Poetry review – The Country With No Playgrounds by Elena Croitoru

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The Country With No Playgrounds by Elena Croitoru coverBook Balm recommendation: Read to have your empathy heightened and awareness deepened.

In her debut poetry pamphlet The Country With No Playgrounds, award-winning British-Romanian poet Elena Croitoru has captured a place and period in time so precisely and skilfully that you’ll find yourself transported.

Stark scenes are highlighted with words that seem fondly chosen for their beauty: “We grew up in our spare time,/ beyond a tower block island/ where pearly cement dust lay…”

Relayed with disarming matter-of-factness, many of the poems are almost cinematic, such as in The Last Wedding: “She looked out of the window/ at the militiamen who watched our balcony/ from below, the way one would watch/ the funeral of someone still moving.”

It’s heart-stoppingly alarming, yet clearly for the inhabitants utterly normal, to live with such a palpable threat. As worrying as the situation must have been for the adults she mentions, for the children Croitoru counted herself among, this was nothing more than ordinary. This gives her the tools to describe moments with a lightness of touch that draws us in rather than pushing us away, so that we read each stanza with wide open eyes.

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Writing prompt – dragon

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Hill Crest School dragon by Judy Darley

As I walked by this primary school early one day, I was struck by the atmospheric beauty of its towers against the morning light and paused to take this photo. At that moment a man came outside, and to explain myself I told him how dramatic the vapour looked pouring out of the boiler flue. I even commented: “I suppose that’s from the central heating.”

He responded with a grin: “Or the dragon.”

Ah, what a response. Now, here’s your choice: either write about the dragon that keeps a school cosy all winter long (what does it do in summer?), or write about the man who lives in the school and tells perfect strangers that it’s inhabited by a dragon. How could his imaginative whimsy transform the outlooks and lives of other people?

Whichever angle you opt for, make sure it has plenty of heat!

If you write or create something prompted by this idea, please send it to me in an email to judydarley (at) iCloud.com for possible publication on SkyLightRain.com.

Poetry review – We Have to Leave the Earth by Carolyn Jess-Cooke

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We Have to Leave the Earth by Carolyn Jess-Cooke book coverBook Balm recommendation: Read to immerse yourself in wonder.

The contents page of Carolyn Jess-Cooke‘s third collection offers a clear indication of the skill at play here. Poem titles are mini-masterworks, with each offering sense of perilous climatic times we live in couple with an awe for the world we inhabit.

Section 1, Songs for the Arctic, illuminates scenes by scattering words across the whiteness of the page. in We Flicker too briefly, you can roll the flavour of the lines over your tongue: “Bone sky./Ocean’s oil-dark/cloth unsettled” and “green sky-rivers/ arrows of geese/ water scythes of whales.”

Section 2 opens with the title poem, which sets the tone for a sequence about beauty and strength in fragility. In Birdsong for a Breakdown, we’re introduced to the extremity of sensations experienced through the rawness of mental ill-health: “Because sweetness amidst such unnameable dark/ is magnesium, too bright to miss.”

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Writing prompt – instruction

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Take Next Left by Judy Darley. Shows a yellow Post-it note pinned to brambles in a rural setting with a path running along one side.A yellow Post-it note pinned to brambles instructs us to take the next left.

How intriguing to come across an instruction like this in an urban woodland! What would you do? Walk on in the direction you’d already chosen, or follow the sign wherever it leads?

I particularly like the ps: If you dare…

What dangers or rewards might lie ahead?

Can you weave these possibilities into a tale of peril and adventure?

If you write or create something prompted by this idea, please send it to me in an email to judydarley (at) iCloud.com for possible publication on SkyLightRain.com.

Writing prompt – survivors

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Windmill Hill City Farm turkeys by Judy Darley

With Christmas Day wrapped up for another year, the surviving turkeys across the UK should be breathing a sigh of relief! We assume they don’t understand what’s going on, but imagine if they did. It would be a fantastic cue for a dystopian tale or a story of resilience and survival against all odds.

There’s no reason your story should be depressing, however. Aardman imbued a similar topic with humour in Chicken Run. Perhaps you could change the species from turkey to human, or give a gang of middle school kids the job of saving a town’s turkeys, go mystical with a tale of wild turnkeys living in harmony with humans, or even give the tale an Orwellian political satirical twist.

However you tackle this writing prompt, have fun creating characters that will make us care and take us along for the ride!

If you write or create something prompted by this idea, please send it to me in an email to judydarley (at) iCloud.com for possible publication on SkyLightRain.com.

Merry sparkle!

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Sheepish Angel I hope you are lucky enough to have those you love close by, and all the frivolity or serenity you crave throughout this joyful festive season, however you choose to spend it.

And yes, in case you wondered, that is a 1960s tinsel tree, given to us by my mum – re-use and re-home is a far more eco-option than recycle! The tree is topped by a sheep who wished more than anything to play an angel in the school nativity play. Now, there’s a bonus Christmas writing prompt!

Here’s to a green and hopeful 2023.

Writing prompt – festive fleet

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Leo Castle_bristol harbour. Photo by Judy DarleyI adore knowing that in Bristol even the boats are full of festive sparkle! This gorgeous narrowboat is all set for some seasonal revelry.

It’s not long till the big day now, but you still have time to conjure a tale of wonder, whether it’s a modern take on the Nativity with a narrowboat standing in for a stable, or the idea that inside this shining vessel Santa and a few motley elves are putting the finishing touches to gifts in preparation for a few water-bound deliveries.

What can you create with this scene as your starting point? It’s up to you whether you write a tale to delight the children in your life or angle it towards adults with a few comic or darker twists.

If you write or create something prompted by this idea, please send it to me in an email to judydarley (at) iCloud.com for possible publication on SkyLightRain.com.

Novella review – The Death and Life of Mrs Parker by Jupiter Jones

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The Death and Life of Mrs Parker cover. Shows a guppy with an extravagant tail swimming against a black background.

Book Balm recommendation: read for stalwart cheerfulness in the face of adversity.

Spoiler alert, this wry, tragi-comic novella opens with the apparent lethal poisoning of the main character, but for the dauntless Aveline Parker, these moments are far from the end. While her heart races towards the finish line, memories flood in and we’re treated to chapters from decades filled with love and misadventure. When the paramedics tell her that she seems to have a problem with her heart, she comments inwardly: “I’ve always had problems with my heart, giving it away, getting it broken”, and proceeds to think through the medical attributes of the human heart, ending with: “The heart is fickle.”

Aveline’s voice rings with authenticity as she relays anecdotes that weave threads of excitement into knots of heartbreaking regret, each edging us closer to the paramedics working to keep her alive on a restaurant floor. The originality of the story and its telling is anchored in this voice, the skilful use of colourful clichés (such as when Aveline observes that the lines around an elderly woman’s mouth contract “like a cat’s arse”) that suit the character so well and the rich textural details that pin each recollection in place.

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Writing prompt – glitter

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Christmas lights by Judy DarleyThis glittering bird caught my eye when meandering at dusk with two small nephews. They were entranced by the magic it suggests, and it made me think what a fabulous fairytale it could prompt – a bird made of ice paradoxically powered by fire, perhaps, or an enchanted robin condemned to only sing after nightfall. You could even give it an ecological spin!

Alternatively, you could focus on the person who decorated their home with such shining decorations. What are their hopes and anticipation, or what loneliness are they keeping at bay?

What could you dream up in the best Hans Christian Andersen style? Could you give it the underlying darkness that always seems to thread through those traditional tales? Or do you want to make your story as bright and cheerful as this festive light? The choice is yours.

If you write or create something prompted by this idea, please send it to me in an email to judydarley (at) iCloud.com for possible publication on SkyLightRain.com.

Poetry review – Much with body by Polly Atkin

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Much With Body book cover. Shows figure floating in green water.Book Balm recommendation: Read to remind yourself to pause and pay attention to your natural surroundings.

From frogs and toads ambling into her home to the herons glimpsed nearby to the imposed quieter times of lockdown, Much with body by Polly Atkin is a reminder to take a breath, open your eyes and observe.

In Lakeclean, Atkin immerses us in the magic of wild swimming. The lines are dizzyingly visual and elemental, while hinting at the freedom and physical relief offered fleetingly in water, as opposed to time spent on land. Atkin alludes to the joy of  being: “released from the tyranny of gravity”, dwelling “in transparency”, and sweeping “mountains aside with our arms without wincing.”

Notes from a transect offers series of determinedly hopeful snippets, each of which works as a standalone poem. In What’s Under Your Feet she records: “One school wins a visit from a scientist. When she asks/ does anyone have wildlife stories to share?/ the whole school put up their hands.” In Windows we glimpse “Those lightless days when pain/ keeps you in, under, and the feeder/ at the window is the only source of movement/ you count birds.”

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