My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads ~ Where Do I Come From? I introduced this poem you Year 7 students when I was still teaching and they produced some wonderful poems. I hope I can do it justice! Where do I come from? You may well ask. I am from monochrome photographs, […]
Tag: Childhood
Saddleworth Moor
This poem is rather dark and morbid for a Sunday morning, but I have been thinking about it for a long time. I was reminded of it by a recent article I read about Saddleworth Moor and recalled the impact the moors murderers, Brady and Hindley, had on me as a child – the personification of bogeymen […]
Childhood Decayed
My response to Margo Roby’s Poem Tryouts: More Abandoning Decades of debris Piles of dust and memories Forsaken childhood Washed up in an empty room In a ghost-town neighbourhood So much sorry silt Deposited trash and guilt Littering the bank Of the river of lost time Where childish innocence sank All that’s left behind […]
Still thinking about children and reading
Storytime Enter a deep dark forest Follow the winding trail Explore the fairy foliage Before daylight fails Hand in hand Folk and fairy tales Erase the lines between Everyday and make-believe Image found on Pinterest
Remembering childhood reading
A Reader’s First Books First impressions Of different worlds Pictures and words From a stranger’s imagination Held between your fingers Feeling As you turned papery pages Slowing down to sound out words Or read them Over and over again Flipping fast To your favourite parts Learning them by heart Shared experiences Different perspectives
The simple pleasures of childhood
Childhood Haiku Innocent pleasure Circles on a tricycle You were the axis
Remembering my dad
Dad taught me to twist with a towel, skip like a boxer with his leather rope, and give my shoes a sapper’s* shine. Dad and I rode together on the 118 bus, watched Dr No and Goldfinger at Streatham Odeon, and danced to ‘Reach Out’ by the Four Tops. His voice was boxing on the […]
Summers past
While reading a friend’s comments about rainy days on the beach, I was reminded of my childhood, when we lived with my grandparents. We couldn’t afford holidays but Nan saved up threepenny bits in a jar for days out in the summer, which she booked with a local bus company. She would take us to the […]
writing in north norfolk 