Author: Katherine

Poetry writer and author

Formal poetry

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/books/review/a-little-book-on-form-robert-hass-american-originality-louise-gluck.html

Hass aims to help readers deeply fathom poetry through considering how a poem’s formal structure, and its interaction with poetic history, enable the poem to embody “the energy of the gesture of its making.” This is the subjective pursuit of a practitioner rather than that of a scholar. It’s also, at more than 400 pages, not a little book. Hass gives innumerable answers to the questions that obsess poets and readers of poetry: What is poetry, and why does it do what it does?

Hass aims to help readers deeply fathom poetry through considering how a poem’s formal structure, and its interaction with poetic history, enable the poem to embody “the energy of the gesture of its making.” This is the subjective pursuit of a practitioner rather than that of a scholar. It’s also, at more than 400 pages, not a little book. Hass gives innumerable answers to the questions that obsess poets and readers of poetry: What is poetry, and why does it do what it does?

In Kent

Cycling down the promenade at Deal

Going to walmer castle for the flowers

I wonder why the bicycles have wheels.

And why we never see the Eiffel Tower

The shingle beach at Kingsdown has a pub

There is a meadow with small folded flowers

There in sunshine you should meet your love

And lose yourself in kisses for an hour.

At Walmer Castle there was a great cat.

She climbed up on my husband to his joy.

Riding back to Deal my tyre went flat

So we went back slowly spirits buoyed.

He said hed5 never leave me but he died.

I fell down on the pavement and I cried

Ill love you till I die

‘Twas but a reptile passing by.
It flew across the deep blue sky
Why do reptiles fly so high?
I’ll love you till I die.

“Twas but a cat under the moon.
Did you have a silver spoon?
Why can’t cats all waul in tune?
I’ll love you very soon

‘Twas but a wooden legged man,
Carrying a large brass saucepan.
Why can’t men do what women can?
I’ll love you better than.

Why are adverbs?
What are nouns?
why do circuses have clowns?
I’ll love you lying down.

Where do dreams go in the day?
What game can we adults play?
Can you or can you not say?
I’ll love you,in my way.

‘Twas but a verse that seemed so free.
It floated over my oak tree.
I have eyes but cannot see.
I’ll love you when I be

Sibling rivalry

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/88b58b5f-e2cf-4554-b278-b571fbc7b8d2?shareToken=6c1bbb717d3672be7eb5d8b5cdb94c24

Conversations in the family are crucially important, and it doesn’t matter what they are about. There is nothing more important a parent can do than talk to their children.”

Obstinate child

Daddy used to beat me with his belt

I did not give in despite the welts.

I closed my eyes I screwed up my small face

Why did you beat me daddy not embrace?

Then you died and we’ve seen you no more

I didn’t like you Daddy did you know?

Old lady

Little lady sitting in your chair

Screaming because you cannot curl your hair

Screaming for you want to go to bed

Screaming for a pillow for your head

You tell me no one listens when you shout

Your voice unpleasant makes us shut it out.

Your motive is the power to dominate.

That is not love it seems to me like hate.

Some things we can’t get by force of will

We only have the power to make men ill.

I now believe in witches you are one.

When you die the witches will be gone.

I thought that I could love the human race

Until I saw the contours of your face

What we’re getting wrong in the conversation about mental health

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/29/conversation-mental-health-psychiatric-language-seriously-ill?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

This means resisting the temptation to label all negative feelings with psychiatric terminology. When I was a psychology lecturer, I spoke to an undergraduate student about how she and her peers discussed their mental health, and she said that everyone in her year group – around 150 students – described themselves as having either depression or an anxiety disorder or both. From what we know from population-based studies, it’s nigh-on impossible that they all met criteria for 

National decline

Could we get worse MPs and ministers than the ones we have already got?

We have people who have no concern for people. Is there intelligent they managed to disguise it very well.

It’s mainly immigrants bringing more intelligence into this country

I heard somebody say about the well-known fact that Jewish people are more intelligent on average than other people in Europe, well you see it’s the survival of the fittest. is persecution and the Holocaust have been such a good thing that really improved the intelligence of the Jews why don’t we kill 6 million British people in order to make the rest of us more intelligent?

Why stop there? Why not kill all of us and wait to see if the intelligence of British people living in other parts or the world will become higher as a consequence

Survival of the fittest does not have that kind of meaning. If you have a very gradual process and does not include murder or in a case of trying to improve your crops it does not involve killing lots of wheat and barley in order to make the next generation better quality

If you kill as much wheat and barley as possible then you won’t have any crops next year or the one after unless you can buy some going to be better than the ones you just destroyed. Natural selection happens naturally and absolutely not by planned killing.

If you killed all the horses that were alive now you would not have better horses born by a miracle.

In my opinion most of the people in Europe and particularly in the United Kingdom are more stupid than their grandparents.

It’s called national decline

P1

I have studied  and I’ve got my last degree

I have studied and I’ve got my last degree
My heart has learned its lessons one by one.
I’m a graduate of the grief academy

I didn’t know how painful it would be
When the man you love is here and then is gone
I’ve been studied and I got the third degree

The tears I wept could wash out the Dead Sea
Remove the salt and scour the shore till done
I’m a graduate of the grief academy

I know now I must die,we cannot flee
We turn to dust and that is not much fun
I have studied and I’ve got my last degree

Ii is not News, not for the BBC.
Unless you’re Stephen Hawkings, that great man
We’re graduates of the grief academy

We can’t control life with a self made plan
God is gone though prayer might well begin
I have suffered till I got a new degree
I’m a graduate of the grief academy

Better writing

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/88041d7e-3089-11ea-b8ef-1301adfca080?shareToken=0c7464b2d2d570334fc94935b9b2b5ee

You don’t have to do it dawn till dusk
Creative work — while not being on a par with, say, mining — can be a hard slog from morning to night. Many of those I spoke to write in short bursts. “It’s like Ribena — it’s always better when it’s stronger and less diluted,” said the novelist and memoirist Elizabeth Day, who works two hours in a sitting. Similarly, the poet Wendy Cope told me that she does two or three sessions of 40 minutes each; that’s as much as she can write in a day.

Hilary Mantel Stared Down Her Past, and the World’s, With Steely Resolve – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/books/review/hilary-mantel-appraisal.html

T

unafraid of stating her sometimes fierce views. Her story collection “The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher” — its title story was the result of a painkiller-induced fantasy Mantel once had in the hospital — caused a literary maelstrom. Lord Tebbit, a former cabinet minister, called it “a sick book from a sick mind”; there were calls for a police investigation. (For her part, Mantel said she was “bemused” at the suggestion that “the police should interest themselves in the case of a fictional assassination of a person who was already dead.”)

Deeply intellectual in her thinking, Mantel was also candid about her personal struggles — with poverty, with early professional setbacks, with how people perceived her, with endometriosis and chronic, debilitating pain — and rigorous in her self-appraisal..

Mom.

No sound, no touch, no smell, no sight, no seeing.

In fields of lushest buttercups we ‘d lie
We’d watch the clouds as gently they blew by.
Love was born we thought would never die.
But you are gone, and so I sadly sigh

That love itself remains without your form
Yet tears of loss enfold me like a storm.
I knew you’d never hurt or do me harm.
I felt your smile’s embrace, so wide, so warm.

How is the world,now emptied of your being?
No sound, no touch, no smell, no sight, no seeing.
How is the world when you have gone ahead
Yet I must linger in this empty bed?

Yet those who’ved loved are grateful for that gift
Our sorrow is that life itself’s too swift

The drowned world

I recall the wet green smell of air

Walking with you sister down the lanes

Singing as we walked with open mouths.

Tasting the soft pureness of the rain.

In the woods we hoped see to see the deer

Children from the farm came out to play.

We soon picked up their accents and their grins,

The cow called sadly for its calf that day.

The dripping trees in sorrow wept to hear

The plaintive cow in grief beside the house

Little rivers ran along the road

I thought I saw a hawk descend and pounce.

Drown me with your tears you awful clouds

For all the world with sorrow’s well endowed

The gravity of loss brought me to earth

apple-tree-and-sunshine1


The gravity of loss brought me to earth




Beneath the rotting leaves, I lay with worms.
I wondered if I were of any worth

No more to be enchanted by love’s mirth,
I  with unnamed particles was turned.
The weight of loss bears down the heart to eart


I  did not know the way but saw a path
While I slept a new design had formed
I learned I need not think of what I’m worth

My sorrow brought no guilt nor fear of wrath
I am the  eagle and the twisted worm
In my little grave, I  loved the earth.

Like the adder, shocked into rebirth.
I from silent underworld had learned
Not to judge my soul nor think of worth.

I shall not  fear the flames of hell that burn
When blackness is accepted, may one learn?
The weight of loss breaks down the soul to earth
With dusty shredded leaves, we then converse





	


	



			
				


			

			
Don’t lie so still
		
	
	

		
















 Katherine  beautiful thoughts, childhood, Courage, death, emotion, how to live, images, sorrow, Thinkings and poems, truthfulness, virtue  October 2, 2021 1 Minute





Ah,brother I don’t want you to lie still





No blood to circulate,no thoughts,no will





No help,no humour.jokes no





sharp true eye





From our old shared pram,to live, to die.





I used to do your homework





late at night





Abstract thought to you was no delight.





You wondered over X and y and z





Preferred the shapes of Nature in your head.





I shall retain the memories of the good





You who taught me speech and hate and love

	


	



			
				


			

			
Where shore and country meet
		
	
	

		

I remember Arnside in the rain





I remember singing, country lanes





The joy of woods that run right to the shore





The happiness that makes the hearts deep core 





Beyond imagination I was pulled





Staring from the Knott I saw the gulls





Tiny vultures, eagles flying low





Looking for drowned sheep upon the shore





Paradoxes contradictions faith.





Nothing living now will go to waste 





Life and death, the host, the requiem mass





The living whole, the patient Death of God.





















	


	



			
				


			

			
Flat green leaves
		
	
	

		

Flat green leaves are saucers for the birds to sip from





See how cautious the blackbird is.  





All of a sudden he flies up singing.





Rustling in the leaves of the apple trees with his body





No he’s looking at the cats water





What kind of rule book does he have ?





Dont tell me he wants the cats food





Red leaves are drying in the sun.





Time to go home now

	


	



			
				


			

			
Where ‘er you walk….cool gales shall fan the glades
		
	
	

		
Even sauntering through a concrete junglecan be  like meditation.Being present to the people you meet like the checkout person,the waitress in the coffee shop,letting your dreaming mind wander over the faces of the people walking by and dogs walking on a leash with a mother and baby,the plants,the cleaners.. so many faces..being present is possible and better than ruminating over past troubles.


Drink your coffee outside,gaze and fall into a trance…it’s spring now and we can smell the soil changing with the sun and almost sense the bulbs pushing through into the small enchanted world of a planter in a busy mall in a town centre.


Of course I find it hard to be like that if I am rushing to achieve some goal.We need to be  somewhat like clouds floating through the sky on the wind..without effort.I keep telling myself


If I can walk through a puddle or two and remember other watery joys;see reflections in the water and admire the poor trees ,in solitary planters. yet growing there even  in such a place then a town centre can be a place to wander  as the mind digests recent happenings and ponders on the mystery of existence[Don’t talk on your mobile as you walk if possible as that will ruin your walk and annoy the real people you pass]…I .take a look at them in all their assortment.. wish I coculd photograph them.


This is what I do… you may have a different way of being in such places…roaming and wandering are not so easy for city dwellers


but we can find a way…imagine we are on a sea shore or in a wood…