What do you know...a new poem. Brand new. Hot off press. And I'm starting to write poems on-screen (instead of on paper) which is not something I ever really wanted to do. Still, when it comes, it comes. No point getting all worked up about it.
Summer forever
Everything changes in summer, it seems
You see people you never see
The rest of the time
You hear all their stories for the year gone by
And some of them sound so strangely familiar
You get hot and bothered and sticky (but like it)
You live for ice-cream and cold, bitter drinks
Thick rain buckets down
But no-one proffers the winter mantra
'Quick, dry your hair, you'll get a cold if you don't'
Things are just different - looking, sounding
Children grow right in front of your eyes
Days last like seasons
Games run and run...and run and run
People seem better, brighter, warmer
RF 2009
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More about the song
This is my old book (published 2008). You can still buy it from my website if you fancy it (go to 'book' page).
Reading in Montrose, April 2010
Photo by Scott Henriksen
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27 comments:
Fresh.
And there's an award waiting for you when you next drop into mine.
Writing on screen is different... it's more like lego. You can move about and play with the words much more easily. I've never decided what I prefer.
Oh, and I still love lego. :)
I enjoyed this very much.
Just walked dog and wondered...should line 10 be 'Quick, dry your hair, you'll catch your death if you don't'?
Can't decide.
As for on-screen...I have been editing on-screen for a while but still always started on paper...till the last few poems when I have just gone straight from head to keys to screen. It feels odd losing paper from the process. I've always liked paper (nothing fancy - the backs of old print-outs usually, a notebook out and about...none of your fetish ones or anything, no lucky brand...). I didn't plan this change...it just happened. May not last. (Internet...just a fad you know).
Jasko - hello. I've seen you somewhere. Jim Murdoch's I think.
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Like this alot, esp the line about hot, bothered and sticky. Lovely altogether.
That's the way it feels, it seems, it goes all right. Very vivid!
Immediacy I suppose. Thanks though. May all your summer days be sticky...at least some of the time.
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I like the spontaneity of this Rachel - I suppose that is what you get when you write directly onto the screen.
I like writing with the computer as I always have this small fear that my brain will get ahead of my fingers and all that "brilliance" will get lost. :)
I like of it but the sticky...if it was sticky from eating ice cream that would be great but the humidity here makes sticky miserable!
Well, there are other stickys obviously but maybe I'd best not go into all the possibilities...or the spontaneities...
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So it's your fault it is raining Rachel! Shhhh, don't encourage it.
Trying to see if there is much of a difference between your 'paper poems' and your 'on-screen poems'. I always write directly on screen, I get stuck quickly when working on paper though that maybe because my writing's quite a scrawl!
No crossing out on-screen. And I quite like the feel of a good crossing-out.
My handwriting's terrible too. And getting worse by the day.
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I write almost constantly onscreen these days. I actually couldn't tell you the last thing I did write by hand. I think a lot to it has to do with the fact I have two computers set up constantly and so it's more trouble half of the time to find a bit of paper and a pen.
I like the speed I can see the finished product because let's be honest a handwritten poem bears no relation to what we see onscreen. It's not until it's all typed up that it becomes a real poem. To me anyway.
I quite like your poem. I feel that it needs a punch line though, something to sum up the piece maybe. It just seems to stop and I'm left wanting more.
I see my entry on your widget works now BTW. A nice person on the Blogger forum helped me sort it.
Oh and you should have a wee look at Jasko's site if you've not done already - he's been producing some interesting short pieces over the past few days, a real burst of creativity.
People being better...even for a moment...even in one's head...is punchline enough for me, Jim! Plus I have plenty of what you could call punchline poems (too many I'm sure some would say)...this one, like a good summer day, has a more blurred ending.
As for only being a 'real poem' when it's typed up...that's a modern limitation that effects many of us too much I think (huge oral tradition and all that). Indeed the whole 'real poem' thing is a bit of a trap. Jump over it. Walk round it. Ignore it. I was reading some Seamus Heaney (the Nobel lecture) the other day (courtesy of Solitary Walker) and liked this very much "walk on air against your better judgement". To be applied as necessary.
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Well, it's pissing stair-rods just the other side of the french windows and this straight-to-screen offering has really cheered me up. Because, come rain or shine, summer still works. Thanks for this, Rachel.
I scribble on paper to start then at some point in the process put it on the screen. My poetic mind seems to work better away from the screen, my editing mind seems to work better on the screen
Thanks, Dick. We amuse each other it seems.
And yes, CGP, that has been my writing method for some years now (paper write, screen edit) but in the last month or so the screen has been higher in the mix, as it were. Maybe it's just a school holiday thing for me - less time to sit quietly with a piece of paper upstairs but I can sneak in a quick type at the desk down here.
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Welcome back, rachel. That's a very pleasant poem. Uber pleasant.
I've often been told that in Heaven it is always summer and each days lasts for years.
I'll be about.
Are you back in Scotland, McGuire?
The rain here today is quite overpowering!
As for heaven...well...that's a big subject...I do have a heaven poem...on website, under poems, under 'seeing and believing', under 'Heaven today'.
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couldn't you sing this one for us as well? :-)
i so loved it when you did it the other time.
you captured SUMMER!
Contrary to others here... my handwritten poems are hardly edited at all when they get to the screen, but ones written on screen are chipped and prodded away to make them just right. Anything in metre is nearly alway a screen-poem for me.
(And being away from computers for the next wee while means it'll be page after page...)
Hullo - I'm doing the rounds through Jim's contacts, lol! (Thanks Jim) What a great community you are. I do like the freshness of this poem, and the ambling quality of it - probably aided by the scant punctuation - and I like every bit of it except for the 'buckets' in line 8, I find the cliche clashes against the originality of the rest of the poem - 'Games run and run...and run and run' is my favourite part.
Roxana...singing...I haven't done much singing of late and keep wondering why (well, I know some of the reasons but can't go into them all here...). You're right though...more singing would probably be good for me (if not for you!).
D - happy travels.
Rachel - hello. Scant punctuation is very much one of the features of my poetry. My rule for writing poetry is minimal punctuation (very minimal...huge long rambling poetry rules post back here...just rules for me though - not for anyone else). As for the 'buckets'...I know what you mean but I kept it because (1) with a Northern English accent, as mine is, 'buckets' sounds great, (2) the other night when it was raining I really did think there was a troupe of circus performers throwing buckets of water at our front window (or something) and (3) the 'thick rain' is fairly far from cliche (I've never read that anyway) so I thought the buckets could allow the line to have both unusual and usual. So you see I did think about it...and then kept it. But thanks for bringing it up and allowing me to show what a lot of long-winded thinking goes into my apparently very simple and straightforward poems!
I'm glad so many of you (clever, fascinating folk that you are) are liking this little poem. I did wonder, on holiday, if I might have got to the end of writing poetry...if I was about to head off in a different direction...but then I got home and back to writing poems again. Apparently.
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Children do grow before our eyes in the summer. Must be all the Vitamin D and ice-cream. You captured the essence of summer very well!
We even managed to have some summer behaviour this weekend with visitors. What a relief!
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