Skeleton Architecture

I wanted to say thank you to all you lovely people who have read my blog over this last year. Since I've made it focus on the poetry my readership has really grown, so I thought I'd take a virtual leaf out of the blogging book of Carol at Virtually All Sorts  and do a top ten of my poems from the year (according to my blog stats, because you've got to use something, right?). I'll link to all the poems, in case you missed one, and repost my favourite here. Hopefully your favourite is here too, let me know in the comments. At number 10 is Mirror Games , a sonnet about looking into the mirror with my daughter, written at a time when it seemed I thought in iambic pentameter! At 9 is May Sun in Scotland , a poem about that wonderful, tenuous moment when the warmth comes back, and how incredibly precious it feels. Pig headed , my post Brexit whingeing poem is at number 8. I've gone right off this since then. There's still a (big) part of me hoping Brexit n

Way back in 2013 I wrote a blog post about how all the time I lived in Moffat I never managed to get up Grey Mare's Tail (very long waterfall) to the loch at the top of the very big hill. I tried, I really did, but the path was very steep, and the way down was very far, and I have a huge problem with heights. The time I got up the farthest my husband called our mission off because I was holding on to the ground, and passing people was becoming a huge problem. Since I went to Ilkley Literature Festival this year I've been inspired to try out different poetic forms, like list poems , and pantoums. I know that formal poetry and rhyming are not currently fashionable, but I love to work with those restrictions. Occasionally something will burst out and become free verse, but I love the interesting things that can come out of pattern. So, today I'm sharing a pantoum. This is one of my current favourite things, and involves repetition, although I'm not quite repea