Skeleton Architecture

Hi all, just to let you know that I've just got my early copies of this year's The Speculative Book and it's sooooo cute. My poem is on p121, but the first story is by Chris McQueer and it's a magnificent story which tells you what happens to bees when you feed them energy drinks. You've got to read it!  You can pre-order the book now  here  and if you fancy subscribing to them you can use my discount code, MCKEE. In other news, I'm delighted to be able to tell you that I'll have a poem in the forthcoming issue of Severine Literary Magazine, although the next poem that's coming is in Picaroon Poetry. Today I've been exploring Dumbarton Castle, and trying to write something for a poetry anthology on mental health, and really  struggling with what might be taboo when you're breaking taboos. I'll get over it!

I want to draw your attention to the amazing poem by Jacqueline Saphra - Cimex Lectularius, which you'll find here  if you scroll down. I love how Jacqueline purposefully meanders through ideas, starting with the bed bug of the title and wandering to seemingly unlikely destinations, before turning back and bringing it together. I particularly love the callousness of the last line which applies to everything and so much more besides. That poem is a stroke of genius. I'm not a genius, so I figured I'd use a technique borrowed from Kamsin Kaneko , using some of the words from the original poem to craft one of my own. I did it a few weeks ago in this post , creating a library themed version of Mary Oliver's Wild Geese. The words I chose to pinch from Cimex Lectularius are as follows: I have learned this week that... and that... which reminds me of... which causes me to wonder... like that... which leads me back... Perhaps... As you can see, they're the directiona...

More! Yes, more terrific tankas from guests to the tanka project. I'm so thrilled to have these guys taking part in this project, so I'm sharing their work with you so you can love it too. First up is another awesome artwork from Joseph Massey ( you've previously seen his work here ), this one speaks to the world being rubbed out by November and reminds me of Thomas Hood's 'November' ( set to music by the Art of Noise ). I love this tanka from Joseph Massey. It reminds me of Thomas Hood's poem, November, and speaks to the grey on grey outside my window. #Repost @tongbliss (@get_repost) ・・・ Still writing tanka over here. #poetry #poem #poems #poetsofinstagram #haiku #tanka #tankaproject #poetrycommunity #poetsofinstagram #tanka #inspiration #poetryofinstagram #instapoetry #igpoetry #instapoetry, #poetsofig A post shared by Tanka Project (@tanka_project) on Nov 7, 2017 at 11:29am PST Elizabeth Bae-rett Browning does not enjoy the tanka, and ...

Today's tanka was inspired by something someone said on Instagram, that they were not really there on that day because they were really upset. They said it on a day when I was not really there either. Does everybody get that? Sociability waxing and waning? Anyway, it inspired me to write, so here you go.

I'm throwing order to the winds to get this one in for Halloween, #22 will follow shortly. This is my first experiment in Scots poetry, which I shouldn't really be writing because I can't speak it, but there are some truly awesome words, some of which really need to get wider use! Particularly 'oorie' - that's just glorious. Some of the words are defined below the tankain detail, but really the word oorie is a poem in itself. Basic translation: It seems always cold/and the low lying mist is miserable and eerie/feet are always totally caked in mud/when the ghosties come through./They have tales that need to be told. Specially glorious words: clartit - related to clarty - muddy, clartit means totally caked in mud dayfelly - a low lying mist in a hollow or depression oorie - dismal, gloomy, miserable looking, hanging from the cold, cold and cheerless, depressive, lonely and sad, feeling of the supernatural, eerie, uneasy. I reckon we need to get ...

Hello there This winter has been pretty uneventful on the storm front. I thought that was what the weather was now, storm after storm after storm, but instead it's been pretty much OK, and not even that cold. It's been grey and wet and windyish the last few days, but nothing exciting. No power lines have been torn down, I have not struggled to close car doors, no crazy snow storms, it's even been pretty calm on the wind front, so I've actually been using an umbrella, which is pretty rare around here! But I'm feeling down in the dumps (lots of rejections, lots of rain, this will pass), and the news just keeps on happening, and who the hell is running the world and why did we let them? Ugh.  So, my writing prompt today was to write up a storm, and I looked out of my window and wrote what I saw, then thought about it and rewrote it to reflect how I'm feeling and how the world looks through my eyes. And here it is: What the wind wreaks Mostly you can...

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...

The prompt over at Mum Turned Mom this week is Lonely, and it got me to thinking about poetry, Wordsworth wandering lonely as a cloud  strikes me as odd, it is rare one seens a single cloud in the lake district, surely if there was one by itself, it would be relishing that moment of freedom? I also thought of Henri's mash up of Wordsworth's poem , and of how things can be taken out of the familiar context to give new meaning, both to the word and to the context. The other thing in my head when I think about 'lonely', is poor Tallulah, who is perhaps the loneliest person at Bugsy Malones when she sings the song about not having to be lonely. But that's what we do. We put our best foot forward, paint on a face and go on with the show. Anyway, I wrote a poem which doesn't want to be very long, about that little cloud. There are lots of clouds in the sky as I write, but I can't see her. I think sometimes we can feel most lonely when we're surroun...

I've been away for such a long time! My last post was about a month ago, and was written when I thought that Katsuma was going to die. I was so incredibly worried about him, and I'm happy to report that he has pulled through that crisis, although he is still a very sick cat. He is now on lots of medication for his heart disease, and he is no longer capable of living the life he previously lived. But I think he's still content. He gets ever so much love, and I know he wishes he could still go out and kill things, but lying in any possible patch of sun comes a close second. He's never going to be fully better, and at some point another crisis will come, and that is when we will stop, because he's done amazingly well, he's walking again and everything, but I wouldn't want to see him go through such a terrible time again. Anyway, what have I been doing to keep myself away for so long? Lots of poems. I have been writing away, with so many ideas that I'm ...