My thoughts about books, writing, life and so many other things….Judy Leigh/ Elena Collins.
Here are two poems I wrote for the writers' group. I promised I'd put them on my blog, so here they are. Thie first one is in response to some discussion we had at a recent meeting about people using curses, so it's about a curse. I heard one once. That was enough. The second …
Have you ever read a poem called YgUDuh by EE Cummings? I read it years ago and loved the unusual style. It’s written in the slurred speech of a belligerent racist drunkard, presumably from New York, and it really has to be read out loud. Give it a go. It's fun, and a great exercise …
I belong to a great writing group. Once a month we meet and share all sorts of different writing, and all of it's wonderful. They're a special group of people and I always come away feeling inspired. But this month, I was so busy with writing and editing, I nearly didn't get anything done. I …
Continue reading A short poem, because I didn’t have time for a longer one…
It’s interesting to think about talented people and to stop for a moment and really take in just how good they are, in terms of their skills being so much more than what we know as average. I often use myself as the average against which to compare others, but in many ways, I don’t …
Continue reading The treasure inside the nutshell: talent that goes unnoticed.
This week I finished writing a novel, some 97, 000 words that I'm quite pleased with. It's a story of a woman and her neighbour on a quest to discover something new after a life-changing event, and it contains a secondary character I love to bits, an impressive lady who speaks her mind and is …
During the difficult lockdown moments when the sun isn’t shining and the world looks quite bleak, when people no longer have a reliable source of income and they can’t buy some foods or they have to queue at a distance to get them; when we all miss the simple things like going out for a …
Continue reading Appreciating ‘Dappl’d Things’ during lockdown
It is autumn now. There is something new, something sharp, a scent of change in the air every morning and the fields are damp. A soft mist rises and leaves are already falling from trees. Autumn is a time when, if it's not raining, it's good to go for a walk and breathe cool air, …
That quintessence of dust 