In other news …

End of the week and a lovely big pile of children’s writing to read and respond to is by my chair (we’ve been studying I Am David by Anne Holm and have had a go at drafting adventure stories set in the mid-twentieth century with terrific results). Then, hors du bleu, an e-mail arrives from Karen…

Poetry competitions … and me

Back in 1967, the Milk Marketing Board ran a competition to promote their dairy products. Pictures had to be sent in from entrants depicting the wholesome quality of milk, cheese and/or eggs. My dad, a milkman working for the Co-operative, brought an entry form home and at six years old, I set about producing my…

Oh bum …

You know that feeling, when you’ve been waiting for an e-mail from a poetry competition organiser telling you your poem has been shortlisted … and it doesn’t turn up, so you assume it hasn’t made the grade. Then you decide to get it “out there” anyway, only to discover there’s been a glitch in the…

Then It Rains …

  You ask on my behalf to rise and leave, to dress without the hindrance of bootlace worms returning at our feet. In vain we anticipate permission from spiders who watch in shadows, spinning webs that constrain all action. Standing, squatting, sitting, we are opposed, resisted. We are tangled marionettes, linked with quantum string, each…