Poetry of the everyday
A far from ordinary Friday round up
Oh happy Friday all,
Here we are again.
Well, actually I’m not. We are in a field camping having an (almost) full tech break so I have scheduled it in advance and will look forward to catching up with all the gorgeous poetry when I get back. Hopefully I’ll be able to drink a cup of tea outside (one of my favourite things about camping) and spot some more ordinary things to scribble about. What a grounding prompt this was last week from
).Here are a few poems:
This Is The Drawer by Rhian Edwards in The Estate Agents Daughter, Seren Books.
‘Coming Home at Twilight in Late Summer’ by Jane Kenyon, from Collected Poems, Graywolf Press, 2005.
‘Road Trip’, Joanna Bennett, from her collection, These are my Delicious Sandwiches.
And since I’m not around to put this in the comments, here’s one that I wrote earlier this year that I thought fit the brief. Though I did enjoy the brief so much that I’m working on another!
How about you?
Nelly x
P.s I know Lucy was still working on her own poem inspired by this prompt too, over on her Substack. Just incase she isn’t around either to share in the comments x
I struggled to write about the mundane, every day things, but I did write something, reflecting on the ordinary but also how 'un-ordinary' the atrocities in Palestine are in comparison...
it is also posted here https://lisaandradez.substack.com/p/just-an-ordinary-day
Just an ordinary day
I am sprawled across my sofa in the conservatory
It has just started raining
the warmth of the day, now cooler and breezy
My cup of tea, now empty
the washing which was drying on the line
now warming on the radiators
I wonder if May knows it is meant to be warm?
I look up at the sky and I think
of all the Palestinian children in Gaza right now
Do they know that they are precious and loved
when the bombs rain down upon them
and the sky turns red
when their families are destroyed, ripped apart
when pain hits and blood stained streets surround them
homes and hospitals now rubble, safe places, gone.
I wonder if they will ever know that we love them
that they didn't deserve this
that we pray for it to stop
that we will not give up on them
that our hearts are broken for them
and I turn on the tap to wash my dishes with tears filling the bowl
as the genocide rages on, living hell on earth..
while we keep going about our business, like it's just an ordinary day!
I'm so delighted to have found this space thanks to a few other writers I follow here. This prompt is such a lovely one to start with.
I am enamoured
by the ordinary, like
.
half-drunk cups of
long-cooled tea, and
.
my lover's warm hand
as it rests on my knee,
.
the rise-fall repeating of
my kids as they breathe,
.
the yawning stretch
of growing seeds, or
.
the freckles on my skin,
soft-baked in beneath
.
the late day sun, while
clearing brush and weeds,
.
hearing familiar calls
from nearby trees, and
.
the wholesome hum
of bumblebees, and
.
sitting in silence (except
all of these), with
.
that ache in my heart
that never quite leaves.