BlueBeretMum

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Welcome 2016

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My Summer of Words

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In Other News..

Dear readers

It’s been a while since I posted any updates on this blog apart from a random post-Christmas cartoon. What can I say, life was very busy (more about it later) and, unintentionally, the blog got neglected a bit.

So this is what has been happening recently:

I had a great opportunity to get involved in co-editing the Paper Swans Press The Darker Side of Love anthology and had a…

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What I Did This Christmas...

What I Did This Christmas…

Apart from having a wonderful family time, eating, reading, eating, chatting, playing with trucks and cars, eating, eating and eating some more I also…

See you all in 2015 – there will be more poetry chat then!

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The Scottish Independence Referendum and I On Voting in the Scottish Referendum This poem is composed of newspaper headlines. Great Scots reveal their political stance:

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Poetry is …

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Dear Editors of Fashion Magazines

Dear Editors of Fashion Magazines

Dear Editors of Fashion Magazines

I’ll keep it short and very trim.

Please understand, for nine months

my body ballooned with life.

And when this body burst into life and air

its gift was this haute couture skin. I love

the way it feels, how it bursts in its seams.

Don’t tell me to live of thin water. I’m not a twig,

a string, far from a runner bean. I’m made of plasticine.

I’m not a rubber band.

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A Poet Grumbles: On Rejection

A Poet Grumbles: On Rejection

Rejection sucks. It feels so final.  Images of editors throwing darts at your most precious work flash in front of you.

And yet rejection is an integral part of the writing/poeting life. If you do not want to go through this arduous skin-hardening process the answer is simple:do not send your work out. Keep it in your notebook, at the bottom of your drawer and keep it that way.

I hate…

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My Body and I

My Body and I

This post is about the longest relationship I have ever had. The kind of relationship that will truly last till death us do part.

Things haven’t always been easy.  I haven’t always been best friends with my body.  When I was sixteen I succumbed to odd diets, one of them being eating paper-thin bread slices smeared with margarine and mashed beetroot. I felt great until I got quite ill and…

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On Packing

1. This is how much I pack for a three week holiday:

2. This is how much I pack for a long weekend aka ‘I’ll be away for three days, on the road for half of this time but you just never know when you are going to need those stilettos* and a ski suit**.’

* I don’t even own stilettos

** in London in June

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My WoMentoring Journey

Writing can be a very lonely place to be and writing poetry is no different. Day in, day out, it’s just you, your pen, notebook and a head full (or completely void) of ideas, clever metaphors and half decent rhymes.

It does not happen very often that an opportunity like the WoMentoring Project comes along and when I saw that one of my favourite poets, Wendy Pratthas offered to mentor women poets…

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Birthday Poem

Today is my birthday and I wrote a poem inspired by the funny and ironic poems by the fantastic Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun .  Enjoy! ( and in case you think I am terribly arrogant, this poem is not meant to be entirely serious and it is my birthday after all).

Who is Ellie D?

After Tomaz Salamun

Ellie you are a genius

you are fantastic, you are lovely

you are the last match in a box during a…

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Thursday Reading List

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Sometimes...Look on the Bright Side

Sometimes…Look on the Bright Side

Sometimes life can really surprise you….and it is not Christmas (yet)!

1.

2.

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Best Toy for a Toddler

Best Toy for a Toddler

….at the moment Peanut loves horses and trucks so it is pretty obvious that a hybrid would be the best thing ever.

… and there was Hruck:

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Hairy Coos and Snowdrops

Hairy Coos and Snowdrops

I’m looking at a snowdrop

  the petals weld together

my muted heart. A hairy cow, as

if accidentally left at

the foot of a hill, stares

at my lens. She doesn’t enter the dusk – filtered shelter

of leaning pines. Instead, she chews on her last straw

unaware her end will come

tonight, suddenly, like this first

snowdrop’s overnight appearance.

Its stalk piercing yesterday’s snow.

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Lullaby

Lullaby

For Peanut on his 2nd birthday

  Your day has eaten its tail, enough excitement

to write a volume of poems, not just this one verse.

  Rowan trees scatter their beads, you drop your words,

rolling, rolling in all the corners of the room.

  Winter darkness stays put in the attic.

Do not imagine a summer anymore.

  I’ll sing to you until the sun returns

from its nightly den.

  I’ll charm…

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