Day two of my residency went well. One more person than last week, but none of them stayed the whole three hours — which was fine by me … my brief is to write poetry while there & to interact with library patrons & to impart (hopefully) some slight dose of poeticking wisdom whenever possible. (I’m keeping notes on each session & my plan is at the end of the month to post something which looks back over all 4 sessions with a quasi-critical eye.)

But the ‘me’ time meant I could play with lots of ideas. I chose about twenty books in under five minutes just grabbing things off shelves that ‘spoke’ to me (apologies to the librarians who had to put them all back the end of the day). Then played a bunch of games based on initially, over half the covers; but eventually my interest whittled down to three or four I really liked. I have a number of pomes either in first draft or partial draft stage at least a couple of which will be fleshed out further for my performance in week 4.

So I had a solid selection to choose from today is what I’m saying. This is the one I chose:

woods: lovely, dark & deep

deep in the forest
someone has left
a circle of leaves
on the path — 55

leaves large & small
in a perfect circle
carved from silver
gems on black cloth

i don’t know how long
they’ve been like this
wind has not disturbed
them — they remain

like the promise
of a child

NOTE: image is a detail of The Promise of the Child (yes that is where the last lines came from heehee 🙂 very handy it was cos I didn’t know how to end it) by Tom Toner

NOTE 2: I also spoke to Musician in Residence, John Denley (it really is a very cool library) & he’s writing three songs as part of his time there … so next week, myself & any interested participants might find themselves contributing lyric ideas to John 🙂 Cross-Pollination, yeah baby!