London Open Mic Poetry Archive
  • Home
  • Frank Davey Blog
  • Stan Burfield Blog
    • Fred Burfield's Homestead Memoirs
  • Our Events
  • News
  • PHOTOS & SUMMARIES
    • Season 5: 2016-2017 >
      • June 7th, 2017: Summary & Photos featuring Stan Burfield
      • May 3rd, 2017, Summary & Photos featuring Jason Dickson
      • April 5th, 2017 Summary & Photos, feeaturing James Deahl & Norma West Linder
      • Mar. 1st, 2017: Photos & Summary featuring Andy Verboom
      • Feb. 1st, 2017: Photos & Summary featuring Ron Stewart
      • Dec. 7th, 2016: Photos & Summary featuring David Stones
      • Nov. 2th, 2016: Photos and Summary featuring Don Gutteridge
      • Oct. 5th, 2016: Photos and Summary featuring David Huebert
    • Season 4: 2015-2016 >
      • June 1st, 2016: Photos and summaries: featuring Lynn Tait
      • May 4th, 2016 Photos and Summary: featuring indigenous poetry
      • April 6, 2016 Photos & Summary, featuring Steven McCabe
      • Mar. 2nd, 2016 photos, summary: featuring Andreas Gripp
      • Feb. 3rd, 2016 photos: 3 Western students.
      • Dec. 2, 2015 photos: featured reader Peggy Roffey
      • Nov. 7, 2015 photos: Our Words Fest open mic
      • Nov. 4, 2015 photos: featured reader Charles Mountford
      • Oct. 7th, 2015 photos: Madeline Bassnett featured
    • Season 3, 2014-15 >
      • Aug. 16, 2015 photos: The Ontario Poetry Society's "Sultry Summer Gathering"
      • June 3rd, 2015 photos: John B. Lee featured
      • May 6th, 2015 photos: Laurie D Graham featured
      • Apr. 1st, 2015 photos: John Nyman & Penn Kemp featured
      • Mar. 4th, 2015 photos: Patricia Black featured.
      • Feb. 4th, 2015 photos: feature Gary Barwin
      • Dec. 3rd, 2014 photos: Feature Debbie Okun Hill
      • Nov. 5th, 2014 photos: feature Julie Berry
      • Oct. 1st, 2014 photos: feature Roy MacDonald
    • Season 2, Sept. 2013 to June 2014. >
      • June 4th, 20114, featuring Monika Lee
      • May 7th 2014, featuring Susan McCaslin and Lee Johnson
      • Sept. 4th, 2013 featuring Frank Beltrano
      • April 16th, 2014, featuring Penn Kemp and Laurence Hutchman
      • March 5th, 2014, featuring Jacob Scheier
      • Feb. 5th, 2014: featuring four UWO students of poetry; music by Tim Woodcock
      • Jan. 2nd, 2014: featuring Carrie Lee Connel
      • Dec. 4th, 2013, featuring M. NourbeSe Philip
      • Nov. 6, 2013 , featuring Susan Downe
      • Oct. 2nd, 2013, featuring Jan Figurski
    • Season 1: Oct. 2012 to June 2013 >
      • June 4th, 2013 featuring David J. paul and the best-ever open mic
      • May 1st, 2013, featuring Sonia Halpern
      • Apr. 24, 2013 featuring Frank Davey & Tom Cull
      • Mar. 6th, 2013, featuring Christine Thorpe
      • Feb. 6th, 2013, featuring D'vorah Elias
      • Jan. 3rd. 2013: John Tyndall featured.
      • Dec. 5, 2012: RL Raymond featured
    • Dig These Hip Cats ... The Beats
  • Poet VIDEOS (open mic & featured readers)
    • 5th Season Videos (2016-2017)
    • 4th Season Videos (2015-16)
    • 3rd Season Videos (2014-2015)
    • 2nd Season (2013-2014) videos
  • BIOGRAPHIES - Featured poets & musicians
  • INTERVIEWS & POEMS (featured poets)
    • SEASON 6 - Interviews & Poems >
      • Kevin Shaw: Poem & Interview
      • David Janzen - Interview
    • SEASON 5 INTERVIEWS & POEMS
    • SEASON 4 INTERVIEWS AND POEMS
    • SEASON 3 INTERVIEWS AND POEMS
    • SEASON 2 INTERVIEWS & POEMS (only from Dec. 4th, 2013)
    • Season 1 INTERVIEWS & POEMS (& 1st half of Season 2) >
      • INTERVIEWS of Featured Poets
      • POEMS by Featured Poets (1st Season & to Nov. 2013)
  • Couplets: Poets in Dialogue
  • Future Events
  • Past Events
    • 5th Season: 2016-2017
    • Season 4: 2015-2016
    • Season 3: 2014-2015
    • Season Two: 2013-2014
    • Season One: 2012-2013
  • Who we Are
  • Testimonial
  • Our Mission
  • Links
  • Contact us

The "My Writing Process" Blog Tour stops here… for a week!

7/21/2014

Comments

 
Picture
July 21st, 2014.  My thanks to Penn Kemp for inviting me to present the week after her on this Virtual Blog Tour. Some of you may have come here after reading her own excellent presentation which she posted July 14th. If you missed it, you can always go back and check it out.  And from there you can check out the other two bloggers, along with me, whom she asked to present after her, and also the ones who came before her, the immediate one being that of Debbie Okun Hill in Sarnia. Penn asked me to write about my writing process and then introduce one or more other writers with active blogs, who will in turn discuss their writing process for the rolling blog tour on July 28, and they will introduce more writers for the following week.  And so it goes…

To see my choice for next week, scroll down.  Then set your calendar for next monday, July 28th. Enjoy and happy writing!

 The Questions…

1)  What am I working on?

Until two years ago I've never written poems for others to read. Only for myself, for my own pleasure -- especially for the thrill of creativity and the insights that often come with it. But in the two years since I began organizing London Open Mic Poetry Night, I've been continuously and heavily exposed to poetry that was written not just for the poet's own benefit, but also for others to read. And that's made me realize that a certain amount of empathy with the imaginary reader is a necessary aspect of writing decent poetry, poetry that's more than just a self-indulgence. It's changed the way I write. Or, I should say, it has added another dimension to the layers I'm used to working my way through.  I've been learning this partly because I've read a lot more poetry lately than I ever did before. But workshops I've attended have also helped me see my poetry through others' eyes. Now my new poems are much different than they would have been. And when I don't have a new one to work on, I just pull an old one out and rework it, adding that extra dimension. 

Aside from poetry, I write the occasional "personal essay" for the blog (the links are in the sidebar, as are the links to a few of my poems). My strongest passion in life is to understand things, and a personal essay allows me to get carried away in describing some  little revelation of understanding in a way that's not too difficult for a reader to follow, and while it's fresh on my mind. Personal essays are definitely fun to write. And I've received a few positive comments, so they must not be too hard on the reader. 

Lately I've been looking back on my life, trying to locate the thrust of it, the reasons for its peculiar meander. How did it get me to this completely unexpected place?  In the process, I've rediscovered a lot of interesting byways and situations. So I've decided that for my next project I'm going to pull some of these things out of the past and plop them down on the blog, as alive as possible, with as many fingers feeling out from them into the world and the flow of time as I can reassemble. Don't know how it'll go, but there's no harm in trying.

2)  How does my work differ from others of its genre? Why do I write what I do?

I think I'm going to get carried away answering this one. Because, having gotten to know to some small degree the poets who have read at London Open Mic, I've been struck by the tremendous differences between them.  I'm one of them, and I'm as different from them as they are from each other. I could try to be really objective about all this and make a Venn Diagram of the sets of all the factors that go into making poets different from each other. Each poet is more or less heavily endowed with each factor. If there were only two or three factors, there would be a very limited variation amongst poets and their poetry. But there are a huge number of factors, and each poet differs from all the others on each of them. I think all of us who've listened to the poets read have realized this. There's nearly an infinite variety. 

I'll use myself as an example: On the scale of education, I have very little, especially as compared to those with an MFA, but not none at all. Ambition? Also very little. Amount of poetry read? On the scale of one to ten, three. Practice? a middling amount. Appreciation for substantive content? Nine. Reliance on inspiration vs craft? Maybe eight. Talent? Now this is a meta-set for sure, made up of sliding scales of intelligence, creativity, receptivity vs judgement, and much more. I'm okay talentwise. But we haven't even touched on the myriad of social and family factors that affect poets and their products. And things like class, actual background, treatment or mistreatment. Memorable incidents. Random memorable incidents with certain effects. And on and on.  Essentially, everything in a person's life has an effect to some degree on a poet. I guess that's a prerequisite in itself. So I'm in there somewhere. 

Why do I write what I do? Well, for starters, I tend to get excited when a lot of things suddenly fall into place, when I see a great expanse of reality all at once, when I get outside my tight self and into the world. I get very excited. I want to keep that vision, retain it so I can build upon it later. Yet I know that, as with a dream, as soon as I take my mind off it, it will disappear. So I try to write it down before that happens. But an intuition like that doesn't (can't) come in words so the only way to write it down is to imply it, to write around it so that in future I will be pointed in the right direction by the poem, pushed into it by the walls of the poem, and then see it again just as I did the first time. To me, this is the ultimate use of poetry. As far as I've been able to discover, poetry is the only means of recording and communicating large intuitions. Every other literary form points to things the reader already knows, simply putting them together in new combinations. But a poem, by convention, is allowed to actually say something that can't be said, but only implied.  

I also write poems simply for the rush of energy that sometimes comes with putting them together. And also for the new ideas and insights and intuitions that writing them often inspires. And occasionally for fun. I've even written a poem just to have something new to read at the next open mic. And I've written my share of descriptions. There have been moments of astonishing beauty that no camera could record. So I would try but usually fail to capture them. At least they would remind me. 


Picture

3)  How does your writing process work?

I'm not fast with words. I talk slowly, usually, and it doesn't take much anxiety to muddle my sentence building to the point where I can hardly speak at all. But I can see pretty clearly.  Which is good in terms of the imagery most poems are built upon, and very good in the sense of intuition, as I described it above, since intuition seems to be pre-verbal. But being more visual than verbal makes writing poetry a fairly slow process. Other,  perhaps better, poets, for instance the one I've asked to feature next week on this blog tour, are equally adept at both tasks. And thus faster and smoother and have more of their brain power left for the art and content of the poem.  But not me. I go at it in spurts and sputters. I feel like a painter slowly dabbing on bits of colour until the image comes together. At some point the flat canvas, and hopefully my poem, becomes three dimentional.  And even then I will rework it a number of times. I really like to go back to a poem that's so old I've nearly forgotten it (even better, one I've completely forgotten), and see it for the first time just as someone else might, and so then rework it freshly for the new me. 

4)  And here is the Guest Blogger for Next Week’s Tour!

On July 28th, Kevin Heslop will respond on his blog (and probably his Facebook page as well) to the four questions above, and then hand the baton on to one or more other bloggers of his choice.  Mark July 28th on your calendar!

Kevin Heslop is a young writer from London, Ontario. He attends Western but sees the process of writing and learning to write as a solitary one. 



Comments

Kevin Heslop Blog Cont.

6/29/2013

Comments

 
(Until Heslop has his own blog up and running, hopefully tomorrow, this serves as his ammo dump.)

the mixers and dumpers and flatteners
cursing and  groaning a cacophany 
of ill-gotten sounds playing across 
the summertime heavy 
air.
 
a bird stands still
on the fresh cut grass of this afternoon,
amid a whirlwind of cement 
thin lines of dried mowed grass
chalking his twig 
legs as he 
hops. 
 
just trying to find a god damn 
worm
or a little 
twig 
for the 
nest.
 

cheque, please

 as the red wine stews
speckled with floating cork bits
twirling a bit with a slouched rhythm like lost sailors
as you pull
pull at tobacco
as you bite the lip
you try and juice the dry shell of dust,
try and whisper music at the treachery
of yet another abandoned evening,
the pale afterbirth of another
mutilated afternoon-
 
it was a day of celebration, though.
graduation.
yesterday the absurd meat parade stunk up the stage
pictures flashed
and today the buffet
with its subtle tyranny, 
the little wisps of old ladies
grinning in a back room
counting the dollar bills,
while the men and women,
the endless procession,
sliding their plates along the stainless steel,
portioning out one ration of each,
lemon chicken,
pork fried 
rice, oo what’s 
that?
onion rings for 
the tame, 
sushi for the eccentric, 
the children following along on 
straightened leg, learning, 
doing the same. 
 
what a joke. 
 
and I’d laugh, 
but I’d choke. 
I’d cry
but I wouldn’t 
stop,
I’d dance,
but I hear no 
music. 
 
the movement of the lost, 
the malcontent,
the weary and broken souls, 
the supposed saviors of 
an obese or swollen-bellied
humanity, 
jabbing each other 
in the back with steaming white 
plates for the last 
of the chicken
balls. 


cheque,
please. 
 
_
 
a peculiar way...
 
rain coming down 
with intent,
swaths of it 
hellbent and studied 
on the art of the 
fall
 
and the dry grass 
didn’t know why
but smiled 
anyway
 
and the birds
and the worms
and the nourished 
and the famished
and the bleak 
and confused
and dizzy 
and depressed
were 
grateful 
too
 
maybe some just 
had 
a peculiar way
of showing 
it. 

-

(...and stirring in a dollop of prose...)

the most heartbreaking of images I carry with me is the sight of tourists poking about in antique or novelty shops checking each empty box for content, but, finding it empty, become increasingly more disappointed moving
from box to box, sometimes leaving the lid half-off to save trouble for their fellows, who inevitably check the box anyway.  saw this sort of thing a lot when traveling down south... especially true of travelers who can afford to
spend money frivolously. oddly, that experience is simply a loosely patched together series of moments of suffering and tragedy in other cultures. there was the fried haggard young man in Jamaica who requested a plate  of barbequed chicken (smoking on the barbecue mere meters from the shops, all to accommodate the tourists
and exclusively this pack of raving animals alone), in exchange for some canvases- got three canvas, on my wall, in exchange for all the fucking chicken the painter and his hangers-on could eat. not great works, but fragment the dam
of reminiscence and bring on a flood of joy in a bed, a sea of suffering, the grass blowing heavily in the wind, eyes blood coloured more numerous than toes. 
Comments

Heslop is getting increasingly restless

6/28/2013

Comments

 
Picture
The day after tomorrow (Sunday) Kevin and I are getting together so I can show him how to work his new blog here on the open mic site. But he's chomping at the bit this evening. He has these poems he's just written today, and there will be more tomorrow, and also on Sunday. Two-day-old poems are ancient history for him. Okay I could go over now instead of posting this here, but Linda's out with the van and I've done my day's walking already. 

Anyway, it gives me an excuse to say something about this guy's poetry. I've been following his writing for literally half of his writing career, which began two years ago, and he turns out so much that I haven't had any time left over to read anybody else's (except our featured poets' latest books). Not that that's a new thing. I had never read much before this last year either (except my own doodlings, of course). So I can honestly say that I'm a lousy judge of poetry. If you hear me exclaiming or declaiming, feel free to ignore me. But following Kevin for so long, and so thoroughly, and from such a young age, has definitely made me a Heslop fan. It's like having two minds, my own and his. Because he isn't some Dead Poet. This is Kevin, who, right now, is just over the other side of that forest I'm looking at from my balcony, and across the river and up the slope a bit. He just sent me an email a few minutes ago, a very interesting one. When my mind isn't thinking up something, I know his is. And it'll get deposited in his blog any minute now. Two minds are definitely better than one. 

Nevertheless, Kevin may be a substandard poet for all I know. The only thing I'm really sure of is that he's a heck of a lot better than I am, and he's only just begun. 

So even though I can't say how good he is, what I can do is tell you some interesting things about the evolution of his production line.  For starters it never stops. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but it's a fairly small one. He doesn't talk much. He listens. Watches, Thinks. Creates. It seems to me that part of his mind is now always 'in the groove', as the Beatnics used to say. In a poetic space. Even when he's pissed out of his mind he's seeing things that way. When he just steps out for a walk, it's going. When he doesn't step out for a walk it's going.

Kevin's idea (he told me something to this effect) is one we've all heard, to read a LOT, which he does, then to imitate the poets he comes to love the most, which he's done: Buchowski (cut to the bone), D. H. Lawrence, now Kerouac (expand). And then back. And forth. And eventually out of that will come a unique voice. Eventually means in its own time. Whatever that means. Kevin's time is a speeded-up version of most of ours. 

One thing he hasn't told me, and which is sheer speculation on my part, is that he has deliberately refrained from using some of the standard rules of poetry. In order to leaave his own future open. Rules like don't repeat words, unless... And like one-word lines. If you're going to have a line composed of only one word, that word better be damned important. Same with single lines. A good share of Kevin's poetry is made up of single lines and single-word lines. It's a bit weird to read it till you get used to it. But when you do it's fine. Well, for the longest time I was reading these long, skinny, thin poems, with a few long lines here and there.  Then suddenly he got into Kerouac, and went to the opposite extreme, paragraph-length lines.  And he got into the Kerouac thing in poetry, which you don't see very often. It's the view out of the eyes of the poet, second by second, or time by time, not cut to the bone, but with the little things of life put back in, jacked-up versions of the way they were felt. The bits of stuff that give life it's colour. Kerouac did that like nobody else. Except maybe Heslop.

And then, the other day, he went back to the skinny poem kerplunk and hit the jackpot. See  what you think:

hush        
 
quiet now
in this dimly
lighted 
theatre.
 
the  majesty.
undulatory red 
curtains
bordering the 
emptiness
don’t 
fall
but
stand, 
as pillars,
as patient watchers,
as the wondrous scarlet
ripples of the 
centuries that
they 
are,
darkened now,
and reverent.
 
this silent play 
is perhaps more
powerful
than it was
on paper.
 
the seats
are filled with 
emptiness.


After I read it a few times, I was convinced it really had to be written like that. Although I can imagine that might be a minority opinion.

Anyway, today Kevin bounced back with a Kerouac paragraph. Simply because he had gone out in the drizzle.


bon appetite (working on the rhythms)

young girl say, 18, moving it down the forlorn sidewalk of drizzling afternoon gloom in June, stretching her long sincere stems to wherever she intended to go or get away from, and I, passing in rain-bead beaten window of car, lumping through yellow winking lights amid all the togetherness of turning or blinking brake light automobiles each drizzled on and weary. moving through it, each one. the forgetful slouch of curbing giving way to the timeless grass shortened by the very clock-maddened man of industry, say, stepping by in blue overalls with ragged white shirt and dark running shoes pushing the mower up and down his solemn patch of green and leaving little continuous hills of cut grass which seem to lengthen his patch into significance, but which will dry and brown and blow away in the first dry breeze of the year, poor chap. but in the car, and slouching past, in the beaten weathered traffic, the jumping shop signs and billboards bouncing ideas at you faster than your eye can keep up, and keeping up like water rising at the chin while trying to shift into second, no, back to first and pause, tail lights blooming on the tarmac, wonder at how no bumpers bent in the drizzle of this warm day of another day at it and at it again- the treadmill. the boat rowers rowing and rowing with arms which tire exactly at the moment of lunchtime, and so shuffle off with the same folk to the same joint for the same roast beef sandwich hold the mustard that the waitress has mastered and greets you by name, and she, a wonderful old doll, fine strands of lonesome faded brown wandering wisps bordering her warm eyes loopily, wavering, and flattening over her nose as she turns to fetch coffee for the clan, the familiars, and draw the chair back say “same chair I set at 14 years munchin’ these sandwiches and slurpin’ this coffee and a fine thing all together”, hang coat on chair back, beads becoming rivulets with the tiredness of the weight of the gravity and your hands, sore and working t’wards arthritic, but warmed palms by cupping old cup of warm java just arrived, already dressed as you please and welcomed rolling down down and making warm ripples of belly smiling gleefully at
the recognition of lunchtime Tuesday afternoon. roast beef being danced up by ol’ Fred in back with the tenderness only experience (and perhaps resignation) can bring, and he, the crinkled fades of smile at corner of eye, smiles having been smiled, and in picture frames, little more anymore with the wifey a square marble plot to talk to only ever talk to these days, though she stands sometimes solemn in white night gown in doorway back lit before he rubs his eyes retired and she vanishes and he settles in flopping book on bed side table and cradling pillow hunkering down for another from which he mayn’t wake, and her picture frame gleaming darkly in the moonlit moonlight night coming in the t-crossed window and plundering the memory of the sleeping man, but standing now, and awake in the kitchen, his leather hands not even reaching or flinching or even thinking about dressing any god damned mustard on your sandwich, wouldn’t consider it, so far from mind as closing time 5 hour and some minutes away (again either this being reconciliation or resignation maybe either or both or none), but the sandwiches prepared and pickle-halfs skewered in the fresh plush white bread and ring bell and let it dazzle about the pans drying on the rack with its warbling metallic resonances, and waitress comes like a fluster and takes plates to table and I bet you didn’t see all this happening- too engrossed in table talk chatter hop top office bits and bites for appetizers- as the plates clink into your forgotten dreams chirping like little children on the playground, coffee grounds in your cup bottoms, bon appetite.


Kevin's email I mentioned above just happened to be about the very thing I've been talking about here, his propensity for rule-breaking. Only he says it in much more interesting language than I could ever muster, as you'll see. (I had just emailed him with a few pleasantries about the above drizzle poem.)


From: kheslop3@uwo.ca
Subject: Re: check this  out
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2013 20:28:24 -0400
To: burfield@live.com

Glad to get the thought we shared down. Having a tough time wrestling with any limitations whatsoever. Let it come. Be more vessel than director (starts to slip into rhetorical monologue addressed to self). 
 
Cheers. I needed the boost. Been shouting at mountains. Smug and indifferent motherfuckers they are. 
 
So I'll start a river and carve into the bastards and force them to take notice. God dammit. 
 
The words keep coming though, shit. Even now. It's like the un-kinking of some hideous hose spitting back water and smudge into your living room or through your kitchen window. No choice but to embrace it. Or it might leave a  smudge on the china. 
 
From where the fuck? 

It's soothing, something like jacking off a horse. For the horse, that is. Something to focus on. Something to wonder about. Some ending to anticipate without being able to palpitate it fully. A mouthful of air. A menu. The smell of McDonald's fries at 30 yards.
 
Good God man. The source. I can tickle it with my toes. And fleeting. Good god- it has places to be; once described as a wind coming from over the hills. To such an extent that this particular poet said she wrote the poem down
backwards if she got to pen and pad too late. And behold. I've the luck to find a keyboard beneath my fingertips at this particular moment.
 
No need to read or respond to this (though that is of course always appreciated), for this practice has merit even in throwing it at the wall. To connect the mind and the fingertips. To navigate space and time with one's total
focus and attention upon words, upon the achievement of the illusive sentence. And to begin again. 

Good God man, I've got to start writing this shit down... 

K


Well, anyway, until we get Kevin's blog up and running, on Sunday, this will serve as his private repository. With me as sidekick. Oh yes, one final thing about Kevin. I can get away with this kind of maybe-too-positive comment about him because I know that he knows who he really is, which is partly a good poet. He's convinced of that by means of his practice of the art. It doesn't matter what anybody says. I mean, blowing him up isn't going to blow him up.  He's in the groove. I wish I was, but at least he is. I like watching it happen.

Comments

New idea: Volunteers wanted

6/26/2013

Comments

 
Those of you who were at the June 5th open mic heard me say that I was going to try to stop this thing of constant stream of new ideas, trying them out on everybody all the time. I said I was burnt out and had to reverse the amount of work I have to do. All that is true. Well this new idea is to post for volunteers, for a Facebook/website manager, a videocamera person, a still camera person, and possibly an ebook editor. Even though we're adding more to the open mic, I won't have to do them. Ha ha ha.

And the volunteers will get this big reward: a personal blog right here, just like this one. They can post whatever they want: prose, poems, YouTube videos, pictures. They just have to take their job seriously, and responsibly.

What's the big deal about having a blog on our website? Well, if you get one on Blogger or somewhere like that, you would be lucky to get 10 visitors a day. Very lucky. But our website has been averaging 120 individual visitors a day, and rising, and once on the site they tend to look around. So any blog here will do pretty well.

I'm looking forward to adding a few more people to our organizing committee.

Comments

    Stan Burfield's Blog

    Organizer of London Open Mic Poetry. former support worker for people with autism and developmental disabilities.  former farm boy, former adventurer, former florist.
    The 2014 Ted Plantos Memorial Award

    Interview in Your Old South Magazine
    Interview: The "My Writing Process" Blog Tour

    RSS Feed

    Going Out
    1. House Fly Dancing to Mozart

    Videos
    *Linda at the Christmas Craft Show
    *Our apartment
    *The  indigenous poetry event
    *Lake of Fear
    *The art of the slow talk
    *Our new Guerrilla Poetry series at the library
    *Stan discovers some treasure.

    Photo Albums
    *2 hours in one of Linda's days
    *How'd she get in there? 
    *Before the leaves
    *Pensive in winter mist.
    *New Year's Day, 2017.
    *Linda's Christmas decorations 
    *Linda and her Christmas display
    *Linda made whole wheat scones.
    *Seeing Linda off
    ​
    *Linda in first day of snow. ​
    *Balcony finished?
    *Linda relaxing
    *We'll see...
    ​*Linda and I in the Rose Garden. 
    *Listening to the leaves popping open. It sounds like rain, or crickets.
    *Fred, my father
    *​A perfect day to stroll in the woods. 
    ​
    Short Blurbs
    *Voting Booth
    *Screaming and shouting
    *New diary plan
    *That's just weird
    *It happens like this...
    *Kevin Heslop as an actor!
    *repair of damaged DNA (aging)!
    *Paterson: great movie about a poet 
    *I learned from Thomas Moore...
    *Linda' skills are blooming
    *Here's how my day began...
    *...or we don't.
    *An actual woman to a man...
    *On this Valentines Day... ​
    *How little I've changed!
    *A sunny dream, with no fear.
    *Little mistakes....
    *A label for the essence of something
    *​Dream of a typed poem
    *Here's what I want:
    *I like her quirks.
    *A little success
    *The course of history...
    *From "The Cat's Table" by Ondaatje
    *Happy to be a citizen again
    *I THINK IT’S LIKE THIS.
    *I'm so lucky.
    *After rollercoastering, I'm excited!!!
    *Old photos
    *Fire!
    *A memory that keeps returning.
    *What is TRUMP''S AUTHORITARIANISM all about?
    *Practising morality on Halloween
    *Hanging on to an ethic
    *LOOK OUT!!
    *Out of a harsh thing...
    *Mr. Moon comes rolling in.
    *What if...
    *Will I and the Open Mic both survive?
    *I'm now a published poet! Finally.
    *Well, the MRI is done. 
    *Yeah!!! I'm finally a published poet!
    *Medical Update, for those interested
    *Yesterday I had a mini-stroke.
    *We being ourselves.
    *Enormous relief
    *Orange-oatmeal cookies!
    *To put London Open Mic behind me
    ​
    *She sings!
    *Worried
    *While walking home from the store with cherries...
    *Science
    *Standing Still
    *Hey, get a job!
    ​
    *Linda and I are learning to trust.
    *Linda is away visiting relatives. 
    *"We halted and so knew that the quiet night was full of sounds..."
    ​
    *"We halted and so knew that the quiet night was full of sounds..."
    ​
    *Diet and health/longevity
    *Edward Hopper: Woman in Train Compartment
    *A pea and a bean in a pod
    ​*Colt!
    ​*Don't get it off your chest.
    ​*In a world that is neither Heaven nor Hell, hope drives everything.
    *Roy is 80
    *What is going on with these incredible coincidences I keep having?
    *My world of coincidences
    *Is that rumble a distant train or the city?
    *Revelations are everywhere.
    *Knowing you
    *Despite...
    ​
    *The sound of love
    ​
    *Our smile for the day
    *Hurricanes Carla and Esther
    ​*Time Warp!

    *The Pow Wow
    *The Polar Sea
    *Other people
    *Moccasin Bells
    * Stories from my life
    *Je  suis Charlie Hebdo, mais....
    *Life at a fire lookout tower
    *Dominoes
    *Grinch
    *This was my dad in 1965
    *Blue

    Personal Essays
    *Here’s my inch, for what it’s worth
    *Freedom to talk
    *I wonder
    ​*Will I and the Open Mic both survive?
    *Medical Update, for those interested
    *Fred, my father
    *THIS  IS  GETTING  TOO  WEIRD:  the nearly-impossible coincidences are rolling in en masse now.
    *After four seasons, I'm flying!
    ​
    *True North
    ​
    *Back to work on poetry, finally!!
    ​
    *Maybe it's time to see a psychiatrist.
    *66: My best birthday ever.
    *Out of darkness..
    *Hacker attack. Oh man...
    *Jean Vanier, what is this thing he's discovered?
    *Jean Vanier and L'Arche
    *But then again...
    *A Most Useful Invention
    *Building my next beater.
    *My dreams are full of people now.
    *Dear Diary: Relax. Take your boots off. 
    *Those big pictures
    *An UnSilent Night
    *Urban Legends
    *Familiar
    *I  had a glass of Landon Cabernet last night
    *The Less-educated Imagination
    *Listen, I'll tell you something that's really got me worried
    *Can't get enough


    Poems
    *The universe as a poem
    *If you don't know
    *A meander through Euston Park 
    *The Picard Card
    *To Open the Morning
    * We'll see...
    *1st published poem: On a Crate 
    *We decide
    *Standing Still
    *DRINK
    *Oblivious
    *Some Other Place
    *Tinnitus
    *It seems you just have to be still
    *In the Night
    *When I was young
    *Not for inspiration
    *Oh
    *Concerning our Glorious Future: (2nd prize winner at 2014 Poetry London Contest)
    *Yes I heard Ginsberg read once he said prepare for death
    *Amazement
    *Getting used to it
    *And now the news
    *Heart Shaped


    Archives

    July 2018
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013

    Categories

    All
    Aboriginal
    ADHD
    Aging
    Albert Katz
    Anxiety
    Barbara Green
    Basic Poetics Study Group
    Blog
    Blog Tour
    Carl Lapp
    Charmaine E. Elijah
    Childhood
    Christmas
    Coincidences
    Community
    Creativity
    Death
    Donald Trump
    Dream
    Dreams
    Ethics
    Father
    Fear
    Frank Davey
    Fred Burfield
    Guerrilla Poetry
    Health
    Henry David Thoreau
    History
    Humour
    Indigenous
    John Nyman
    Kevin Heslop
    Landon Library
    Lawrence Of Arabia
    Linda Burfield
    London Open Mic Poetry
    Love
    Martin Hayter
    Medicine
    Meredith Moeckel
    Movies
    Music
    Nature
    Outlook
    Penn Kemp
    Personal Essay
    Philosophy
    Photos
    Poem
    Poems
    Poetry
    Psychology
    Reading
    Relationships
    Religion
    Revelations
    Roy MacDonald
    Science
    Shelly Harder
    Shyness
    Sidewalk Poetry
    Soul
    Space
    Stan Burfield
    Strength
    Trust
    Understanding
    Video
    Volunteer
    Walt Whitman
    Writing Poetry
    Youth

Proudly powered by Weebly