I am making limited editions of of The Little Book of Festive Poetry, for my family and friends. There will only be 100 made with had decorated covers. Here are the pages all waiting to be put together, I will have some undecorated ones with me when I do various readings in the hope of selling a few to raise money for books for my little girls school library.
This post probably belong on Orange Monster but I’m in a very Christmassy mood so it is going on here – I have had the idea of producing several picture/story books that are long poems. The first is based on an advent calendar and I have a substantial part of it written already, the next is a story of twelve days of christmas and third is about christmas eve, christmas day and boxing day.
It is a challenge when writing long poems not to force the rhyme (children do notice) and to not just do the same rhythm all the time as it grows stale and old quickly. So that is basically taking up my poetry brain this side of Christmas – hope you all have a good one – I’m go back to my mulled wine and story telling through rhyme.
Last year I finally scanned and began editing the poems I’d written the previous year as part of the PiBoIdMo challenge. I then printed them and the poems and glued the poems onto the pictures having an iffy laptop that wouldn’t let me do much at the time.
I then gave these and tonnes of christmas stickers to my little girl who decorated the thing within an inch of it’s life – I’d stuck the front and back covers onto green mounting card and the whole lot was whole punched so that I could tie them together with ribbon as the binding.
This was The Little Book of Festive Poetry Mark 1 – this year there is a Mark 2 which has involved rescanning and editing poems and working out spacings and the like and generally been far more work though is a prelude to publishing properly for next christmas!
Azure sky, azure sea
Both trailing into
Deep blue, studded with cream
A mirror, a divide
A gray smudge
Marrs the perfection
The land slicing intrusion
Rocks in red clay
Rocks in the precision walls
Rocks in the rectangle
Clay matrix
Clay cement
Dark tomb
Your own small cave
Forever
Or until the continents shift
Shatter and crumple
Your cave
Your realm
You have a beautiful view
And we shall miss you
Rocks above
Rocks below
Rocks around
Rocks forever surround
What can you say
When the sorrow is so thick
It chokes you
Leaving you gagged
What can you feel
When the sorrow is so large
It blankets you
Leaving you smothered
What can you do
When the sorrow is so keen
It cuts you
Leaving you soaked
What can you be
When the sorrow is so fresh
It chains you
Leaving you trapped
Hold on too tight and you crush
Let go and you lose
Tether and you bind a trap
Cut loose and you kill in kind
Tooth and jaw consume
Hunger burns bright
An orange bubble in their minds
Green swirls slicing their stomachs
Mostly hungry
Always empty
Predators of marine paradise
Shadows large and fierce
Hunger always
I am the cactus of the prairie
I am the cactus of the plain
I am the cactus of the equatorial mountain
I am the cactus of the desert
I am thick skinned
I am spiky
I am green
I am beige and grey covered
I am an oasis
I am reaching to the sky
In the desert at night it is cold
Ice in the crevices
The sky is clear and dark
Stars shine there
How do you see them?
For me time moves faster
I live longer
It is relative
My stars are streaks
I live in a blurred circle of white blue
My desert
My sky
All around me is silver glitter
I lift my limbs high