ideas. I read an article about a pilot who had flown from the UK to Australia in an old bi-plane so I chose to write about women who inspired me. 

I think of Margaret Atwood's description 

of a red thread stitched through and between every woman

passed from mother to daughter, 

linking Aunt to niece, friend to friend, sister to sister.

A great crimson tapestry of all our strength.

I think of the women I know, who inspire me: 

The ones who travel fearlessly on paths overgrown and remote

seeking the adventure of new experiences and finding peace.

Those who create and have confidence in their creations. 

Flamboyant performers with scorching determination, 

doggedly refining their art.

Those who get through each day on cups of tea and carrot cake,

offering kind words and hands to steady me. 

Those who are raising children with such devotion

in a cauldron of love and transformation. 

I think of the women who helped me become who I am today,

with buckets of patience and unending persistence, 

with good humour and imagination,

I want them to know how grateful I am.

Blue Monday

So I've written this poem today in response to the "Blue Monday" nonsense in the media. As Mind quite rightly point out. Any day can be blue! 

Blue Monday

It is dark

The air twisted with frost

We've pushed out into this new year

Too far to turn back,

Even amongst the ice we must 

Pick out a careful course

Keep momentum,

It's a nice thought

Intrepid explorer of life

But really I'm sitting in my kitchen

Pinpointed by light

Listening to a radio burble 

About blue Monday,

And they're not playing New Order.

It's that day the travel industry decrees 

Is the lousiest of the year,

When we're supposed to be in the doldrums 

Still lugging Christmas around;

Grease on our bones.

Half of us detoxing;

Feeling vile.

The other half in despair

About our tax returns.

All this they claim makes us blue

But for me, and more besides,

Any day can be that wintery slatey shade.

Depression doesn't strike 

because I need Florida's citrus sun

Or a pick me up in the Med,

Depression stalks me

Seeking me out on the sunniest days,

During Christmas and New Year,

When the autumn leaves brighten and shed,

Depression is never far away.

So yes today is dark

And the frigid sky is tinged with steel

But we've rushed out into this new year

Gone too far to turn back,

So let's push on into the heart of this adventure,

Intrepid explorers! 

Wrap up warm and grab my hand, 

We have places to go

People to meet

Books to read

And life to live

One day at a time!