- This topic has 9 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 10 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
For the May competition, evoke the movement of routine travel. Portray a regular or ordinary journey. Your character(s) can be anyone; the transport can be anything including walking. This task is about day-to-day life rather than big plot turns or realisations – the familiar, written anew.
If you want, do a W H Auden in Night Mail:
Pass cotton-grass and moorland boulder,
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder.
[…]
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in a bedroom gently shakes.Maximum 400 words. It can be a complete story, or poem/lyric, or part of a longer piece.
Between 2011 and 2013, for some eighteen months, I participated in a ‘Small stones’ project; a daily moment of intense observation. Many were made during the twelve minute walk (six there, six back) to buy a morning paper. This is a 396 word selection.
Autumn
Stepping stones of yellow sycamore
stuck to the rain-damp roadAnd the sky this morning
wet on creamy-papered wet
Paynes Grey and a touch of Burnt SiennaSplendid pile of fungus:
griddle scones awaiting maple syrupTwo overhead geese, ten degrees apart,
noisy enough for a ‘V’ of a couple of dozenAbsence of blanketing wind
enables tiny, coloured stitches of sound
to be heard, as background pattern.Mediterranean colours:
the bonnet of a turquoise car,
scattered golden leaves
rime-edged and frost-adhered.A slew of eggshells
pale and slimy-stuck to tarmac,
adherence for a cast-off car keyHalf-light. Half-dressed woman
high heels and a towelling dressing gown
searches the boot of her car
for clothesWinter
Lilac clouds this morning
and I ponder on the possibility
of purple rain.For ten days now,
a mattress and a divan
brand new, polythene-wrapped
left uncollected
at the side of the house next but one.Not, as first thought, a man up a tree with a didgeridoo
but the scrape of a branch against the hat
of a close-standing streetlightClouds both pink and blue,
hedging bets:
sex not yet determined.When the wind is in the west
noise from the trains and planes get louderGiant strides (bigger than mine)
and an apparently levitating dog
allow me to play detective.The upward curving branches of the ash tree
clamouring hopelessly toward the uncharitable white skyGlorious pink promise
dish of dawn
spiced with a scattering
of silhouetted geeseAn asymmetric feather, light and lying in the road,
sent me searching for the names of parts thereof.
Shaft, web, calamis, brachis and barbDifficult to tell in the dark
whether blackness of sky
due to lack of sun
or imminent pouring down rainFrowning to stay upright
I dissuade all morning greetings
and omit to post the letters
I diverted forRecycling bags
straight-sided and close-packed
along the half-dark pavement edge
An instant, urban Giorgio MorandiA rough, tobacco-damaged, dirty chuckle,
conjured up a much-loved and delinquent aunt
who took me apple-scrumping when I was eightFallen small branch
lichen-striped
emulating adder
or some other poisonous snake.Fifty minutes late
and no-one says ‘good morning’
– we have not the two years plus
of graduated nodding
in acknowledgementDarker yes, but oh the joy of striding out
no longer feared of falling.Down Memory Lane and Beyond
I am nine and today choose to leave for school by our front gate. I step down into Sandy Lane. The tall trees shielding the convent opposite rustle their leaves as though whispering the secrets of a cloistered life. If I walk up the lane to the top road I will pass the allotments with their topiary birds unable to fly to foreign climes. But I walk down the lane, the sickly sweet scent of privet hedge blossom wafting over me. I glance at the house of the scary old lady who wanders the lane in her nightdress. We children do not understand she is ill. I hurry past the abandoned sand pit where an evil presence is rumoured to harm any child daring to climb over its fence. I glance at the forbidden territory of the off licence on the corner before turning onto the bottom road which will take me to school. It has nothing of interest until I reach the little sweet shop with its displays of sherbet lemons which fizz on the tongue and flying saucers whose papery coating sticks to it, so I busy myself with imagined adventures.
The road bends and there is the falling down row of houses where once my curiosity had led me to explore amongst the rubble; feeling brave and nervous all at once. Had they been bombed in the war? Were people killed? I shake off these troubling thoughts and continue my journey.
The school comes into view and I wave at the lollipop lady before entering the playground where at morning break my best friend and I wave at the engine driver as the steam train puffs grandly by on the nearby railway line. Where does it travel to on these daily trips?
The school day ends. I choose a different way home, across the green and through the churchyard where one day I’d seen a tiny white coffin being carried into the church.
On the top road I scatter sad thoughts and conjure up the seaside where we will soon be on our annual week’s holiday. Then down Lowlands Avenue I quicken my pace and soon reach our home’s back gate. The long garden with its abundance of vegetables, fruit trees and flowers seems to greet me and I smile. It had been my early childhood playground which had fuelled my imagination as I played happily alone.
400 wordsA circuitous route – the same-old, same-old – but not so taken for granted as once it was.
Hot grey asphalt, its dull top layer peeled back by sun and tyres, glistening wet and black under, suggestive of a just-laid stickiness.
Pavements littered with the faded shadows of chalked rainbow messages to un-caped crusaders or old-fashioned hopscotch grids that beg to be hopped and skipped along, and causing a smile when temptation wins.
The comfortable familiar warmth of hand-in-hand – a rare moment of human connection in an otherwise untouchable world. Steady steps, a measured pace, talking about the little things that are so magnified under the lens of crisis.
Oversized daisies bobbing on delicate stalks. Jewel-bright bearded flags standing sentinel. Briar rosiness hanging over head.
Veering sideways to give room.
Noticing – properly – the details on buildings, the individuality expressed among a street full of the similar.
The brook running fast and low, deep in its channel, hemmed in by overgrown stingers. The heady almost-stench of cow parsley clinging to the water’s route in a swaying tide.
A rain of petals falls from gigantic conker trees, the mushroom seats beneath: empty.
Foxglove and lupin spikes pierce the soil between the wildlife-area apple trees, the branches of the latter loaded with a strange new – unseasonal? Perhaps nothing could me MORE seasonal in this time and place – fruit of woollen pompoms, attended by fir-cone birds which fly between.
A green man, previously ignored while the road lay empty, now obeyed as movement and life begins to be restored to tarmac’d lifelines.
Peonies and ponds before a last corner turned, and feet walk along familiar territory where faces are known – even if names aren’t always remembered – and a small community has grown closer and stronger through simple kindness and concern.
(Mr Squidge and I have a route we’ve walked in lockdown…)
All these entries are wonderful! Goodness, it has been hard to choose a winner. I love the way they all capture the detail of immediate surroundings at the same time as linking to a wider world, and how each one answers the competition’s brief in such interesting ways. All these pieces show acute sensibilities and curiosity, and I really enjoyed them.
For instance, in Sandra’s poem(s) these verses are among my favourites:
Frowning to stay upright
I dissuade all morning greetings
and omit to post the letters
I diverted forRecycling bags
straight-sided and close-packed
along the half-dark pavement edge
An instant, urban Giorgio MorandiThis is so distilled it feels perfect. I like ‘omit’ rather than the more obvious ‘forget’. I like the Morandi reference, the feeling of the thingyness of things and how we see and interpret them. And, elsewhere in the poem, the light humour, the clouds pink and blue hedging their bets regarding gender, and the woman searching for clothes. What has she been up to?
The narrative voice and a sense of character is also clear in this verse:
Giant strides (bigger than mine)
and an apparently levitating dog
allow me to play detective.The whole poem is very impressive.
In her prose Squidge captures our current moment in which any kind of travelling, even a casual walk, has been affected by coronavirus. The touch is light but the messages are clear: how do we and our communities respond? The problems and our reactions are noted with just enough emphasis to let the reader know what’s happening but without being heavy handed. I love the images too. ‘Hot grey asphalt, its dull top layer peeled back by sun and tyres …’ – the exactness, not overdone, is so effective. And: ‘Noticing – properly – the details on buildings, the individuality expressed among a street full of the similar.’ What a lovely example of telling it slant, of a subtle metaphor for the way the lockdown has overridden so much of our individuality but how we’re still here among all the rules and limitations.
Another thing I especially enjoyed was Squidge’s portrayal of wildlife or garden life. I can see she really knows what she’s talking about. None of the incongruous pairings of plants or confused flowering times that sometimes appear even in well-regarded published novels.
The winner, after much deliberation, is Jill. I think memories of childhood, whether in memoir or fiction, are especially hard to write well. That’s not to suggest any other form is easy but to me childhood recollections often feel burdened with the back projections of the adult writer; it can seem a particular struggle to have quite enough control or distance. There’s none of that problem here. The child comes across as clearly as if she is speaking herself. And I think what’s especially clever is the dual viewpoint, the early insertion of ‘ We children do not understand she is ill.’
So we know there’s an adult voice too in the background but it’s not speaking too loudly. The child is vivid: ‘On the top road I scatter sad thoughts and conjure up the seaside …’ The vocabulary feels like that of an adult yet it would be understood by a nine-year-old and possibly even written by her, or some of it at any rate. I like that uncertainty, the merging of two perspectives that’s part of how memory works.
Congratulations to everyone for such excellent entries. Over to you, Jill ?
-
This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by
.
-
This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by .
Well done Jill – you came so close to winning on YWP that it is only justice you come first here.
And thank you Libby for setting a theme which sent me back to all of these ‘newspaper’ small stones and properly gather them in one place (now up to #94
Thank you, Libby – what a lovely surprise to find I am the winner for the interesting topic you set us. Loved the other entries and enjoyed going back down memory lane myself. I have many memories from that happy childhood, but having to focus on the school journey was good writing discipline! Less is more and all that jazz…
Your critique of my little piece was a great boost. 🙂
Thank you too, Sandra for your kind words.
I have an idea for the June competition and I hope everyone will warm to it.
I’m pleased the critique was useful, Jill.
I forgot to link names, and as we haven’t heard from @squidge here’s a direct contact.
-
This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.