Each man’s home is his castle,
so I made mine a fortress,
my sitting room a keep,
and a battlement of books
to stand watch for invaders
wielding words like realistic,
while I was carving hope
into a portcullis,
certain these walls could hold.
Tag / inspiration
Blood Always Comes With Birth #WeekendWritingPrompt
How even when we whispered it
there was someone shushing
our small mouths
with calloused fingers.
Pressing the words back inside
as if they were Ouranos
horror struck but what we birthed
in those terrible, unspeakable words.
Filling our bellies
with ideas we were not allowed
to give life to.
Until we burst from the ineffable
and held it screaming
before their faces.
Made them look
at what we’d made.
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A Little Later Than Dusk #WeekendWritingPrompt
Stung between garden fences
twilight coaxed you outside,
to the square of wilding lawn
uncut from summer’s end,
the coils of wood smoke
streaked with petrol
rising above an evening glow
of light behind closed panes
as one by one they too
flickered out.
Image by Giani Pralea from Pixabay
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Playing With Polyptotons #DVersePoets
Slipping I slipped deeper
on every word you spoke,
caught up in the letters
like giants and their fingers
pinioned and pyloned
at the edges of my reason,
they made a fence
around my certainty.
Territorial of territory
you deemed dangerous
you became guard dog
reversed.
All teeth and snarl
when I made to leave.
Or maybe that was me
biting the hand
at my collar…
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Self-Publishing: Planning A Launch, Holding The Proof
Back in June I talked about my plans to self-publish my poetry collection, in a post I called To Self-Publish Or Not To Self-Publish? That Is The Sleep Depriving Question. In all honesty, it really was a tough decision to make, and I questioned myself every time I told someone I was self-publishing because I almost always got the same response.
‘Oh, why have you decided to go down that route?’
At that point in the conversation I could point them towards the blog post where I list all the reasons I decided to go down that route.
Of course it wasn’t all smooth sailing from writing that post to finalising the manuscript. There were moments where I wondered if I was making a huge mistake and if I had made the right decision to following this path. However, today I finally felt that it was all worth it. Today I got to hold the proof copy of my poetry collection in my hands.
There are still a few tweaks to be made before I’m happy to hit that publish button. The font for the page numbering needs adjusting and I want to give all the poems one last run through for typos, but overall I’m really happy with how this book has turned out.
I have to say a massive thank you to Caroline Layzell for designing the cover, and to Helen Kay for helping to edit the collection and Deborah Edgeley for helping to blurb it.
Now I’m moving on to planning the launch night (November 30th) and finding poetry events to read a few of the poems at. The book itself should be available to buy from the 30th November onward.
It’s real, I’m holding it, and I’m very happy that I did decide to go down the route of self-publishing. I’m not losing sleep anymore.
Carol J Forrester 
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