It's been a while since I've made a word-cloud so I fed my poems from this year and last year into a word cloud-maker and it seems that the moon is presiding over my current poems!
Taking stock of my recent poems - I've written thirty-five poems over the last eighteen months, twelve of which are for the scrapheap which leaves twenty-three poems towards my eventual next collection.
I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be a 'Scottish' writer. Much of my poetry is strongly connected to place so I guess I've always felt like a particularly Scottish writer in that sense. But I've been thinking a lot more recently about Scottish history and how history has formed us. Working as a tour guide in a castle means that I spend a lot of time talking about the Highland clans, clan wars and the eventual crushing of the clan system. Some of this has been ebbing into my writing as I ponder what all this history means to me personally in the here and now. I finished a poem this week about the muskets on display at Inveraray castle which were last used at the battle of Culloden - I never thought I'd write a poem about guns!
3 comments:
I love your word cloud; didn't know there was such a thing as a cloud maker. 'Cloud Maker' is evocative and could lead to a poem. I have been away from Scotland for so long that even though I have lived here for seven years or so now, part of me belongs somewhere else (I grew up in a Scottish expatriate enclave in India. My dad was from Dundee, working in the jute industry). Despite that, I do have a strong, inner connection to Scotland and have also been thinking about my place here and what it means. Twenty three poems seems in eighteen months seems amazing to me. I haven't written that in a decade!
Hi Lesley, I find the concepts of belonging and connection fascinating. I do love word clouds - could spend all day playing with them! Not every year is as productive poetry-wise but I feel I'm in much more of a rhythm in my writing now.
Nice postt thanks for sharing
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