Haiku Hopscotch

‘The Peace of Wild Things’ by Wendell Berry- The Perfect Poetic Balm for Lockdown Tuesday, June 7th 2020 Hey world! How are you all doing? I hope you are managing to stay sane in these bizarre and stressful times we find ourselves in. A lot (and I mean a lot) has happened since I last posted on this blog. My life, and most of the people’s lives who are reading this has been turned upside down in a matter of months. The world has been brought to it's knees by a pandemic thanks to Coronavirus, which has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives across the world and has forced governments to enforce strict lockdown measures to try to prevent the spread of the virus. This means that people have not been able to go out of the house for any other reason than to get food and medicine. People haven’t been able to go to school, work, shops, meet friends or family, and we are all fed up it. Here in the UK, we have been in lock down since March 23, which is seventy-six days, w...

Hey world, November is such a beautiful time of year, a time when the landscape is caught in the transition from autumn to winter...

Hey World! I got some really good news last week, I placed in a global poetry competition which is my first poetry award of that scale! The competition is called the Foyle Young Poet Award which is a global poetry competition for young poets up to the age of 18. I have been entering this competition for several years and on results day have been met with 'Dear entrant, we are sorry to inform you that your poem has not been chosen for this year's award'... But this year, my email came in with my name in the first sentence and I knew that this was finally the year that I would place. Sure enough, my poem, 'Celestial Acne' placed in the top 85! The way this competition works is there are 100 over all winners, 15 winners, and 85 commended poets. The large amount of winners was what drew me to this competition, and I am so happy that I was able to place! If you are a regular reader of my blog you will already know that my poetry is usually nature based, I am very fond...

I love September, such a beautiful month where the summer dies in Autumn’s arms with the promise of next year on her lips...

Hey world, “Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river.” -Virginia Woolf Amen Virginia.

Hey world! Concrete jungle where dreams are MAAAAADE OF, there's nothing you CAAAANT DO, now your in New York! New York! New YOOOOOOORRRRK! (Alicia Keys, 'Empire State of Mind') Two weeks ago I visited NYC for the first time and I absolutely LOVED IT! Currently I am trying to wrestle with my phone and minimal technical skills to upload pictures of me in NYC, so watch this space for updates. -A xx Central park Lady Liberty and I

Hey world, If you are needing a quote to keep you motivated, or to give you some encouragement and strength, here is a lovely quote from Thomas Edison who obviously had a light-bulb moment when he came up with this: “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to try just one more time.” Keep trying, world. -A. Heezen

Hey world, Spring is here!

Hey world! Recently I was closing my curtains quite late and I glimpsed a particularly bright constellation, the only constellation that I really know and recognise in the night sky: Orion. Ever since I was little I have always looked for him on a starry night. No matter where I have been, I always find his belt which is easy enough because they are three in a row. I find it comforting when I can look up and see him anywhere in the world, he is like my celestial guardian. There are several different stories of Orion the hunter. My favourite one is perhaps the most sanitised version as there are several myths about Orion being a rapist. However,  I am  willing to overlook this for the purposes of poetry. There is, after all, not just one story. It is open to interpretation.  Artemis, the goddess of hunting, fell in love with the hunter and, to stop her from giving up her vows of chastity, her brother Apollo dared her to hit a small target in the distance with her b...

January 13th, 2019 Hey world, Happy New Year! To celebrate the opening of the new year and all the hopes and aspirations that accompany it, I thought I would pick a nice cheerful poem about senile old people who are, for lack of a better phrase, slowly losing their marbles: ‘The Old Fools’ by Philip Larkin. Philip Larkin is renowned for his honest, intimate, lyrical and often foul-mouthed verse, the latter description bringing his famous poem ‘ This Be The Verse ’ to mind. He is also renowned for being a bit of a pessimist. Using his own poetic technique he conveys his own discontent with his existence, but he does so with elements of humour and profanity. I have blogged about Larkin before on his poem ‘The Trees’ which is one of my favorites, so if you haven’t seen that post make sure to check it out before continuing. Before Christmas someone gave me a collection of poetry which included Philip Larkin’s collection of poetry High Windows, which was the fourth volume...

December 3rd 2018 Hey world. In my garden there is a beautiful, inspirational tree. This tree, whom I have named Nox, is very special to me. Those of you who have read some of my earlier posts will be aware that I am a huge dendrophile, and adore anything with leaves. Trees, to me are incredibly spiratual things what are so much more than wood and sap. Trees capture and store excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and give off oxygen, giving us air to breathe. They regulate the climate, filter water, provide foods, medicines and provide habitats for countless living creatures. Trees are the lungs of the earth and are a fundamental part of our environment that allows us to survive. The poet Khalil Gibran shows how fatuous our attempts to make art appear beside nature: “ Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky. We fell them down and turn them into paper, so that we may record our emptiness.” Trees have a lot of symbolism and philosophy to them as well. They have appeared in mythol...

November 28th 2018 Hey world, We have made it into the cold, wet, transitional stage of autumn into winter: November. It is a time of fires being lit and the sun leaving abrubtly in the early afternoon. This is the time for thick scarves and thin trees. Taking inspiration from my grey surroundings I have written two poems about Autumn. I have been trying to reassess my poetry writing style: ever since I was little I have had the tendency to make my poems into lengthy epics that bore the readers in the first stanza. Because of this, I have been trying to condense my poems, I have been trying to distill them down into a single drop of gold. I read somewhere recently that poetry is what happens when you stop for a minute and all you do is feel. Following this quote’s message, here is what I wrote: Autumntide The sky decided to unfold its its grief for us down below on the russet November earth, our forests and hedges losing their cranberry rash and beginning to resemble a door mat...

August 20th 2018 Hey world. Last week, I took a drive through the rolling countryside of County Derry in Northern Ireland and visited the Seamus Heaney Home Place in Bellaghy County Derry. I had been looking forward to coming here all summer, and I was so excited to learn more about Northern Ireland’s most beloved poet. My family (especially my mother who is from Northern Ireland) has always been a massive fan of Seamus Heaney's work, so it was incredible to go to an entire centre dedicated to him and his work. We also visited his grave nearby. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this poet, I will provide a quick biography: Seamus Heaney was born on April 13, 1939 on a farm in the Castledàwson in County Londonderry, the first of nine children in a Catholic family. He received a scholarship to attend the boarding school St. Columb's College in Derry and went on to Queens University in Belfast, studying English and graduating in 1961. Heaney worked as a schoolteacher for a ...

Hey world! Two weeks ago, on a sweltering 33 degree celcius day in London, I had the amazing opportunity to go to William Shakespare’s Globe Theatre and see Hamlet! I had always wanted to go there, ever since I was little. As a big Shakespeare fan, both in reading and physically acting out his work for my LAMDA exams, it was a huge moment for me to finally stand facing one of the most gorgeous stages I have ever seen. The theatre is absolutely magnificent, despite it having no roof. Thankfully, I did have a seat which did provide a bit of shade as there was a balcony above me. The performance was just under three hours, so as it went on the sun gradually slid onto me. Luckily I did have a hat and suncream but that didn’t stop me from frying in the heat combined with the sunlight. The play was absolutely incredible, and the performance took my breath away. I went to this performance with my parents and my sister, and at one point it got so unbearably hot my Mum had to go out and make so...

Hey world, Spring is finally here!! I was inspired by a cherry tree that was in bloom outside my window, so I wrote a poem to celebrate springs arrival: A cherry tree in early morning. The blossoms’ magenta depths inhale the blue skies, feeling it fill their lungs, and breathe out fragrant sighs, their breath heavy with sweet pollen. The bees too are drawn to these clumps of candy-floss hanging enticingly on the twiggy limbs of the tree. The sun pries her sticky golden fingers into the delicate clusters of fist-like petals, peering into their centres as though there was some secret hidden there. The buds yawn and unfold their pink skirts in the breeze, shaking the nights dew off their soft heads. The sun, fascinated by this transformation, laughs so hard she rolls around the sky, making the clouds frown and back off, scratching their wispy heads and wondering why she is so happy. Spring dances beneath the cherry blossoms, beating her tambourine to a jig of growth, drums of the thrum...

May 2nd 2018 Hey world! The other day a friend of mine got me this book called ' Lyrics from the Chinese' by H. Waddell. It's this really old blue book with wizened, yellowing pages, but within it there is some amazing stuff. This type of poetry is more along the lines of song lyrics than poetry. All of it flows so smoothly, it's incredible to read and experience-when you read it you feel more than read. This is what poetry should do in my opinion- make you feel something deep down. Poetry makes us say what we couldn't or wouldn't say out loud. A quote that really illustrates this for me is not by a poet, but a British-Hungarian physicist called Dennis Gabor- " Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them ." See? you don't have be exclusively a poet to appreciate poetry. Peach blossom after rain Is deeper red; The willow fresher green; Twittering overhead; And fallen petals lie wind-blown Unswept upon the courtyard s...

Hey world, I have just discovered a whole new type of poetry: prose poetry! This is such a great form of poetry, it sort of combines a short story with a poem. My poems do occasionally tend to go on a bit, so when I put it into a mini story it makes a lot more sense, but still has the expressive element of poetry. I wrote my first ever prose poem this week on March 14th, and it is called Sapphire Dusk : The bleeding sun sinks down behind the horizon, trailing her bright fingers across the heavens, beckoning to the shy stars that advance towards her dying halo.The sun’s whisper of tomorrow echoes through the trees softly, as her golden head disappears. The moon’s arms loosen reluctantly, and he lets her slide down out of sight, a burning jewel on the skyline, their kiss closing the day. The moon rises slowly, and takes his place among the diamonds that are rapidly populating the heavens. Down below the stars’s midnight dance, quiet has settled on the land. The trees are still, and...