Poetry and Creative Writing for All

Linda Howitt

Winner of our Top 5 Poets of October 2005 Online Competition

I’ve always loved writing and the way so much atmosphere can be expressed with just a few well chosen words. However, I have to confess that while I love reading poetry it is not something I paid much attention to writing until fairly recently, preferring instead to focus on a novel that I have been working on for about four years. My friends and family have lovingly (?) entitled it ‘that book’. My dream, of course, is that one day ‘that book’ will be well thumbed by avid readers.

My biggest writing success so far has been to see one of my plays staged by local group ‘No Mean Company’ to a sell-out crowd in Cumbernauld Theatre. It was an amazing experience seeing my words come alive out there and to see the audience reaction to it. More recently I discovered the Forward Press website and decided to send along the lyrics to a song I’d written while tinkering with my guitar. Amazingly this was immediately accepted for publication in an anthology (The Many Hues of Life) giving me just the kickstart I needed.

While I love light-hearted poetry, much of mine is quite dark and brooding, often coming from what I see as an injustice. My poetry generally comes from flashes of inspiration. Something moves me on TV, in a book or the melody of a song and I run with it. Sometimes it surprises me as the words tumble out. It’s not the first time I’ve been lying in bed trying to sleep when I find I have to write something down because I know if I wait until morning I’ll have forgotten what I was thinking.

Home for me is in Scotland, with my husband and two sons. There I juggle my writing with three part time jobs and the perma-clutter that doubles as a dust shield for my desk.  I also run a small business with a close friend handcrafting bespoke greeting cards.  Life is rarely less than chaotic but I manage to survive largely without reading the manuals (though I do occasionally stop and ask for directions).

I’d love to walk a million miles
To pick a purple daisy
But frankly it will never be
In truth I’m just too lazy

A pinpoint of light
Tight
In a window
Waving
Waiting for a soul
Lost
In a sea of broken lives
Flickering
As hope wanes
Smoke
Curling as it dies
Then
Nothing
But the burnt out smell
Reminding
Of a life half lived
Then lost
What price
Paid
Unasked
Leaving tears
And pinpoints of light
Tight
To flicker
Tease
And die

Dedicated to the wives of the Kursk.

The honey thickness of the air
Cloys as its sweetness
Envelopes and chokes.
The sweet stench of death
Running red in the mud,
Sticking its inky fingers
Into every rivulet,
Mingling until the lives of many
Run out as one, long, red thread.
While the ideas man,
Too important to risk
On a dangerous front,
Sits ivoried and safe,
Surgically removed and clinically detached,
His soul dead and gone long
Before the lives of those
Who fight for his wisdom.
Truth, lost in the chaos of
Neighbour against neighbour.
And as pockets line
And histories are made
The wise man swaggers, celebrates.
Patted and congratulated,
He builds his future successes
On foundations strengthened
With the congealing blood of the many
Who, under orders,
Fought the wise mans war.
Well done!
Who won?

Days End

The tide is
out and a boat drifts by
on a minimal breeze, heading
for home where distant sounds
are muted and wash ashore gently
with the lap of the surf. The warm
light reddens as the sun dips her lazy
fingers in a calm sea. Meanwhile she
gilds the high tops of the mountains
sending the forests into a shadow of deepest green; Reflecting gold on the outcrops of whinstone that break from a blanket
of heather and rough grass;
Spinning candy floss
clouds in a pale lapis sky
and then sinking to
reveal a giant golden
moon as she
sails ever
so gently
over
the far
horizon

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