http://www.poemsblog.com Poetry of Rob Radcliffe Thu, 12 Jun 2008 22:22:49 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Wow, no post for a couple of months, the 2 in one day! Something must be happening! Well, in fact a friend of mine called Aryamati (she is an ordained Buddhist!), is on a committee at the Museum, and had been asked to organise an arts event, so came up ... http://www.poemsblog.com/poetry-evening-at-cafe-muse-manchester-june-12th-2008/ Haven't posted for a while - have been busy with this thing called "life" - it is incredible how the months rush by. Anyway, I am not going to say much today. Am due to give a reading at Cafe Muse at the Manchester Museum this evening, was ... http://www.poemsblog.com/beginnings-and-endings/ I was struggling for something to post today, as recent times have not been times of any substantial creative output. So I had a dig through some older poems, and thought most of them might need some reworking before posting here! In any case, I found this one from the mid ... http://www.poemsblog.com/tides/ I've been noticing that now this poetry blog of mine has been around for a while, it appears to be established a little in the search engines, and is getting a fair number of daily visitors. This is all I ever wanted - I struggled for about ten years ... http://www.poemsblog.com/downpour/ As timelines go, the last few months have been pretty shocking for me. In August my father died suddenly and unexpectedly, and a month later my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and has since been stuck in hospital, as well as having poor mobility to start with. No ... http://www.poemsblog.com/timeline/ Regular readers of the Poetry of Rob Radcliffe will be aware of my fondness for Wales - and recently I have been exploring again, this time managing to scale Snowdon (well, at least on the train as far as Clogwyn!), find Dolbadarn Castle in Llanberis, and also spend two days ... http://www.poemsblog.com/couple-in-betws-y-coed/ I have some poems up my sleeve, for now here is one about finding one lonely person amid a crowd of strangers - and how simply listening to them, acknowledging them, made them open up with their pain, their issues - and how a sense of connectedness arose despite wildy ... http://www.poemsblog.com/the-strangers/ Well, I've been busy lately bustling about, doing lots of new things, and the writing seems to have taken a backseat. Either that or the words won't come in the right place at the right time, and even then rarely in the right order. Still, I'm experiencing lots ... http://www.poemsblog.com/cosmic-love-poem/ Things have been, and continue to be busy lately and it's been a fallow time for my writing, but I have written some, and spring is often a productive time for me. I will post this brief poem for now, it is quite self-explanatory and rather simple, kind of ... http://www.poemsblog.com/metaphor/ A short poem to kick off my 2007 poetry postings - a little late, as January is almost over! How the time does fly! Anyway, this short poem was inspired on my last trip to Llandudno (and I am hoping for brighter nights and slightly better weather so I ... http://www.poemsblog.com/west-beach-sunset/ Sometimes I wonder whether some of my poems are too personal, too full of recent turmoil to post - maybe I should keep them for another day, another month, another year? I have not made a post for a while, things have been happening. It's funny you can meet someone and ... http://www.poemsblog.com/zen-love-poem/ This is one of the very few poems I've "written for a purpose", so I hope it suggests there is some merit in this practice. Usually I have to wait until some urge is tugging at my attention, until a poem is aching to be written. Sometimes life ... http://www.poemsblog.com/ghosts-of-the-tomb-builders/ As the clocks go back, the nights draw in, fireworks fill the air, Christmas decorations threaten, and the air gets colder, I thought it was appropriate to bring this poem to a wider audience. It has gone down well at readings in the past, I only hope it goes down ... http://www.poemsblog.com/darkfall/ I'm becoming very fond of Llandudno and all it, and the surrounding North Wales coast, has to offer. I recently returned there and spent several splendid October days, but this poem was conceived on my first trip there in August, although my mind didn't give birth to it until ... http://www.poemsblog.com/great-orme-august-2006/ I spent a few days in Llandudno recently, a trip I'd booked as soon as I returned from my last visit to Wales to stay with Louise and Phil in their beautiful country cottage. I'm finding lately that going away is preferable to coming home, a big change for ... http://www.poemsblog.com/only-the-tide/ The longer the internet goes on, the more it comes to resemble a kind of living, constant time capsule, the artefacts not deliberately buried but more lost in the constant avalanche of new pages. We might expect one day to find our own image, long removed, cached in some ... http://www.poemsblog.com/old-friend-on-a-web-page/ The French poet Paul Valery said that a poem is never finished, only abandonded, and this is something I've certainly come to agree with over the years. Poetry is all about playing with words, playing with language, and play done properly is a process, not an end in itself. ... http://www.poemsblog.com/morning-bus-ride/ This isn't going to feature in the annals of my best work, but seeing as it was the "writer's group" exercise that kicked off the writing again, I thought I should put it here. The workings are rusty, but I'm at least having phrases and rhythms pop into my ... http://www.poemsblog.com/spring/ And it's like learning to walk again, like I'm learning to write two poems, even two lines at a time. The last few months have been very creative ones for me, but I have been creative with life instead of with words, which we all need to do more ... http://www.poemsblog.com/finally-i-begin-to-write-again/ Alcohol has played a big part in my life - sometimes positively and sometimes negatively. All too often negatively! For a long time I spent life in a kind of Dylan Thomas haze of self destruction. The killing factor for me is that I'm a bit of ... http://www.poemsblog.com/alcohol/