There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall...

When I had my first child I worried about the baby being born healthy, how I would cope on my own, how to be a good mother. I didn't think about how it would effect my creativity. I didn't give it a thought...my mind was too full with anxiety about getting the baby out of my body and then taking care of it.

When it happened the birth was straightforward and looking after her was a joy. I came across this quote by Cyril Connolly a few years ago and read it in a slightly shocked way because my creativity exploded when my baby was born.

Of course I was exhausted most of the time, living on three hours sleep yet I had to write and paint whenever I could. I would sketch the baby as she slept. Write poems as she breastfed, well scribbled them down on a pad balanced on my knee. There are times when I could scream because I am working on a poem or story in a snatched moment when the children are playing outside and they come in and interupt me for the fourteenth time but I just swallow the annoyance and on focus on them for a while, let the poem simmer until I can come back to it.

It means that when I can write there is a frenzied urgency to it, I have to make the most of the time I have. I also want to make my children proud. It's no use thinking 'I want to be a writer' and not do anything about it. So there is a determination to learn new skills and sharpen my talent until I can look at a poem or story, sketch or painting and feel satisfied that it is the best I can do.

So I do not agree with Cyril Connolly's miserable prediction about motherhood and having children in the home. I think having a child transformed me into a more productive artist and I wouldn't exchange it for the peace and quiet of an empty hallway. Although I do wish I had someone to do all the laundry for me.

can poetry change anything?

Poets for CHANGE

Women are brutally murdered in Guatemala,
Thrown in the gutter and the authorities
Don’t investigate, shrug as if to say well,
It’s only a woman and yes, it is happening now.

Women can be raped by their husbands,
The law says so, in Nigeria, Morocco
Saudi Arabia, so many other places you visit.
It’s only a woman and yes, it is happening now.

Women are married before they are women.
Forced; it is a word filled with fists and bruises
And it is not a historical event. She is sobbing but
It’s only a woman and yes, it is happening now.

Women must be cleansed of their sexual parts,
Pass me that newborn or that young girl, give me
My blunt knife, the clitoris is dangerous; she screams
But it’s only a woman,

And yes, it is happening now.

Iseult Gonne

the thunderclap
did not come
where  where  where

are the rolling clouds,
the slim streak
of white anger?

the wind roars
and disturbs the ears
of the Queen

the candle is lit
and blown out
lit and blown out

you cannot create a life
out of a dead baby
you just can’t do that

dance on the edge
of the ocean
but peace never comes

eyes are always
watching the shape
my shadow makes

if you bruise and
confuse the leveret
the hare will flee

girl twin Peter and boy twin Finnegan

You're not doing it right...

'I don't know. Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.'

Teddy McArdle

Autumn by Siegfried Sassoon

October's bellowing anger breaks and cleaves
The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood
In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves
For battle’s fruitless harvest, and the feud
Of outraged men. Their lives are like the leaves
Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown
Along the westering furnace flaring red.
O martyred youth and manhood overthrown,
The burden of your wrongs is on my head.

Autumn, chill and lonely comes

The beginning of autumn;

The sea and fields,

All one same green.

All along this road 

not a single soul – only 

autumn evening comes  

An autumn night;
don't think your life
didn't matter.

 

Will you turn toward me?

I am lonely, too,

this autumn evening.

- Basho