All posts tagged: blogging

Ten Years Of Blogging And Have I Learnt Anything From It

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Today is the ten year anniversary of Writing and Works. That’s right, I’ve been mad enough to continue blogging for ten years. I started this site so that I would have somewhere to share my writing, and hopefully reach people who would want to read it. Since then, the site has changed and morphed slightly. During my first year blogging, I didn’t post any poems, but now poetry is the biggest feature of this site. I rarely write ‘my life’ posts these days, and most my fiction gets tucked away or submitted elsewhere. However, I went back to that very first post this morning, and though my style has evolved over the years, the core of what I was saying still resonates with me. So as I sit with pen in hand I see almost everything. It’s not the world I visit though, the one supposedly occupied by you and I, but the great expanses of kingdoms and domains that unfurl within imagination. My home is wandering among ideas and capturing in words what I …

The Year After Last – A Poem By Carol J Forrester #DVersePoets

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Squirming at the pumpkin guts, your hands scooped into ladles, spooning palmfuls of seed and sludge. We took desert spoons to the wisp remains. Raked the slick walls smooth. Marked out the features with sharpies, a wide outline mouth, hollow eyes, skeleton nose. Sawed kitchen knives through thick sick, fingers squeaking tight on the handles. This year, that kitchen is someone else’s, and the plants have not spat out anything other than flowers, their yellow blooms autumn mulched into the borders. There is no spilling through the doorway, hat and coats rain kissed into my open arms. No mud footprints on the tiles. Only seeds, sat on the shelf, kept dark and safe, for more hospitable times. My own roots deepening, on the promises pushed away till Spring. Evening has a weight,a sense of things settling down,comfort in closing.

Plan Gone To Ancient Crete #FlashFiction #WritingPrompt

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Grinning, the newsreader finished his story and muttered something half-funny to the reporter next to him. Edmund muted the sound and redialled Atlas, flicking crumbs off his armchair as the phone rang.‘Heyyyyyy mateyyy…’ Atlas’ voice trailed off.‘Problems with your connection?’ Edmund asked. The newsreader handed over to the hot weather guy, Edmund tried to remember his name, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Something like Phil, or maybe Mark.‘Yeah, the line’s bad and I-’ Atlas broke off. ‘Look mate, I’m sorry I hung up on you, I didn’t mean to answer the call, I was dealing with a bank robbery and I forgot my phone was in the suit.’‘Bet everyone still came out alive though.’There was a pause. Edmund tracked the weatherman as he indicated high pressure coming in from the west.‘You ran headfirst into a train Ed. What did you think was going to happen? The way Tulis tells it, you damn near split your skull like an egg.’‘Bruised noggin’, nothing more. Stopped the train.’‘And killed every, single passenger on board.’‘Most were …

Bubble-Wrap Knuckles – A Poem By Carol J Forrester #DVersePoets

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Fireworks popping off underneath skin,an explosions against the brickwork.Blood so bright it burns my retinasand when I dreamed I can see it,the splash, the sizzle of colour.My own fists tight as un-popped corks deep in my dressing gown pockets,buried under lint and hidden things,like the sound of bone crackon plasterboard,always plasterboard,this fuse pulled taught between my shouldersunlitand your face so dark with thunderthe crash of it in a plate on the kitchen floor,slowly starts to clear. I feel like I need to preface this poem with the fact that it is not a description of a real event, or specifically based on one real individual. We’ve had sporadic fireworks for the last couple of weeks, so if anything, those are the main source of inspiration. Right with that out of the way, here’s an audio recording of the poem, and a note to say go and check out the rest of the poems written for tonight’s DVersePoets sound prompt.

Beyond The Past And After Hours #Prosery

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‘He existed once you know?’ Janet turned from her monitor, squinted into the gloom. ‘Who now?’ she asked. The hands on the wall clock glowed faintly. Half-seven, closing time was long past and James was still bent over the archive’s central table. ‘This,’ he said, and circled his hand over the papers in front of him, ‘this all belonged to someone who existed. Now all that’s left to mark his existence are cargo lists, household receipts, and half a letter to his land agent.’ ‘That’s more than some have,’ Janet shrugged. ‘But how can someone be boiled down to so little? We look at him through the wrong end of the long telescope of time and know less than was once understood.’ ‘We work with what we have.’ ‘But it’s not enough!’ ‘It must be. We can’t turn back time, only save what remains.’   I’ve spent most of today going through history books, journals, and archive online materials to write a post about the history of witchcraft in Shropshire, so I’m feeling a little …

Shropshire Witches – Witchcraft In The Early Modern Era

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Researching witchcraft in Shropshire is similar to panning for gold when the river has run dry. These days, there is a wealth of information regarding the ‘European Witch Crazes’ of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but Shropshire is rarely mentioned. Even when Shropshire does come up, it’s for no more than a sentence or two. This lack of history can perhaps be accredited to the narrowness of the field of study. Between 1563 and 1736, less than 500 executions were carried out for the crime of witchcraft in England.1 Europe on the other hand saw 100,000 individuals tried and less than 50,000 put to death.2 Accusations of witchcraft also rarely saw just one person implicated, resulting in numerous ‘suspects’ popping up once once the accused was questions. This resulted in localised pockets of witches being discovered in certain towns and villages, rather than nationwide witch hunts. It should perhaps reassure Salopians that there is so little to find regarding the history of witches in our county, and that the ‘historical accounts’ we do have are …

Trickle Down – Working On Writing During Lock-down

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At the start of this year I was planning on which poetry events I wanted to go to in order to publicise my new collection ‘It’s All In The Blood‘. I managed a few local ones, and had a slot booked to perform at a Ludlow poetry night, right at the beginning of March. Then 2020 hit its stride in the UK.  Flooding meant that I wasn’t able to get to Ludlow, and lockdown meant no more poetry nights. What was supposed to be a year of poetry and readings, turned into four months of searching for new nooks and crannies in the house to reorganise. Of course I started off with the best intentions. I was going to finish my novel, work on my next collection of poems, and submit to every journal and competition under the sun. I did work on my novel, and I did write a few new poems, but I’m not close to finishing either project. Submission went very much the same way. In fact I’ve spent the last two …

What Power There Is In A Name

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When I thought about it there was no memory of your name being slipped to me. Just the taste of it on my tongue and a certainty for the syllables chanted into my pillowcase when my head found home and I wished you there. I had to delay getting across to the pub tonight, as I was taking part in another poetry event with some local poets from my neck of the woods. It was done through Zoom and streamed live to Facebook (not without hiccups). I’ve included the link below for anyone interested. It might be fun to try and set up a dVerse zoom night perhaps? I start reading around the 51 minute mark, however the video is a bit choppy and my inability to listen to myself without cringing, means I’m not 100% on what the audio is like.    

Is This Deity A Goddess Or Witch?

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I tried swearing at the garden pond, to see if I could goad a water witch into dredging herself up at at ’em with enough pissed off vengeance to take at least one body down. I wasn’t decided on who I wanted, squealing in her webbed, wet grip. Half-thought if she came I’d go, grab her right back with both hands, test to see if she tasted stagnant, or like spring water breaking free after centuries underground.    

One Size Fits All In Broken Tartan

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For a while I wondered if my grandmother was magic. You see she would talk about the night she spent near Culloden. How my grandfather slept on sound, and she was tossed through dreams of screaming men. The English and their guns, against the all those clansmen, come to die. For a while I believe she’d walked the battle in her dreams. The tartans, like welsh (for a while) were outlawed to break that spirit. Make them less like them, and more like us. Then they only rise against themselves. The English are very good at making adversaries of themselves. When a friend shows me her family tartan, there was a plucking sort of feeling. An ache for a history only half understood, and twice removed. I could find it, put it on, but somehow I doubt I would fit. Not enough of the right stuff in me, to tie me into the pattern. Made me wonder how much of myself I can claim. The loch waters rose and I saw my own face there …