Beachcombing

Our Stanza group met today and they've written some fabulous poems inspired by beachcombing. We've had fantastic storms which have really churned up sand and debris, destroyed huts and wrecked beachside restaurants. The idea was to bring photographs of  their finds with a poem/poems about them. I was excited by their work and we are continuing with the same theme for next month's meeting.

Meanwhile plans are afoot again to organise our first public reading here in Portugal, so hopefully more about that later.

No resolutions.

I don't like resolutions as I always break them but I have tried to make some poetry ones.

a) I plan to read more using the time I waste fiddling around with things like templates for my blog and Googling around on my ipad. 

b) I'm going to carry on with the Reading notebook that I used for Lancaster. It stops me dipping in and out of poetry books and magazines in an aimless way and helps me to concentrate on what I'm reading, focus on poems I like, and think about why I like them.

c) build writing time into every week.

d) put all my writing notes into some sort of order.

I think that's enough for a year when I wasn't going to make any resolutions. Anything must be easier than dieting, but I won't talk about that one here.

The picture is blue string I found on the beach at Christmas. It shows an unravelling, the way of resolutions. I'm meant to be beach-combing for material for a poem for the next stanza meeting but it's been pouring with rain for days. The next sunny day I will go out and comb the beaches, and that's a promise.

So, Happy Resolutions to you all.