writing poems, tweaking poems

I'm back into writing the last few poems for my next collection- due out in August... I love the fragments that I find in my notebooks- it gives me a structure and a momentum to come back a year, two years, a month later and push through to the end.

But of course I've got to be writing snatches of lines down in the first place and I'm just not doing this enough lately.  I aim to change this...the last few lines I wrote were about the cricket plague after all the wet- and the note books become a diary for me to enter again that moment, that feeling- then why aren't I writing in it regularly????

I know that collections of poems are built this way...(well for me they are)
So get writing Lorraine...

Cooking and creativity

I love remembering recipes from the farm- this was a challenge- a spinach and salmon roulade from the Women's Weekly Barbeque cook book- for the family tomorrow.

And some sensory teaching activities for my grandson and ultimately all the grandchildren- The idea came from here:

Felt magnetic counting fish- catch a fish with a magnet- my variation will be to ask my grandson to catch two fish then add the total together- anyone else got some other activities to build up basic number facts( in a fun way)?

Keeping on

Recently my neighbour Judy invited me to come to exercise class- every Friday morning.  It's great and hard work for such an unfit person.  Then the chance to take another hour class came today and it seems like starting back again on exercise is becoming a bit more of a priority, a bit more of a routine.

As the sweat rolled onto the floor today, I made a connection between the practice of writing and exercising- both call on remembered routines, stretches and muscles. 

I know I can produce good poems, good writing, once I've limbered up and begin- writing is a physical exercise- it really is- if I am immersed in a story, I come away heady and disorientated and exhausted. 

I  wonder if anyone else feels writing is a physical activity and improves with workouts!

Fruits of many harvests

What a bountiful week!  On Friday we welcomed our sixth grandchild- Sienna.

Although we've had torrential rain, it has spurred the vegetable patch into production, so tonight I have a choice of our own organically grown vegetables!

Surely such gifts as these are an intricate part of the creative life.  I certainly think so!