Author Archives: James - Page 92
Poetry – Bloom by James Kemp
Bloom “Splash!” A roar over my head closes from behind and drowns the radio. Binoculars brought to bear, I observe the seed embedding. It grows a small orange blossom. Morphing into a larger, darker flower climbing from the point of impact. Rain patters over the iron roof as sods and stones strike sonorously. The flower is gone, dissipated in a cloud of dust, and silence returns. Notes Bloom was the first full poem that I wrote, and this is the fourth draft, which may not be the final version. It was prompted from my memory of watching artillery shells burst when training as an artillery forward observer at Warcop training area in Cumbria in 1991. On the FOO course I gave an incorrect map reference and the first ranging shell burst about 150m in front of me (the wartime safety distance is…
Book review – Casting Shadows Everywhere by L.T. Vargus
Casting Shadows Everywhere by Vargus My rating: 4 of 5 stars A dark and twisted coming of age tale with a satisfying conclusion. Told as a teenage boy's journal this breaks a couple of writing rules, it is mostly tell with little show, which works because this is a journal. There are stories through the journal of the protagonist's fevered dreams, and we get 'then I woke up' a couple of times. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, we get a good view of the inner psyche of the character (helped along by the fact that there is also a commentary on what he's learning in Psychology 101 that seems to mirror some of what is going on in his life). The basis of the story is that Jake has grown up in a single parent family. Lacking a…
How I write poetry
Before I started studying the Open University's A215 Creative Writing course I had never tried to write poetry, even though I've written several short stories and novellas. For TMA3 of A215 I had to write 40 lines of poetry. How I write poetry With one exception, which was my first attempt, all of my poems start as a freewrite on the subject, title or prompt. Normally I discard the first paragraph of the freewrite because it is overly literal, I use words and phrases from the remainder to form the basis of the first draft of a poem. Unlike my prose, where I typically draft in scrivener, the poetry starts on paper or a basic text editor. Subsequent drafts use the track changes feaure in a word processor. This allows me to see how each poem develops. Each draft is its…
Poetry Station
my desk for writing poetry I am busy crafting poetry for the third assignment of my Open University course A215 Creative Writing. Or rather I am indulging in a little displacement activity right now. However I will be back to work in a few moments. You will see from the picture of the table I'm using as my desk a number of things. Most useful being Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled which is a very good introduction to poetry that I heartily recommend. Next is the video camera that I've been using to record myself reading the poetry out loud so that I can listen back and refine it. This is my own take on poetry being about the sound of the thing, much more so than prose. I think that's what makes poetry harder for many people…
Book Review – Flames in the Field by Rita Kramer
Flames in the Field: Story of Four SOE Agents in Occupied France by Rita Kramer My rating: 3 of 5 stars While this has lots of fascinating information about SOE Operations in France in WW2 it needs a better editor. The nature of the story, primarily of the secret operations in German occupied France in 1943 and the SD penetration of the SOE network, is one of many parallel threads and the uncovering of a mystery. So this makes it hard to just write a linear narrative, and the author has done a pretty good job of writing very readable prose that clearly explains what is going on. However there are a few places where the ordering of the material goes backwards within a few paragraphs and crucial pieces of information are given out of order. The book shows an…