One Last Leaf

A few days ago I was working on the fourth floor of a building and feeling cut off from the world outside. I happened to look out of the window and see in the distance a tree with one last leaf clinging to its otherwise bare branches. I was struck by the mutability of leaves. I thought about which leaves let go and which cling on until the last, bearing the buffeting of the wind.

Losing leaves is a tree's strategy to survive.

In plant terms, senescence is an ordered and controlled series of events initiated in preparation for the tree's resting period. The final step in the process is called abscission. In response to the shortening day, hormones are produced that weaken the cells at the base of the leaf, forming something similar to a serrated edge. The wind does the rest. After abscission a protective layer of cells similar to scar tissue grows over the exposed area. The line of the abscission is also called the separation line.

So there is a tacit agreement between leaf and branch to lose and be lost.

 

Dwelling in Possibilities

Yesterday I completed my fifth sprint triathlon - the first one since turning sixty in March. It was just two years ago that I decided to compete in these events, after many years of fell running. My inspiration was watching the New York Triathlon in Manhattan for three consecutive years.

This is an Olympic distance triathlon that starts off with a 1500 metre swim down the Hudson River. Then it's a 40k bike ride with a 10k run to finish off. What has always impressed me is that apart  from the elite athletes, the majority of the 3000 strong entrants are "ordinary" folk of all ages and sizes just up for the challenge. There are always, too, a large percentage of competitors with one or more missing limbs who swim, cycle and run  along with the rest. I like to think that we are all dwelling in possibilities.
.

"LIVE LIFE WITHOUT LIMITATION"

 

 

 

I dwell in Possibility--
A fairer House than Prose--
More numerous of Windows--
Superior--for Doors-- Of Chambers as the Cedars--
Impregnable of Eye--
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky-- Of Visitors--the fairest--
For Occupation--This--
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise-- 

 

Emily Dickinson 



 

A Brick in The Wall

When Pink Floyd brought out their single "Another Brick in the Wall" in 1979, I had been teaching English in a comprehensive school near Southampton for three years. Anyone who had known me as a student in my grammar school in the Rhondda, would have been puzzled at my carreer choice. During my time in that institution, my behaviour was considered outrageously rebellious and I spent many lessons outside the classroom door in the long, dark corridor. I hated the mind numbing conformity and the unsympathetic attitudes to anyone or anything out of the norm.To be fair, there were one or two teachers there who were inspirational  and supportive of difference. But not nearly enough. Sadly I found this to be true throughout what became a 25 year teaching career.

So it never really surprised me that I would sing as loudly as anyone else -

"We don't need no education.
We don't need no thought control.
No dark sarcasm in the classroom.
Teacher leave them kids alone"
 
The precept primum non nocere or non-maleficence is one of the principal precepts of medical ethics. It is invoked when debating the use of an intervention that carries an obvious risk of harm but a less certain chance of benefit. To put my own spin on this, I like to think that as a teacher I "did the least harm" and hopefully did quite some good most of the time. Institutions rarely bring out the best in anyone - I suspect many of us are survivors of an education system that forced us to attend and then punished us for being present, in the real sense of the word.

I would like to thank Andrew,who contacted me today to say he enjoyed my blog. Andrew, now a writer, is a former student  of mine at that first school I taught in. He inspired me to write today as, he said, I had once inspired him. My huge relief is that neither of us were or ever will be bricks in the wall.

Poetic Forms

a Container for Creativity

 

A four week online poetry and creative writing course

exploring poetic forms

 

 

This exciting new course will provide the opportunity to:

·        Extend your knowledge of poetic forms

·        Explore how other writers have used poetic forms

·        Experiment with using poetic forms

·        Share your work and ideas with other writers

 

All resources included, as well as regular writing prompts and detailed feedback of your writing.

 

Cost: £35

Led by: Jill Teague – writer, Certified Poetry Therapist, creative writing facilitator

 

For further details contact – jillteague@yahoo.co.uk

Want to know more about Poetry Therapy ? - Radio Interview

                 I will be guest speaker on Calon FM on Tuesday, February 12th , 12-2pm 

on the Community Focus show presented by Dave Williams.

I will be talking about Poetry Therapy - how I discovered it, its process,training in Poetry Therapy and how I use it in my own facilitations, workshops and courses.

Calon FM is Wrexham’s own community radio station.You can tune in on 105FM if available in your area or listen online via their website 

                                                   www.calonfm.com

I hope you can join me.

Chwarae Teg - Fair Play



 

 

Today I took a friend to see Gelert's grave and sculpture in Beddgelert. I was told the legend of Gelert as a child. As well as being exceptionally poignant,  it is a story of outstanding unfairness.

 

   The story, as written on the tombstone reads:

 

"In the 13th century Llewelyn, prince of North Wales, had a palace at Beddgelert. One day he went hunting without Gelert, "The Faithful Hound", who was unaccountably absent. On Llewelyn's return the truant, stained and smeared with blood, joyfully sprang to meet his master. The prince alarmed hastened to find his son, and saw the infant's cot empty, the bedclothes and floor covered with blood. The frantic father plunged his sword into the hound's side, thinking it had killed his heir. The dog's dying yell was answered by a child's cry. Llewelyn searched and discovered his boy unharmed, but near by lay the body of a mighty wolf which Gelert had slain.
The prince filled with remorse is said never to have smiled again. He buried Gelert here".

 

 

The Welsh phrase for "Fair Play" is "Chwarae Teg", and is I think, deeply ingrained in the Welsh consciousness. It certainly is in mine. It must also have been in my parents' too. They taught me to play numerous games, and whether it was ludo or street cricket, their maxim was "play fairly". Indeed my father was very prone to quoting those lines from poem Grantland Rice's poem, "Alumunus Football" -

 

"For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name,

He writes - not that you won or lost - but how you played the Game."

 



Lost Glove





Hope Poetry Gloves - "O wind if winter comes..." from Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind".

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25733039@N08/3240087422/

Today was one of, if not the, coldest day of the year in this corner of North Wales. The ice was thick on my windscreen and Snowdon Mountain was completely covered in snow. It was the day of my cycling group ride from Porthmadog to Caffi Gwynant and back via Beddgelert. I put on extra layers, including thicker socks. When I arrived at the start of the ride I discovered that I had dropped one of my cycling gloves. By the time I reached the cafe I didn't know whether my hand had warmed up or lost all sensation.

I started to think about all those single gloves that I've dropped throughout my life. Running and walking in the forest I often come across "the dropped glove" and think up stories about its origin and about what the other glove is doing.

A couple of years back an artist based in the Cairngorms had an exhibition using all of the gloves that she had found in the mountains over a period of time. Also, a few years ago I went to see an exhibition by North Wales based printmaker Ruth Thomas. "One winter, Ruth collected a total of 50 dropped and discarded gloves, in a variety of materials from leather to rubber and each one lacking its all-important partner.

 

"I became fascinated by gloves because they say a lot about the people who wear them, whether it is a little child or a workman,'' she explains. ``There is always a purpose for wearing gloves and it's amazing how many there are lying around when you start looking.

``On a short walk, I could easily find two or three lone ones. Some were lying in the road and had had traffic rolling over them for days, making the fingers splayed and battered. They all have a history and there's something very poignant about that.'' In the case of Ruth Thomas's glove project, the works were given a botanical feel. After entitling her completed collection of glove prints Foxglove, Ruth gave each of them an individual name, based around the Latin term for foxglove, digitalisdigitalis (dĭj'ĭtăl`ĭs), any of several chemically similar drugs used primarily to increase the force and rate of heart contractions, especially in damaged heart muscle. The effects of the drug were known as early as 1500 B.C.
..... Click the link for .

``I made up scientific names for them all, so a child's glove is called digitalis minor and a lady's glove is digitalis matronalis,'' she explains.
``One, which was found with a finger missing and the other three sticking upright, is called digitalis pseudo-cactus, because it resembles a cactus plant.''

http://www.ruththomas.net/component/option,com_zoom/Itemid,28/catid,2/

Collagraph Print by Ruth Thomas

Here is a prose poem by Naomi Shihab Nye

The Yellow Glove

What can a yellow glove mean in a world of motorcars and governments?

I was small, like everyone. Life was a string of precautions: Don’t kiss the squirrel before you bury him, don’t suck candy, pop balloons, drop watermelons, watch TV. When the new gloves appeared one Christmas, tucked in soft tissue, I heard it trailing me: Don’t lose the yellow gloves.

I was small, there was too much to remember. One day, waving at a stream—the ice had cracked, winter chipping down, soon we would sail boats and roll into ditches—I let a glove go. Into the stream, sucked under the street. Since when did streets have mouths? I walked home on a desperate road. Gloves cost money. We didn’t have much. I would tell no one. I would wear the yellow glove that was left and keep the other hand in a pocket. I knew my mother’s eyes had tears they had not cried yet, I didn’t want to be the one to make them flow. It was the prayer I spoke secretly, folding socks, lining up donkeys in windowsills. To be good, a promise made to the roaches who scouted my closet at night. If you don’t get in my bed, I will be good. And they listened. I had a lot to fulfill.

The months rolled down like towels out of a machine. I sang and drew and fattened the cat. Don’t scream, don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t fight—you could hear it anywhere. A pebble could show you how to be smooth, tell the truth. A field could show how to sleep without walls. A stream could remember how to drift and change—next June I was stirring the stream like a soup, telling my brother dinner would be ready if he’d only hurry up with the bread, when I saw it. The yellow glove draped on a twig. A muddy survivor. A quiet flag.

Where had it been in the three gone months? I could wash it, fold it in my winter drawer with its sister, no one in that world would ever know. There were miracles on Harvey Street. Children walked home in yellow light. Trees were reborn and gloves traveled far, but returned. A thousand miles later, what can a yellow glove mean in a world of bankbooks and stereos?

Part of the difference between floating and going down.