Gifts Of Love

Monthly Thoughts

The end of March marks the end of my own year; it is convenient to keep my year and the tax year synchronised.

This month I did something I have not done for some time. I summarised at the end of this year’s diary the things I had achieved; these were personal, house and finance, and creative. It’s an interesting and fruitful exercise.

It is easy, among all the messy turmoils of our lives, to lose sight of achievements. So I found it rewarding to do this, have a think about each one, and consider how I might move on from each one. It was surprising to me how much I had actually achieved in one year, and it had been one with some huge changes.

This month’s featured poem, Gifts Of Love, only tangentially reflects this. It came from a ‘random words’ exercise so perhaps the Big Idea was lurking somewhere in my unconscious.

The poem itself works with simplicity and repetition. each stanza takes a metaphor (or cliché) of love and draws it towards the real world. The last stanza subverts the progress towards this point.

It is a little poem which, just maybe , carries an important Big idea.

Writing

I have continued to write new poems and edit older ones to finish them. This has been challenging over March as I have had a lot of other things going on.

I have signed off my Arts Council project; the two guidelines (Guide to VI Directors and Guide for VI Poets) are available on my website. I have prepared pitch documents which I am sending out in an endeavour to find a producing partner for my theatre work, All Change, bvased on my poems General Guidance; I shall them make an application to the Arts Council for the next phase of the work.

I continue to review for ReviewsGate.co.uk, which I also edit.

There is an interesting featured interview with Samual Barnett who has been giving a terrific performance in Ben and Imo at the RSC; great script from Mark Ravenhill and brilliant performances from the two actors, Samuel Barnet and Victoria Yeates.