It seems to have been a while since I last wrote an entry. Which does seem rather pathetic. However there has been a lot of personal difficulties at home over the last few weeks and this has made writing rather difficult. These still seem to be going on but we are at at last trying to put them in in a reasonable perspective. So then...poetry.

I read Alice Oswald's TSEliot prize winning poem and loved it. I read it in two sittings. lots of different voices all submerging into one voice - the river - a great idea. A poem that seemed not really to have a beginning but just wandered and flowed eventually out into the sea. There was a real sense of her capturing individual characters, her own voice minor, self efacing letting others speak.

I won't be submitting anything to Magma this time. I wrote the poem - finished it off over half term. It is a good poem but does not address the theme of alienation or separation from home strongly enough.

Now I'm busy - desperate to be honest - to get a poem out for The Troubadour. The theme is letters. I have an idea but it is so outrageous I hardly dare use it. I just can't think of anything else at the moment.

Nothing on the 15 minute slot at The Troubadour yet. I'll let you know in good time, don't worry. I've completed 4 poems since the beginning of the year. I think that is a good record, so far. I enclose one of those poems here. Enjoy.

Seven Twenty-Five

Midwinter morning,
still dark, except my head lights
boring into the blackness
and an upstairs bedroom, flood lit
curtains drawn full back, no nets,
and a woman,
her bare arms
bent over her head
brushing long blond hair
staring into her mirror,
pale naked shoulders,
her flat belly
and small breasts,
caught in her bedroom light.

She stands oblivious
of my fleeting gaze
in the cold, frost coated, street below.


© David Loffman 14 January 2003