The blog has been in abeyance for a number of disparate reasons.
Firstly, I have been concentrating on visual rather than written art practices, and have been investigating the use of spontaneous smartphone photography to record everyday experience of living with manic depression.
Secondly we spent a lot of the summer preparing for, and then hosting, our youngest daughter’s wedding – a magical event that repaid the time put into preparation many times over.
Thirdly I had a fairly bad depressive relapse of my manic depression in the early and mid summer weeks, which used all my spare energy to manage.
So now I, and life, is back on course, and I am spending a couple of years doing creative writing as part of the longer PhD journey. Hence my conflict of interest – I have just realised that the writing journal that I’m working on is in some ways overlapping with/ supplanting the writing on this blog. I have to work out how to manage this, but these are a couple of draft poems that I’m working on.
Ode to Theresa May
They tell the same old story but they are messing with your head,
Forget what went before
Things will be different now,
Blue has moved to red.
Don’t worry if you’re sick, you will have a bed,
Forget about austerity,
Your savings will soon grow,
Blue has moved to red.
No places in the nursery? Forget what they said,
We will find a way,
We will make work pay,
Blue has moved to red.
Struggling to pay to keep the roof above your head,
Unable to save and can’t afford the rent?
We’ll build a lot of houses soon
Blue has moved to red.
No pension in the bank and granny blocks a bed,
Don’t worry, she can share your sofa
We’re all in this together
Blue has moved to red.
Old and cold yourself now, you’d rather be dead,
You remember long ago they told you
That things were going to be different
When blue moved to red.
Untitled (as yet)
I opened my mouth and the words sprang forth
like butterflies released.
They hovered in the air
between us.
I thought they had gone,
vanished into space.
He opened his mouth and the words left like arrows
hard edged and clear.
Finding their target
my butterflies were fixed,
Wings pinned by his pedantry.
Then there was silence.
crackedmirrors and angelpie 