Three poems to end the year

i 8:58PM write poems x1 x1 x1 I wrote on my week’s to-dos. It’s 8:58PM on SUNDAY. The radiator’s cranking up; Counting down to the bedtime routine. This isn’t a poem: it’s a snapshot. ii. write poems x1 x1 The idea was to help me See each output as a ‘1’; As a single entity

What I Ate Today

What I Ate Today Porridge for breakfast, again at three. Stirfry for lunch; in the evening aubergine. Brown rice with lentils, bulgur stirred in, With the stirfry and at supper again. A pear, peanut butter, boiled egg for a snack; To finish it all a piece of chocolate. – I’ve been finding myself down YouTube

blushed apricots, green-skinned Hasses

Can you believe two years have passed since the London Olympics? I was fortunate enough to attend an evening of paralympic events. It feels as though it was only last year that I was sitting in the massive stadium, with an enormous lion emblazoned across my t-shirt and yelling encouragement at the athletes. Clearly, it wasn’t. That

Poems inspired by sea creatures

This poem about scales is a mash-up of ideas about old flames and red herrings. Strangely, yesterday I also wrote about sea creatures. In ‘New ink cartridges‘ I paired cephalopods with writing in black ink. — The image of fish scales is courtesy of Wikicommons Media and photographed by Rajesh danji. View the original image here. You can

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

A short poem from the wood

They are tall and have green eye-lids. See how they blink at the sun. trees — Being amongst trees makes my soul so happy. There are a number of woods where I live in London and I consider it my commute to work to walk through them when I have time set aside for writing.

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

Poem 104

Escucha My new muse is light in his visits, is late, never calls, smiles his cheek, tells me nothing. So I invent everything. My new muse wears white-soled trainers and a St. Christopher tucked against the tattoo, never seen in full. When the night begins, the muse’s t-shirt smells of clean laundry. My new muse

Spring Wants

The poet wants new curtains, please. Yellow and white, in a gingham print of medium squares; lined in white cotton. The light will stream through across the room and catch the duvet on the bed in a stroke of sunny warmth, The poet wants new curtains, please. New ones that don’t slump from hooks that

Things a poet needs: laptop, coffee, soya milk, oats

This poem is based on the day in 2012 when I finally took the plunge and bought a laptop in London. The incessant “£299 on Strand” echoes my personal obsession with the cost of things, which I really am trying to transcend in 2014 (…both the cost of things and the obsession). This close attention to price