Tag archives for Poetry
Air a’ bheinn / On the Mountain [Poetry] [Write Club]
Air a’ bheinn / On the Mountain was written for Write Club's January 2024 meeting in response to the general prompt for poetry. I thought I’d write something about the pleasures of walking in the mountains, given that’s one of the things I enjoy. It turned out to be a wee bit harder than I thought, and my second thought was to write something a bit shorter, and use my 800 day streak in duolingo learning Scottish Gaelic to see if I could write something that showed that I was as fluent as a bard (I don’t think I’m anywhere near that). Anyway, here's a short poem that looks a bit like a bottle on its side, and serves as a little bit of mountain advice for those that enjoy both the water of life and being out in the…
Hello, Hullo, Hallo [Poetry]
My daughter's writing challenge from school was to write a poem where the first word was Hello. I figured it might be fun to do this myself while she was doing it. So I wrote a villanelle inspired by both the challenge and by our current situation of keeping our social distance. This is a short poem about not being able to see the people that you love. Although I am in the house with the people that I love, I just felt it made the poem work better if the stanzas alternated like a conversation between people that were separated lovers. When reading it imagine each stanza being an exchange between two characters. The first two as a pair, then alternate until the last two are paired. No matter how much you miss people, follow the government advice for…
A Hundred Years Before [Poetry]
War Memorial in Boubers-sur-Canche, France (photo: James Kemp) I wrote the first draft of A Hundred Years Before after visiting a cemetery in France in Boubers sur Canche near Arras. It wasn't one of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries, it was an ordinary French commune cemetery, but it had over a hundred graves of French soldiers killed in action during August 1914. On reflection I realised that British soldiers, and before that the constituent nations fielded soldiers in the same place as the legions of WW1 we're currently remembering publicly. Let's not forget their forebears. A Hundred Years Before Here I stand now, near the border of France and Belgium. The cockpit of Europe. A hundred years before, others stood here. British soldiers who fought, and died, with the French against the Germans on this soil. Le sale Boche.…
Castles in the Cloud [Poetry]
I referred to the Castles in the Cloud poetry in my post about cyber warfare the other week, and only after I'd published it I realised that the poetry wasn't generally available, unless you'd bought my book Themself. So here are those poems, if you like them you might also like the book. Castles in the Cloud Laying Siege Unsuspecting users are unaware of spam silently suborning their systems. Malware lurks waiting for the one in a million. Click conscripted computers, zombies in the 'bot-net horde, pillaging user credentials and sending more spam. Each zombie sends tens of millions of emails before they too are cleansed. One day the hordes will swell, the tide sweeping away all defences. Then the zombie apocalypse will infect us all. Castles in the Sky Fortresses nestle in their own cloud, keeping out trojans. Patterned…
Hell No! I won’t go! – World Poetry Day 2017 [Poetry]
English: The RedBalloon office - an example of an open plan 'Bullpen'-style office. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) World poetry day was yesterday, and it prompted me to write some poetry on the train home. This first draft is provisionally titled "Hell no! I won't go!". The inspiration for this poetry is a proposed series of office moves to bring our teams into fewer buildings. Many colleagues have been grumbling about moving office. This is intended to be a comic take on it and bears no relation to any real reason people may have cited. All this is purely imaginary, and I hope it brings a wry smile. Hell No! I won't go! The bosses have decided. We will be better together, in a new office. The new office is where everyone will be. Enjoying their coffee, except for me, I commute…