Although I set this site up in 2011 and added very occasional posts I only started blogging regularly on this day in 2018 with this photo of a swan:

After that I fell into it at a time I was away from work and had a lot on my mind – writing here helped. At first I posted a couple of poems from my as yet still unpublished collection, but soon started experimenting with posting new poems. The first written just for the blog was (I think) this haiku, from part of a very vivid dream:

summer’s damp height, grey
dream garden beauty drips, green
my lone ghost drifts, home

A. H / K. H-H (2018)

I’ve often written just to post, sometimes whilst online, not my usual pen and paper first. That has really prompted me to write far more than I usually would. I thought I was a writer before but this really stimulated my writing and I’ve learned much from it.

At present, whilst I am trying to write more, I’m pushing myself to ensure quality, after all in lockdown I do have quite a bit more time to do so.

To mark the day another poem, partly from dream, after a very dodgy haiku I had to delete:

dreamscape

i’ve been lying in the sports field’s puddles
the school field the back field now of others
dream field bedspread a thousand eyes grey
empty and railed but for their skyward gaze
the railings drink eyelash blink imagination
awake, not one person in this field any longer

A. H / K. H-H (23rd April 2020)

It’s helped me to share process as I have gone, it has made me feel less guilty about process and less burdened by the need for product, to feel a bit playful and I don’t think it is coincidental that I finally joined Lapidus International in this time. I believe in writing for wellbeing, and agree with Gwyneth Lewis, in my case too, if I do not write it is bad for me.

This poem uses an image from a recurring dream in which a field behind a childhood home is full of puddles. Locals used it a lot for games and dog walking, but its long been railed off to stop that.

I hope to continue blogging, and continue true to process and respecting the wabi sabi, whilst also trying to do as good a job at it all as I can, as it can be good.

toni