‘Thoughts’ Rather Than ‘Poems’…

I’ve done a book called Pebbles (Smokestack Books).

It’s made up of what we can call ‘thoughts’ rather than ‘poems’.

What I tried to do was grab
things that
I heard
saw
remembered
imagined
and thought about.

Each time I came up with something, I just wrote it down, often in ‘lines’ as you find in ‘free verse’ poems.

I kept each ‘pebble’ short, usually no longer than a tweet, because most of them I put up on Twitter/X.

So what happens when you string these ‘pebbles’ together?

They grow into a stream of thoughts.

I like to think of this as being a bit like the way we think.

I feel that we often think in fragments.

These fragments flow into each other.

In the past, writers have tried to express this using short sentences, even sentences that aren’t sentences in the conventional sense – with fully fledged verbs and stand-alone meaning.

They called this ‘stream of consciousness’. I like that way of writing.

What I’ve tried to do with Pebbles is approach this matter of ‘representing thought’ with these short, sharp bursts: observations, thoughts, reflections, memories.

So, for the blog this time, I’m suggesting that you have a go at doing this. One way, is to get my book, and imitate what I’ve done. I think imitation is one of the best ways to have a go at writing. In reality, we never to produce a mirror image, when we ‘imitate’. What we do is have a voice in our head and write something that has ‘echoes’ of what we are imitating. We mimic some of it but work new bits in as we write.

Another way, is to come to my event at Karamel Cafe, Wood Green, London, where we’ll do this live! It’s on November 29, hosted by the poet Paul Lyalls.

Another way, is to just have a go yourself, based on the few examples below…

Shhh, he said,
don’t let anyone know,
but the damage in me
means I’m not afraid
of anything else.
You can throw anything at me
rocks, acid, rage,
drive over me if you like,
it just won’t matter
because it won’t matter as much
as the damage.
The damage looks after me.
Shhh.

The end of the garlic pickle.
The last of the pickle.
No more pickle.
Just smears in the pickle jar
where the pickle once was.

Interesting:
all year round
people believe
what doctors and nurses
tell them,
and then
when those same doctors and nurses
want to be paid properly,
people say they’re not telling the truth.

Spring is here:
the first outdoor nail-cut of the year.
Ants – you’re in for a treat:
a keratin feast.
You don’t see that on Masterchef.

Grief is being sorry
that things aren’t the way
they were.
But nothing is the way it was.
Even in grief
we have to see
we are part of all things
becoming different.

A plumber came
to unblock the sinks.
He talked of
drains breaking
walls subsiding.
Nothing could be done.
He left.
Another plumber came
He had a hoover.
There was a roar.
He cleared it.
But what was ‘it’?
We dream of giant plugs of fat
speckled with coffee grounds.