Loss

Poetry,

to fill the cracks of silence

while I plan my work in progress…

 

Something Natural…

  

Something New…

I just posted for the first time in Facebook Group Virtual Haiku as I always like to do something new in January, following on from the New Year. This is what I shared with them:

How about you? Are you starting something new this year?

Thanks for reading.

G is for Grangetown

In celebration of friends from different backgrounds/cultures wherever they may live in the world ❤

We Are Cardiff

Katie Hamer is on a quest to uncover her own A – Z of Cardiff. Today she’s off to Grangetown, where she’s having a look around the Shree Swaminarayan Mandir temple. Join her below!

 

Just south of the city centre, and to the north of the docks is the suburb of Grangetown. Here you will find a vibrant multicultural, multiracial community. While the majority of places to worship are Christian in Grangetown, Muslims and Hindus are also accommodated.

The Shree Swaminarayan Mandir Temple

My focus for this article is on the Shree Swaminarayan Mandir, the Hindu Temple. I have a personal interest in this subject, although my own background is Christian, since my brother had a Hindu wedding ceremony at Dulwich College, London in 2002. Despite this family connection, I came to the realisation that I have very little understanding of the faith, and I decided to rectify…

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Poetry Thought for the End of 2015: Rhymes What Don’t Work

To Rhyme or not To Rhyme, that is the question.

I’ve been pondering this question ever since a friend of mine complained, good-humouredly, about a rhyme that only worked if you ‘put on’ a really posh accent. I’m sure the author in question never meant to cause offence, but she would perhaps see things differently if she had to read her poetry to a class of Mancunian school kids who would undoubtedly be mystified as to why she chose to rhyme ‘giraffe’ with ‘scarf’?

The issue of accent and class snobbery is perhaps unavoidable the moment a particular rhyme is chosen. Clearly, rhyming reveals a bias towards a certain accent, and life would be dull if we all spoke the same. But then, rhyme is just one tool in the poet’s kit, and it’s possible to touch the hearts of an audience without writing in rhyming couplets etc.

What do you think? Can you think of any examples of rhymes that haven’t worked?

Thanks for reading. I’ll catch up with you all in the New Year! ❤

 

 

 

Dreams of Future Christmases

Carousel of light,

a humming, spinning top delights

with childhood memories….

 

A thought for Boxing Day, as we journey towards 2016, and beyond…

Jung about the Collective Unconscious

The collective unconscious – so far as we can say anything about it at all  – appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. In fact, the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious… We can therefore study the collective unconscious in two ways, either in mythology or in the analysis of the individual. (From The Structure of the Psyche, CW 8, par. 325.). 

A-Z of Cardiff – F is for St Fagans …

A truly magical place after Christmas ❤

We Are Cardiff

Writer Katie Hamer is busily discovering parts of the city and revealing them through her We Are Cardiff series, the A-Z of what makes Cardiff special to her. She’ll be sharing the parts of the city she finds with you over the following weeks, so stay tuned!

Rhyd-Y-Car Terrace, originally built c.1795

 

F is for (St) Fagans

There are three places for which I will always find time to take an annual pilgrimage. These three places are the Eden Project in Cornwall, the grounds of Cliveden in Berkshire, and St Fagans’ National History Museum in the heart of Cardiff.

I thought I was fairly clued up about this open-air museum until my most recent visit last week. I got chatting to a couple of Australian tourists, who posed a relatively simple question to me: “So, why’s it called St. Fagan’s?” They were clearly very puzzled, and I was completely stumped.

On the off…

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Dreams of Christmas Present

As

Always the

Anticipation

Of present giving brings hope

Through friendships renewed

This Yule Tide

Hour.

In Response to ‘The Windhover’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins

A Spiritual Flight, A Vision – An Awakening

 

The flight of many memories emerging merci-

fully, within the realm of daylight, dawn, and daybreak,

to drift, and glide before the rolling hills and meadows,

across a chessboard, chequered with herds of cattle, sheep,

and onward to the Angel of the North

then further still, to the unfurling curvature of the coast

the waves that listen on a crest of time and tide

that no man can halt, although they falter

upon the singing sands and hidden caverns of starfish,

the stalagmites and stalactites within a cove

or Capel Ogof – a chapel in a cave,

where nature’s terrestrial haven

becomes a celestial heaven, once more.