Archives
Don’t Send Me Back
You can keep your liberty.
It was never mine at all.
This year I set myself a challenge to start experimenting with poetry forms I have never tried to write in before. Well, this is the first Villanelle I have ever attempted and, if I’m honest, I hate the form. But it was good for me nevertheless. In the process of writing this one poem in a strict form I also produced three more poems which didn’t fit the form at all. If I hadn’t tried something harder I might never have stumbled across the magic beans that grew into three poems am really happy with.
And I’m not entirely displeased with the Villanelle I produced either – only the form itself. You can read the full poem here.
When
When I have lost all that I love,
I will still have the memories
of the good times we had.
A couple of mouths ago I was thinking about everything I have lost and everything that has been taken from me over the past thirteen years, and over the last year or so in particular. But one thought did keep coming into my head. No matter what happens. No matter how much I lose. No matter how things turn out with one situation or another or with this person or that. The memories of the good times can never be taken unless I let myself forget them and obsess about the negatives in life instead.
Sure I’ve lost a lot that I care about. And I am bound to lose more still. But I’ll always have my memories of the good times, I’ll always be thankful for them, and it’s because of this that I will never lose my smile.
You can read the full poem here.
Prisoner Number Six
“I’m not a number, I’m a free man!”
In the sixties TV series The Prisoner, Prisoner Number Six said these words during the title sequence. They are words which resonate with almost every prisoner around the world and they inspired me to write this poem, quoting the line in every couplet but turning it around into a positive affirmation of identity.
It’s a poem I like to read back to myself every so often (when I remember) to remind myself that nothing and no one can take away the freedom of my imagination and creative drive.
You can read the full poem here.
Loss
“You only know loss when you’ve felt it.
Suffered the shadow of a gun.”
Recently I took the lead on editing a special tenth anniversary bumper edition of HMP Wakefield’s prison magazine The Signpost and, to mark the anniversary, we committed to emphasising the theme of ten.
One way we did this was to collaborate in the Creative Writing class on a set of ten poems, of ten lines each, where each line is written by a different prisoner. We called it Ten by Ten Poetry and Loss was my favourite of the poems we produced.
You can read the full poem here.
Seasonal Revelations
“Only hope stays above ground.”
I very rarely plan to write poetry in a particular form. I usually just start and the form either finds itself or it all becomes a piece of free verse. That’s something I hope to change this year. I want to write in as many different forms as possible. To experiment. To see what I like.
Seasonal Revelations are a set of Haiku (or Haiku No Renga), based upon the biblical nature of the seasons and the year. I originally wrote them for a creative writing class at HMP Frankland and I must admit that I don’t like the form all that much, but they still hold meaning for me as each year blurs into the next and time leaves me behind.
You can have a read of the full set in my Poetry section.
It’s You
My love is a pure white rose
with a single shining thorn.
