A post of several pieces

My poem for this week's Poetry Bus is at the end of this post. First let me tell you a couple of things.

This book




is brilliant. It was first published a little while back but it is just a totally marvellous novel and really worth all the hours it will take you to get through its many (at times dense) pages. I've never read any of Byatt's work before (various not very important reasons why...) but someone else recommended this book (Dick Jones and maybe a couple of others) and they were all right because it is superb. If you have any interest in any of the following: late Victorian and/or Edwardian history (English largely), art, crafts, children's literature, the suffragette movement, people, families, sex, puppets, German history, the First World War, museums, nature, walking, mental health...then you will find something to arouse you in 'The Children's Book'. Plus it has a good narrative pull (I thought) even if you might need to take note of characters for the first 100 pages until you can remember (without checking) who is who (it has quite a lot of characters by modern novel standards). There are various reviews online but they struggle not to mix thoughts about the book with thoughts about its author - she speaks her mind a bit and you know how that can be... There's an interview with Byatt here about the book that is not half bad but I really recommend that you read the book before trying any reviews or interviews. I think the novel is powerful enough to tell you what or who it's about (or not...) without some journalist (or indeed the author) chipping in to tell you what's what.


On a smaller-scale publishing note I have a poem called 'Blink and miss' in a quite new magazine from the North West of England called Beautiful Scruffiness (great name, don't you think?). You can buy copies of this cheeky little publication via its editor Katie Metcalfe at morbidmaiden@hotmail.com (price £2.50 incl. p & p).


And finally here is my Poetry Bus poem for this week (and the instructions for this spiritual trip can be found here).



Close to you (no knock)


I hear a knocking noise
A knocking in my heart
A knocking on the wall

There's a thought I had
It might be sounds of you
A calling from outside
A place I listen to

There's a tapping bird
It flutters as it beats
It pecks its way to air
It hurts my head and heart
I wish it wasn't there



RF 2010


p.s. The title of this one, for those interested in such things, references two songs – one from 1970 by the Carpenters (obviously – here it is and what is she wearing...) and one from 1972 by Gil Scott Heron. They are very different tracks...and yet I love them both. Here's GSH:





The older I get and the more I write and read words aloud the more I realise what a genius Gil Scott Heron was and is. There's your Nobel Prize winner right there.

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