Excited

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I always love taking part in poetry workshops and on 7 February Kevin Higgins’ online workshop kicked off. It’ll last 10 glorious weeks and I will share my weekly in poems with you when I have edited them after receiving feedback from my fellow poets and Kevin.

Why workshops are so valuable is because it’s all about helping the poem become its very best. And Kevin’s workshops are all the more inspiring because the poets are a mixed bunch from all corners of the world joined by their love of poetry.

Here’s the poem I wrote for the first week of the workshop, inspired by my frequent walks.

My Nike

She walks with wind I plod against, guides

me along the Dokkumer Ee, pronounced eh!

DURATION 11 MINUTES

AND 59 SECONDS

She knows torrential rain doesn’t bother me,

provided data show I’m about in any weather

YOU ARE NEARLY THERE

COME ON, YOU CAN DO THIS

We walk to the rhythm of the downfall

Move to the slashes on the canal.

DO A BRISK WALK

FOR 10 MINUTES

Slashes dimmer to a soft song

Drum beats to a triangle chime.

NOW COOL DOWN

I take photos of a tree, red

berries on bare branches

5-4-3-2-1

YOU DID IT

VICTORY

Your own take

The prompts are amazing too. Kevin usually gives you a poem to get your creativity going. This week it was a love poem, ‘To My Daughter About Love’ by Mila Haugová. I gave it my best in two tries and I will go back to it to work on it one day. But you know sometimes the original is so good, you just need a bit of time to create your own take on it.

So, I was struggling a bit with the direction of the poem when storm Eunice hit my hometown of Leeuwarden, the Netherlands on Friday. I don’t know about you but the sound of fierce wind drives me insane. And yet somehow I managed to settle down in the windiest places in earth… I wrote a poem called Winded.