[Image by artist and photographer Nick Dormand]

[Found in Trump’s statement: this is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history]

[Images by artist and photographer Nick Dormand]

Anyone who reads this blog and my thoughts on the Hirsch Knowledge Curriculum – so therefore Tory a la Cummings, Gove, Gibb, Toad, the Framework and so on – will understand [so much more than ‘know’] my views.

Therefore, my pleasure in seeing this today in a Sidmouth shop window. Of course, it is about product/s, but my imagination understands it more broadly, as did Einstein.

Thanks to IT. Read the poem here.

Having misread a line in a poetry review this morning, I wrote a found prose poem based on that, and this is often how I ‘find’ my prompts for writing.

The line misread was ‘enunciating in capitalised italics’ [review here] which I saw as ‘capitalist’ [even if that is the briefest of errors] and substituted that word within an otherwise same title for my found poem.

Not that I’m presenting that poem here. The focus on ‘italics’ reminded me I had written the above poem ransom recently having been introduced by a friend to the Ransom Note Fonts site here [so given as acknowledgement but also for anyone to visit and use].

Having recently posted a creative writing resource for this Year’s ‘Vision’ themed National Poetry Day using Kubla Khan, and yesterday – unintentionally connected – my Edwin Morgan inspired poem Clear Message, I was reminded of creative writing resources I prepared for NPD in 2016 and its theme ‘Messages’.

Revisiting that work I was reminded I obviously had quite an energetic response to the theme. As ever, the ideas are based around writing List Poems and I do recommend this approach when working with students.

These don’t need a national focus on a theme and I have re-written slightly if any would like to use them now. Help yourselves:

1 Message CW Ideas

2 Text Message List Poem

3 Message to Myself Poem

4 Rescue Me Message List Poem

5 Uncorker of Current Flow Messages in a Bottle Poem

[Inspired by Edwin Morgan’s Message Clear]

Down
and
down

to a sunless delight, a
dome on waves

beneath
believing.

And in the caves
a savage beware of
symphony and song

deep
romantic
chasm
down
and
down

beneath.

And sea.
Ocean.
And sea,

huge fragments,

lifeless.

Drunk on
the milk of hills

O

O so drunk
now that sunny dome

O
cean

of sinuous rills.

Fertile ground
girdled round

with its poetic
decree:

to such a deep
I revive to
poesy.