Hello there!
Greetings from the sofa. I didn't go to work today- my first day off sick in a long time. I have been really losing my voice a lot this week, it got to the end of choir yesterday and I was struggling. As I went home, it started to hurt a lot and I spent most of the night awake, trying to swallow as my throat and tonsils felt very swollen. My stomach felt a bit upset too and I had a headache and I was struggling to speak. Unfortunately, I was supposed to be filmed teaching Year 6 for Anglia Ruskin university's PGCE course this morning but there was absolutely no way I could do a good job feeling like I did.
I feel more improved than I did in the morning but my voice is still struggling. I am grateful for the rest but I do feel guilty.
Anyway, enough of me, I'm fine!
Today is World Poetry Day. I have really had fun these past few months writing poems. I've written them over the years but in September 2022, my school was trying to introduce more poetry into the curriculum which reminded me about writing poetry. Subsequently, back in March 2023, I attended an online Children's Poetry writing workshop with an old friend from Gamelan, Kate Wakeling. It was so much fun and I really enjoyed it and I had written the odd poem over the year after it, but it wasn't till this September that I started writing more poems. There's a few reasons for this I think. The first being that , following my old blog pal, Sarah Ziman on Insta (she's a brilliant, published poet), I've seen a lot of poetry and similarly, following my friend Kate. The second was attending a poetry Open Mic night, called Testing Ground, at Bard Books in Mile End to support my friend John, who is one of the organisers. Hearing people share their poetry was inspiring but my friend John read this wonderful poem called 'Feedback' which was about a child who we both taught and the thing he said, in his pre-spiel was, Write about what you know. That stayed in my mind and as I was sitting in a tedious orchestra rehearsal in which I was tacet for 2 movements of the Shostakovitch symphony we were playing in October, I had an idea for that poetry mag, for a poem with a musical theme. I sat there writing it and then the piccolo player asked me what I was doing. I told her, rather bashfully, and she asked to read it. She was delighted by it and laughed at the 'punchline' and told me I should write some more. I then wrote that poem about the Snail-kissing incident and a few others. Subsequently, I wrote a poem for my work colleague, who likes toilet humour. He laughed out loud and read it to the entire staffroom who also laughed. I guess, the reaction and having a spare couple of minutes in rehearsals made it a good activity to do.
In addition, I had a go at submitting the odd to a free online children's poetry mag (nothing has been chosen for publication, but it was fun writing for a purpose).
I've checked and seen that I have written 64 poems since September which is crazy (don't worry, I'm not going to inflict them on you- I get, from the reaction, that poems, or my poems in particular, are not for most of the people who read this blog- this is fine but I like sharing them so I will share the odd one here and there) . I've really enjoyed writing them and since discovering The Toy magazine's Word of the Week prompt, I've had a reason to write regularly.
So, that's my current poetry story!
This week's prompt word is 'Fuzzy' and this is what I wrote.
xx