Scribblers news

Scribblers

Sunday October 8^th from 2-4pm

For anybody who is afflicted with the need to scribble

come and read what you have written

other poets and authors would love to listen

let us gather together in friendship

At the ‘Look and Sea’ Visitor Centre

above the Harbour Lights Café

overlooking the River Arun

in Littlehampton

Email me with your questions or to say

that you cannot wait to meet us: dafbelt@outlook.com

This meeting is for anybody who has written a verse at all, ever and it is not aimed only at eggheads. You do not need to have taken any qualifications to come to the meeting. What I hope will happen, is that a few secret poets will come along and take a turn at reading their work.  It doesn’t matter how long you have been writing or if you have only written one thing, or if you have a little drawer full of poems or stories.

It matters not a jot if you have a perfect grasp of grammar or if you have never used a comma in your life. Much of my first months writing, in my drive to write a poem a day was dot and dash free. My reasoning being that I was the only one who would see it and my husband the only one who would hear it. However, should Carol Ann Duffy bowl along on October 8^th she can jump the queue.

My greatest downfall is that every now and again I set myself some complicated verse pattern like this one below today. Mostly, once I have something that I want to say in verse, I can get it done in one hit but this one had me working at it off and on every day this week. You may read it a think I shouldn’t have bothered, but it is such a subject that I wanted to be special and actually I have said what I wanted to say, and (here we go again) if it is your own poem, you can only do it in a way that you feel it needs to be written.

                                               C.R. with her Uncle Ben

Catie-Ross

Life is not always easy for new born babies,

her first year on earth, Catie-Ross showed this.

Some people thought she would never survive

as intensive care tubes invade this little miss.

Rarely possible to feel her mother’s lips kiss

as doctors and nurses fought to keep her alive.

Anxiety as treatment sometimes seems way amiss.

All ifs’ and buts’ and too many maybes.

Waiting was tough and hope dreadfully slight,  

the one permanent for the family was hope,

as push came to shove, they silently prayed.

Rarely a break from needles and stethoscope.

Operations stretched chance like a tightrope.

Parents and baby bonded through their crusade,

how can something so tiny possibly cope? 

Born with the spirit to fight her own fight.

She smiles and chuckles through every pain,

too often touch comes from a latex glove,

so unfair when desperately needing a cuddle,

private promises offered to heaven above.

Picture of innocence is this sweet baby dove

Doctors’ solemnly stand in a robed huddle.

This child survived on one thing, and that’s love

A family’s pilgrimage was not held in vain.

And here with Uncle Ross. Below is the most recent photo I have of her playing in the summer sunshine on the beach just like other children just past her first birthday.