View from the Hill

So it's been a while...

14/4/2020

It's been over three years since I last posted. Life has been a bit busy with going back to work full time (and three job changes in that time), all the kids at school and their activities, moving house, health issues, and everything else that pops up.

I love this time in the kids' lives. They are more independent and the teenagers (there are now 2) are increasingly active. Getting them from A to B and sometimes G in any given week reminds me of growing up. I hope to give the kids the same experiences I had because I look back at my time in high school as some of the best of my life. However, they are now dealing with mandatory social isolation and home base learning, which has halted most of our external activities.

Writing is still a personal priority but at times it takes a back seat to all the other things that need to get done. I completed a second draft of my first middle grade novel (yipee) and then start the whole thing from scratch (sigh) while working with a Story Grid Certified editor. I'm now on my second, second draft and the story is much better from a structural perspective and I think it's more interesting. I will keep working this novel so I can go through the process of re-writing and re-writing. I hope to have it published one day.

My friend Jennifer and I have also been working on a book of writing and art by female veterans and we've secured grant funding from DVA to have it published. The internal design of the book is currently underway (it looks amazing so far) and we are finalising endnotes, a foreword and all the details that are easy to miss if you've never published a book before - luckily for me Jen has. We hope to have this book available towards the end of the year.

I am also studying story structure. The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne, The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler, and now I'm reading The Anatomy of Story by John Truby. Understanding story structure is essential to writing good stories, but more importantly for busy people like me - it saves a great deal of time. Plotting and then writing a better first draft is the one of the advantages, then knowing how to identify and fix problems, as well as what scenes to focus on and which ones that need a little less attention has been a revelation. I also have a few more books on structure and story lined up, but more on those later.

I have been toying with an idea about a podcast featuring tips and stories from creatives who care (for others). Time savers will probably be a feature heavily - if I get time to start it.

Now that I've put it out there...I'd better start working on it.

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You make mistakes because you try

20/2/2017

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My Dad would say something like the above to me when I discussed my coaches/teachers feedback after a game/race/test or exam. He said it enough times that it sunk in, and I believe it to be true of everything.

This doesn’t mean I like making mistakes; I don’t.

It doesn’t mean I am fearless; I’m not.

I try because to get better I have to go outside my comfort zone, regardless of fear and the risk of embarrassing myself. When I do this two important things happen.

The first is my fear disappears. A good example of this is submitting manuscripts whether it’s poetry, picture books or longer stories. Yes, I still get nervous but I’m not fearful anymore. I've done it enough times to know the world won’t end, my family will still love me, and the sun will rise tomorrow.

The second is learning from my mistakes. There are times when I know the only way I will learn is by doing. I could read all the books on how to do things right, the theory will be etched indelibly in my memory, but until I try and fail, I will not learn the lesson properly. For example, my recent competition to win a book of poetry on this blog was a resounding failure for a number of reasons.

Failure 1 – Facts and Figures
The basis of the competition was people who subscribed to my blog during would go into a draw to win a book of poetry. Not one new person subscribed to my blog. Along with this, I had about 8 likes (total over 14 days) and one share for one of the posts on Facebook. There were no likes or re-tweets on Twitter.
Lessons

Not everyone likes poetry like I do (a bitter, bitter pill to swallow!)
Offer content that people need or want.
A competition and free stuff does not always guarantee interest.

Failure 2 – Breaking promises
My intention was to pick a different love poem for each day leading up to Valentine’s Day, and write a short but interesting post about each one. This meant 14 poems and posts. I didn’t write a post each day, so I broke a promise. That is now very evident on my blog if anyone reads through the posts. I may come across as someone who can’t carry through.
Lessons

Plan ahead – I should have had the blog posts written well and truly before I started the competition.
Keep a promise - Passion and intent a great but they don’t always win over the everyday random events that life can throw at me to disrupt my blogging plans. If I had planned I would have kept my promise.

However, there were a couple of good thing to come out of my mistakes.

Success 1 – I overcame my fear of blogging. I don’t particularly enjoy blogging but it is something that I would like to get better at. I am nervous about posting but it don’t prevent me from getting something up on my blog anymore. (Especially if no one reads what I write – there’s no pressure :D)

Success 2 – I’m planning a new short series of blog posts that will be written beforehand and have content that I think is important to potential writers/readers.

Success 3 – I made time to read some of my favourite love poems, and quite a few others as well.

So I tried and made some very obvious mistakes. I am embarrassed that my posts were a resounding failure. I am embarrassed and disappointed that I couldn’t send out a book of lovely poems to a new subscriber. There were also some good things to come from this experience.

I just have one thing to add to my Dad’s pearl of wisdom – “You make mistakes because you try, and you will be better for the lessons.”

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Unrequited Love Part 1

11/2/2017

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A great deal of unrequited love poetry is written from the point of view of the suitor whose feelings are not returned, such as Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Mirza Asadullah, Khan Ghalib and many more. In ‘No Thank You, John” Christina Rossetti is the subject of John’s affection and she clearly doesn’t want a bar of him.

No, Thank You, John

I never said I loved you, John:
Why will you tease me day by day,
And wax a weariness to think upon
With always "do" and "pray"?

You know I never loved you, John;
No fault of mine made me your toast:
Why will you haunt me with a face as wan
As shows an hour-old ghost?

I dare say Meg or Moll would take
Pity upon you, if you'd ask:
And pray don't remain single for my sake
Who can't perform the task.

I have no heart?-Perhaps I have not;
But then you're mad to take offence
That don't give you what I have not got:
Use your common sense.

Let bygones be bygones:
Don't call me false, who owed not to be true:
I'd rather answer "No" to fifty Johns
Than answer "Yes" to you.

Let's mar our pleasant days no more,
Song-birds of passage, days of youth:
Catch at today, forget the days before:
I'll wink at your untruth.

by Christina Rossetti

The blame is clearly John’s and she doesn’t take any responsibility for his feelings. It is a very direct and forthright poem from a lady whose work is usually full of images of nature and spiritual devotion. Her tone is fed up and she gives John an ultimatum of friendship “no more, no less”. She certainly exercises her right not to be forced into a relationship, which is a sign of the times in England where the role of women was being debated and changing.

I wonder if John, whoever he was, got the message.

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Women’s Love poetry

6/2/2017

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A series on love poems wouldn’t be right without a quick look at one of the most well known sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806 - 1861

Let me Count the Ways was one of forty-four sonnets published in ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ during a time when most great love poetry had been written by men. The name of the book was used as a decoy to take the focus off the biographical content of the sonnets, all of which were written during the courtship with her husband Robert Browning. A more detailed account of Elizabeth’s life and how this poem came to be written can be found here:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/elizabeth-barrett-browning

Sonnet 43 is written in Petrarchan form, which is more difficult to write in English because it has only two rhyming sounds in the octave and two in the sestet.
While the technical aspects of the poem are interesting (for nerdy word people like me), the real loveliness comes from her description of how this love has affected the small aspects of her life and the idealisms of faith, righteousness, and immortality.

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A poem about your first kiss

5/2/2017

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The First Kiss of Love
by George Gordon, Lord Byron
(composed: 1805 or 1806, from Hours of Idleness - 1807)

1
Away with your fictions of flimsy romance,
Those tissues of falsehood which folly has wove!
Give me the mild beam of the soul-breathing glance,
Or the rapture which dwells on the first kiss of love.
2
Ye rhymers, whose bosoms with phantasy glow,
Whose pastoral passions are made for the grove;
From what blest inspiration your sonnets would flow,
Could you ever tasted the first kiss love!
3
If Apollo should e’er his assistance refuse,
Or the Nine be disposed from your service to rove,
Invoke them no more, bid adieu to the muse,
And try the effect of the first kiss of love.
4
I hate you, ye cold compositions of art!
Though prudes may condemn me, and bigots reprove,
I court the effusions that spring from the heart,
Which throbs with delight to the first kiss of love.
5
Your shepherds, your flocks, those fantastical themes,
Perhaps may amuse, yet they never can move:
Arcadia displays but a region of dreams;
What are visions like these to the first kiss of love.
6
Oh! cease to affirm that man, since his birth,
From Adam till now, has with wretchedness strove;
Some portion of paradise still is on earth,
And Eden revives in the first kiss of love.
7
When age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past—
For years fleet away with the wings of the dove—
The dearest remembrance will still be the last,
Our sweetest memorial the first kiss of love.

What would romance be without the anticipation of the first kiss? The First Kiss of Love is one of Byron’s earliest works, written when he was about 17 or 18. For me, his youth explains a great deal about the enthusiasm the poem exudes.

Lord Byron, who speaks with a voice of experience, and takes the position that nothing you read, hear or see in your lifetime will ever compare with a first kiss. Stories we read will fade from your memory, you will age and forget a great deal of things, but you will never forget your first kiss. In fact, someone who has experienced a first kiss will be able to identify those who write about romances but haven’t had the same experience. A first kiss is transformative.

There is fervour in the refrain, “...the first kiss of love” at the end of each quatrain. The tone Byron takes is one of recommendation. Readers must seek out and try a first kiss because it will change the way you see the world.

Although the subject of each stanza differs, the continuation of the ‘b’ rhyme throughout (abaB cbcB dbdB...) links each one and reinforces the poets position about the power of the first kiss.

The poem’s rhythm is light and joyous – just a first kiss should be. By reading this poem and remembering your first kiss the poet is right, there is something special about a first kiss. It moves romance from the idealistic to a physical experience. Once you have tasted the poison fruit of Eden you can’t go back!

George Gordon, 6th Lord Byron

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9th and 10th Century love

3/2/2017

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Today’s poem comes from the book The Ink Dark Moon which contains poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikbu, and translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani.

No way to see him
on this moonless night‑
I lie awake longing, burning,
breasts racing fire,
heart in flames.

Ono no Komachi (834-?)

The poems in this book are short but incredibly powerful. Although they were written 1000 years ago, they capture love and loss in a way that is timeless.

When I read these poems I am standing in the moment with the women who wrote them. The imagery is so specific that the emotions they express become universal – something that each of us has experienced even for a fleeting moment.

Lying alone,
my black hair tangled,
uncombed,
I long for the one
who touched it first.

Izumi Shikibu (974?-1034?)

If you enjoy poetry, and not just love poetry, I can’t not recommend The Ink Dark Moon published by Vintage Classics more highly.

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A ghostly love poem

2/2/2017

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The Voice

by Thomas Hardy

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,

Saying that now you are not as you were

When you had changed from the one who was all to me,

But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,

Standing as when I drew near to the town

Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,

Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness

Travelling across the wet mead to me here,

You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,

Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,

Leaves around me falling,

Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,

And the woman calling.

I first read Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd and the Mayor of Casterbridge when I was studying Victorian Fiction. I found the stories tedious and I had little sympathy for his characters. I wasn’t very hopeful when we moved onto Hardy’s poetry, but his poetry beautiful.

The Voice is my favourite Hardy poem. It is about the idea of love in the beginning of a relationship, how it fades, and realising the value of loved one after they are gone.

Most analysis of this poem discusses Hardy’s state of mind and his remorse when he wrote this poem. Emma and Hardy were estranged in the latter part of their marriage, and he had an affair with his secretary while Emma was dying. After she dies, Hardy longs for Emma the way she was when they first married.

Emma’s ghost haunts the poem through the soft sounds in words like dissolved, breeze, and listlessness. As the poem reaches the final stanza, these sounds are replaced with fs and ths that mimic the faltering and stumbling of Hardy as time moves him away from Emma.

Hardy had already married his second wife when he wrote this poem. The Voice is the regret of letting love fade over time.

Remember, if you'd like to be in the draw to win a copy of 2016 Poetry d'Amour, please subscribe to my blog. The winner will be announced on Valentine's Day.

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A little bit of love competition and classic love poems

1/2/2017

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Valentine's Day will be here soon and nothing says romance more than love poems. All love poems lay bare an essential part of the human condition - the need to love and be loved in return. To celebrate one of the most romantic days of the year, I have a book of love poems to give away.

Back in November the WA Poets Inc. released the 2016 Poetry d'Amour anthology of love poems and it includes one of my poems.

All you have to do to own a copy is subscribe to this blog page (over there on the right), and on Valentine's Day I will draw the name from the list and that person will win a copy of Poetry d'Amour 2016.

I also thought I'd share some of my favourite love poems each day leading up to Valentine's Day and share some thoughts about why I enjoy them. I'd love to read your thoughts on the poems via the comments below.

A Birthday

By Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird
      Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
       Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
      That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
      Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
        Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
         And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
         In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
         Is come, my love is come to me.

(Christina Rossetti Selected Poems - Bloomsbury Poetry Classic 1992)

A Birthday is a fitting start to sharing some of my favourite love poems. Despite its title, this poem was on the back of our wedding booklets because the happiness it expresses with the phrase 'my love has come to me.' The use of similes in the first stanza seem like the writer is having trouble finding the words to express her happiness, which was how I felt on the day.

The second stanza requests a royal platform to celebrate on (viar, purple, gold and silver grapes, and fleurs-de-lys...) which is an interesting contrast to the nature filled imagery in the first stanza. The language, while joyful, is soft and contained within the regular rhyme scheme in each stanza, and the (mostly) iambic tetrameter rhythm.

What do you think of A Birthday?

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World Building from the Master

13/11/2015

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My nine year old son amazes me. His imagination is larger than the universe and more infinite, and what’s more, he really moves into the places in his mind and lives there. Some worlds are already made, like Pokemon, but he extends them with his own regions and invents new creatures as well as their evolutions. Where ever he happens to be in his head, he talks about it non-stop.

Two weeks ago, I bought him a new mask for his Halloween costume. As we drove to sports training, Sam established that he was the head Crypt Master in a hierarchy of crypt masters. He worked out what their powers were, who the lesser beings were, what language the Crypt Masters spoke (based on the imitation runes etched into his $5 mask), who was out to dislodge him from his position of ultimate power, and what the consequences of that would be (dire and catastrophic for the whole of mankind). It was a long 15 minutes by the time we got to the field, and no one else got a word in.

It was impressive, in fact as much as I dislike the overuse of this word, Sam was awesome. He has also declared that he doesn’t want to be a palaeontologist any more; he wants to be a game designer. I can see him being very good at it. As a writer I envy his imagination and his lack of inhibition. I can learn so much from him and I intend to make sure that he doesn’t lose it as he gets older – the force is strong in this one.

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Sharing Success

17/10/2015

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Sharing the success of a friend is one of the joys of being part of a writing community. It gives hope when being traditionally published seems hopeless, and it can be the difference between either giving up or soldiering on. One person’s success becomes everyone’s hope.

I feel very fortunate to have seen my friend Yvonne Mes’s journey from pitch to publication. The timeline from accepting a contract to the launch of Yvonne’s book, ‘Meet Sidney Nolan’ has been short for a picture book, (11 months), but it was still an intense time for her. A lot of research, numerous drafts, then edits before the manuscript was finalised.

Her excitement when she found out the illustrator was Sandra Eterovic was contagious. Yvonne shared pictures of Sandra’s work with me, and I knew the story Yvonne had written would be brought to life by Sandra’s artwork.
When Yvonne showed me the cover, with its soft pink background and Sidney, looking very pleased with himself, I shared her joy.

I didn’t get to go to the launch of Meet Sidney Nolan at The Mad Hatters Bookshop in Brisbane, but I am very happy for my friend and I am overjoyed to share this beautiful book with my children.

Meet Sidney Nolan is published by Random House Australia, ISBN 987 0 85798 589 7 and is available in bookshops now. The teacher’s notes can be found here http://www.randomhouse.com.au/content/teachers/meetsidney.pdf