Listen to me, you golden beauty

Livelihood If you were a beast and it was May, I would say Listen to me, you golden beauty, we must walk through those flames. Do not fear. Shhh, calm, calm your hooves. Calm your trample, trampling. Look at me. With my hands to the muzzle I lead the prosperity of my summer yield, garlanded

The mask of nonsense

“It’s complicated” posted this time last year proposed a point-blank assessment of The Relationship Drama, especially as recounted by heterosexual women (as this encompasses most of my experience). It’s the “He loves me, he loves me not, why doesn’t he love me?” tune. The poet/narrator declares, none of this is complicated. Either it moves forward,

Ulterior motives

It was very suspicious the way that whale rolled over and opened its mouth for tips, then set fireworks to the water gods from its blowhole. — Whales have featured in my poetry before. Like sluice gates and bears, whales prefigure as a childhood fascination. In my first or second year of school, we learnt

And the earthworms cannot breathe

  I posted “Impatience” this time last year. It’s a poem about seeking goals. The first lines follow the hard work involved in aiming towards goals. The later lines move towards how things seem not to be working out. The Astro Turf suffocates the earthworms. Earlier this year I revisited the earthworm motif. In this poem I list

Happy 2nd birthday, blog!

Looking Back at Cuttings and Proteas: a log entry about growth and development Two years and 217 posts ago the BeadedQuill blog was born. On 15th June 2013, after decades of hiding my fiction writing in notebooks, I decided to share it with the wider world. To my 123 signed-up blog followers, I say a

104 Poems

The 2×52 project developed in April 2013 when I committed to posting two poems a week for a year. I completed my self-made creative challenge this April when I revealed the 104th poem. Next month (June 2014), all the poems will be available in a book at my Blurb bookstore. In the meantime, here are the 104=2×52 poems listed in all their glory! And for your convenience, so

In the ocean one night

I try to revive a blue whale with raw eggs from plastic bowls in different colours laid out in a wooden fishing boat. To do this you must put two or three eggs together in each bowl, watch their yolks lilt to the tide, then pour them through the whale’s sieve-like mouth. — This poem

How do you make a dream come true?

1. Wake up. Work hard. Plan and strategise. Talk to someone who has done it before. Find a mentor. 2. Protect its pollen from the wind. Blow on the quills when they erupt. Wrap it in this moment and suspend it from but what if? It might rest its weary hope in a chest of

Happy 1st birthday to my 1st published book

It’s been a whole year since the first draft of my first published book arrived in the post for my perusal. It was thrilling to see a long-held goal manifested. My Facebook profile was plastered with gratuitous proud mum pics of me holding up my copy of “Shining in Brightness”. I had hoped my first book

Two Poems about Grey

On the fringe of grey bring some blue set above white and petal disks. Green is a good addition. Lay down black as tarmac. Square everything in Your life and love and happiness A tree! No less Grey like silver grey like gold grey like suits tales of old grey like hats grey, like pointer