Week 18Repair.

Pass it on.

  My mother 
could not see to thread a  needle.
She repaired hems with safety pins
wore laddered  stockings in the house.
She had cardigans eith missing buttons. .
Her b handwriting was like illegible
She passed on her inheritance 
To her two daughters. 
Thankt yoi  Mum. 

So, in true NaPo style, post and be damned: here are a couple of responses that I hope are up to snuff.

Week 13: Hills and Valleys

Written in Welsh, then translated into English, which was an interesting pairing of challenges!

Hills and Valleys

Week 15: Morpeth Rant

Another one with a Welsh twist. You can find the song I refer to here

Tu Cefn Y Ty

Hello everyone,

Again I have some news for you! I will be coming to England  between 2-10 September. I will be participating as a reader in the Tears in the Fence Poetry Festival in Dorset between 4-6 September. The rest of the time I will be in London buying books, etc.

So please make me exempt from next week’s prompt. I can catch up with everything later in the 14 September week, hopefully.

Here is my poem for this week’s prompt.

UNDER REPAIR

( I won’t be taking my laptop with me)

Sorry but this is daft

To improve that poem of yours

replace
every
possible
adjective
in
reverse

I’ll give this prompt another go later.  Thanks Annette

Morning everyone.  A one-word prompt this week – a poem on the theme of REPAIR please.  As always, I look forward to reading them! 😊

With hindsight, I wish I had studied my 10 words and written whatever they said to me. But what follows is the story of my day on Tuesday, with 9 of the 10 words shoehorned in. It is a revised version of my original. I took it to the study group I go to with Almira yesterday and I have incorporated some comments made there. Thank you, Almira, on 2 counts!2026.08.29 Week 17 v3 A Tuesday with U3A walkers

I picked a book at random,  ‘Standing in the Sunshine‘, a history of New Zealand women in the twentieth century.
The words are:  promise – thin – sullenly – listen – house – patterned – sum – orchards – throat – nightdress.  They’ve shaped themselves into a somewhat predictable poem! (although it is raining here this afternoon, thank goodness).

Drought

the promise
of rain overnight

she wakes to listen for it
hears nothing, gets up
to wander through the house
as if her watchfulness, her longing
might coax it from the clouds

heat hangs sullenly in every room
her thin nightdress
feels heavy as an overcoat

is this the sum
of what was promised?
a few fat raindrops patterned on one window
so few she could count them

she thinks
of scorched orchards
trees letting unripe apples fall
of hedgerow blackberries
parched into small sour stones

her eyes blink grit
when she swallows
her throat imagines dust

My words come from the book I’m currently reading, The Mysterious Affair of Judith Potts, and are:  kitchen, clock, outside, somehow, find, haze, first, benefits, wait, bright.  This is the latest Marlowe Murder Club offering.  The words are not so out of the way so I had to work to make the poem something else.  Ink not yet dry, needs a title.  I’ll look through a notebook and see if I can find something incongruous.

Standing outside the action
you wait to see your way through
the haze of expectations;
the bright cliches forcing their impressions
on daily life somehow seem irrelevant.
The kitchen used to be your haven
but now even the clock has lost its charm.
How can you find your equilibrium
in this crazy world? Are there benefits
still to be discovered? First you must
retrace your steps …

BNOARD GAMES

But isn’t life like that?
Fingers crossed
missing a turn
snakes waiting to swallow you
paying forfeits
being sent back to the beginning
hoping to land
on a get out of gaol free card.

This is a prompt I’d like to go back to, and keep working with (thanks Alan). I’ve got several half-written ideas but I wanted to post something – this is a sort-of response to several memoir poems.

On Going Back 

What did you expect
to recognise?
the old house
has a loft extension now
faux-brick cladding
the apple trees
are a double garage

every street
bewildering
maps kept folded
for years inside yourself
impossibly out of date

even those you love
not as you imagined
hugs, tears, cries of delight
yet also
flicked glances
towards the clock
the calendar

that not-quite-focussed look
whenever you begin
to reminisce

Our internet connection is back! ( after a week’s cut)

Thank you for this prompt. It was a very nice exercise to find these words in Ian Duhig’s book ‘New and Selected Poems’.

The words I chose are:

shell, mists, waters, class, skin, tattoo, chess, yet, gift

I also chose ‘fall’ (page 91) as a word but forgot to use it when I was writing my poem. So, my poem ended up a ‘9 words’ poem.

Sorry for that Almira.

A TALE FROM THE HEART

Where Once An Ash Stood

We walk towards the old house
with the curve of the road
beneath mottled sycamore, hazel
already dropping its cobbs
onto dry-gravelled tarmac and verges
dusty with ivy and dog’s mercury.

Up ahead I can see the chestnut
I’d set in hard earth, rootbound
from its first trip away from home,
its siblings dried, counter to the rules
and strung opposite the friends
I’d left behind, broken on the playground.

Its low fork and alternative trunks
are now twisted
up into boughs, bronzed and umbrous
lingering the sun green and ochre
over the lane. I stop
to see how it forms part of a gate,

gives on to the field behind it
its shape leaning accumulated shade
into the walls of a small window,
whilst its sinuous reach
into space, the light I now realise
had always granted it.

Hello everyone,

Our internet connection is still off. Today at work somebody showed me how to connect from my iPhone, so that is how I am sending this to you now.

But it is a bit costly. So, I can only post my poem. Apologies for not commenting on your poems. Maybe we will change to another service of internet. This malfunctioning isn’t sorted out yet.

THE HUNTER

For this poem, I used ideas from two of my recent poems.
And thank you Wendy for letting everyone know about my problem.

Not really happy with this but it’s the first thing I’ve written since week 6.

Poverty, poverty, knock

Alice has donned her clogs and bells
poverty, poverty, knock

the metronymic rhythm beats out
poverty, poverty, knock

George is wearing high heels and sequins
poverty, poverty, knock

glamour beats to its own time and the
poverty, poverty, knock

boys in line, in Stetsons and boots
poverty, poverty, knock

girls form a circle round handbags
poverty, poverty, knock

the dance goes on but still there’s
poverty, poverty, knock

please don’t clap hands or lose
poverty, poverty, shock

New Okanagan Normal
From Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare

A summer’s day, a hazy sky,
more lovely and more eerie.  May
summer’s hot shine and not burn as often,
every chance encounter with humanity changing course.
Eternal summer fade or lose or wander off
in eternal time. So, breathe deeply when you can and
see lives live life to their fullest.

The trill of the castanets
did not ring of birdsong
more the clatter of falling
objects scattered apart.

In our soft-soled indoor shoes
the clicking of heels did not sound,
only the creak of stiff spines.

Straight back      arms aloft
marking the rhythm   chin up
full skirts beginning to twirl.

Before term ends      fingers loosen
castanets flowing like rivers
matching footfall almost pleasing.
The language of dance.

Not managing to catch up very quickly, but here’s something for Theresa’s lovely prompt.  (Wants a better title, but I need to go & listen to a Morpeth Rant or two!).  Back to read & comment shortly.

Childhood is Hills

Land leaps and plunges

to leave the house
is always to go up or down
every neighbour
below us
or above

a low-gear grind
of zig-zag gravel roads
steep dust tracks
and endless steps, a Friday bus
that creeps to us
at walking pace

windows
spill panoramas
treetops, valley, hints of river,
scatterings of rooves, beyond them
a blue smudge
of harbour

it’s home, I take the hills
for granted, scarcely think
about the views
only pause, sometimes
to stare longingly
at the little distant town
wonder

what a valley life might be

(To the rhythm of the music.jpossibly!

Take your partner here we go 
fiddle , drum and  old banjo
and here they go, the old life,
the good times all together,
lost in some dusty archive,
.boxed in attic cupboards
lost in the empty parish hall
forgotten grave and care home

And the sad thing is that the young don’t know 
of the fun they have missed with heel and toe
and the songs we sang with glass in hand 
in country pubs throughout the land
and the orris men with bells and nat
and rapper swords held high in in a lock
in city square and on village green .
When was the last time these were seen?

I chose some words from a poem I would probably totally forget about in a few weeks’ time.

TO SUMMER ENDING SOON

I’m confused about weeks, and thoroughly behind in responding to prompts – but thank you for the new prompt list, Wendy. The scraps I’ve written lately all feel unsatisfactory or unfinished (or both!) but in the interests of catching up…

After

the washing up, the washing
after emails, bank statements, groceries
after paying the plumber, phoning the dentist, dealing
with grime and cobwebs

after that
there will be time
to walk or sit or open a book

although somehow
there rarely is

and so today I choose
before

Revising

Take a poem you are not happy with plus a highlighter pen. Highlight only words, phrases, and images that stand out for you.

Copy these phrases etc, into a new document and build a new poem from these pieces.

I listened to both Morpeth Rant and Golding Country Dance. It brought back memories. So, here is the poem.

AN EARLY MEMORY FROM DRAMA CLASS

P.S. Miss Julie is a one-act play by the Swedish playwright Strindberg, written in 1888.

Town Mill

Now as I was young and cheeky under the street lamps
about the dusty houses and grubby as the road was black.
the night above the house is was smoky.
time let me squeal and try to climb the lamppost 
up to the cross bar by the glass. 
But honoured among climbers 
were the boys of the backstreets
princes gripping the iron pole with feet and knees.
shirt-tails trailing from the bar
falling to the ground in a pool of light.

And as I was young and grimy, infamous down the entries,
about the mill yard, and shouting that I was On ,not Out
when the chasers caught me,they let me play again .
Oh how I begged mercy, and noisy and naughty  
I was hinter and hunted,. the streets rang to my screams, 
the kids on the kerbs called clear and loud
and the clinkers in their boots rang proudly.
<on the cobbles of the county town.

All the day long we were running, it was funny, the way
we all raced around, <
like smoke from the chimneys, 
it was dust. and playing, grubby and dirty and faces black.
And nightly under the ceiling cracks, as I tried to sleep, 
the trains were shaking the house away.
All night Long I heard the trinklements rattling 
on the glass tray, and the carriages flushing with light,

And then awake, and the house in the winter.
cold and dump, the clock on the mantelpiece ticking,
It was grandad’s and precious.<
The sky clouded again.
and the rain poured down all that day.
So it had to be jigsaw puzzles in the gloom of the gaslight,
the table spinning round with my head as I fitted the pieces
out of the tattered box onto the cardboard farm.

And honoured among teddies and dolls in the grey house
under the clothes airer, and happy as I could hope
In those war t worn years, I ran my wayward days.
My wishes were kept under lock and key.
And no-one cared for my angry moods, 
that time dragged in all it’s dull turning, night and morning, 
 long before I grew up new and hopeful
 and could find my place.

Nothing I shared, in those austere days, 
that I wished time would pick me up 
and whisk me away to a land
where, my life would be upwards rising, 
that falling asleep, I would fly to the far fields.
anfAnd wake to find childhood gone forever.
Oh, I was young and green in the mercy of their means .
ztime held me sad and crying 
though I sang in the street like the free.

As I walk upon earth’s mantle

Deep though it may be elsewhere on this planet,
here in the Tablelands, the mantle touches the sky,
it carries its history along with its future.
The result of folded layers of peridotite and serpentinite,
scraped clean and ground over by
ancient glaciers from far away,
painted in purple and green and amber hues,
a blended kaleidoscope of igneous and sedimentary,
explain the Rock to all who visit its craggy shores
and seek its mysteries of life.

Ups and Downs 

This town is built on a hill.
I am halfway down it
or up it
depending on which way I’m heading.
The bank is uphill
That’s the bank that has my money
 as well as
the bank I have to climb up to get there.

Oh dear,
I’m going to have to explain everything.
The co-op is downhill
thoiugh actually it’s a really good co-op.
The  Chinese Takeaway is downhill, too.
It came top in the awards.

The climb up from the station is a killer
especially with half a ton of luggage
At the summit of the hill is Castle Street.
The castle went donkey’s years ago.
where the swimming pool was
and my optician is,
and the park is nearby, for a sit dow n.
At the bottom of the hill is the hospital.
At the top is the public school.

In the Trough of Despond
 is the cement works
where ichthyosaurus swam
long before Anglo-Saxons built this town
at the top of a hill
wih absolutely no consideration
for the elderly and i infirm.

Found in the News

Red sun
Another day of hazy sky
Black ash
Another subdivision gone
No blue
No green
No water
Only pain
Only memories
Only tears

Due to the extreme amount of work I need to catch up with after my holiday in Greece, I am sorry to skip ‘After’ prompt of Maureen. (I am sorry Maureen). I could only write this Dylan Thomas inspired poem this week, as my second poem. The other ‘ found poem’ of last week, I posted below.

THE HILL

I am also a Dylan Thomas fan. Thank you for posting his reading of his poem.

ps week 12 2026 After She Left CAW

Hi everyone,

I am back from my wonderful holiday in Greece! I am posting my poem for Week 12 first. I guess there were two prompts for last week and I wrote to the found poem prompt.

Week 13: Hills and Valleys poem I will deal with later in the week hopefully.

UNDERSTANDING

I used a page from Elizabeth Strout’s book- ‘The Things We Never Say’.

Sometimes….
 I wonder if heaven is a choice of time and place
where you want to exist for eternity.
Let me then choose summertime in my former house
where a plastic paddling pool clutters the lawn
and the air claims the squeals of my kids
jumping in and out of the water with others.
The sun is always shining in theory
and tiger lilies, and dahlias spin a blaze of colour
around the well-mowed lawn. I am in the kitchen,
chopping lemons to make lemonade,
licking the sharp taste from my fingers before
wiping them on my floral dress. Friends are
gathered around the table chatting about
the recent playschool fete and how the
sweet stall needed more home-made
coconut ice.  Their voices like the resonant hum
of bees intent on gathering nectar. Imagine them
as phantoms with me celebrating
the absent sights and sounds of summer.

The two little fir trees I planted
are doing well  in their pots
on either side of  the bench  
by the bay window.
I sit there and play the soft fronds
like a harp and think of you.
 

I emailed this to the dentist and today they me rang me offering an appointment in mid August . The power of Poetry irrespective of how bad it is.

AFTER.

Nice to be back.

Write a poem which includes a line or word/s which you have heard or read. Two suggestions are

I can’t rob a bank anymore

I don’t do football but I do do controversy.

2026.07.25 week 11 Sights and sounds of wildlife

Hello everyone,

I will be going to Alexandroupolis, Greece this Sunday 26th July for my summer holiday. I will hopefully return 1st August Saturday.

I won’t be taking my laptop with me so I won’t be able to write to next week’s prompt or other commentaries to your poems.

Hope to be back and running on  3rd August.

Best wishes,

Gul