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Website of poet Elizabeth Rimmer


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  • NaPoWriMo – the score card

    Well, April was a busy month! As well as Easter and the Dark Mountain Writing Weekend, there was the Easter holidays and the spring garden work to contend with. All this, and NaPoWriMo too! Unsurprisingly, I didn’t make a poem a day, but I did manage 24 poems. Most are still in first draft form, and a lot of them are haikus, but still—.
    Here they are:

    • About to Get Lost
    • After Visiting Time
    • And So Today
    • Anda Union
    • April Rain
    • Border Fells
    • Buzzard Poem(s)
    • Change in the Weather
    • Chant for a New Start
    • Dum Y At
    • Grey Mug
    • In the Fields
    • In the Woods
    • King of the Birds
    • Land-Chant
    • Murmuration
    • Nettle Shirt
    • Plantation
    • Primroses
    • Ruined Abbey
    • Starling Walk
    • The Way We Live Now
    • Wind Changing
    • Wood Violets

    Some of them will probably be combined to form longer pieces, and at least one poem will probably develop into at least two, so the final total may be as few as fourteen, but really, that’s not bad for a busy month! The experience of doing NaPoWriMo has been a very good one, not only providing me with a lot of material to work on, but also a great confidence boost at a time when I was beginning to falter. I think the Dark Mounatin Weekend which I blogged about last time was crucial in this – I came home with the bits for ten poems out of three days! I’ll put up some pieces here, but the longer ones will be saved so I can submit them elsewhere, as even the most limited appearance here can be counted as ‘previous publication.’

    Anyway, thank you to the people who organised the whole project, to the poets and family who encouraged me to take part, and especially to Jo Bell, whose prompts were unusual, imaginative and truly inspiring!


  • Rain!

    Most of the garden seems to have been in suspended animation lately.I’ve been looking at the rhubarb for a month, saying “Another week will do it!” with no result. On the other hand, the primroses are thickening up nicely,

    and the whole spring border seems to have made a step forward.But everything was getting very dry – an odd thing, after all the rain last year – and despite the gathering cloud, the dropping pressure and the humidity, it never rained. The wind remained in the east, and it was cold.

    This morning, though the wind remains easterly, it has rained – half-hearted drizzly mist at first, but now genuinely wet stuff. I’ve just been out to water the greenhouse, and it smells wonderful!

    There’s been very little gardening lately, what with the frost, my arthritis and my daughter’s illness, but I’ve been keeping up with NaPoWriMo – more or less, and so far I’ve written:

    • Nettle Shirt
    • Dum Y At(haiku)
    • Ruined Abbey
    • MurmurationHaiku)>
    • Opening Autumn
    • You Will Get Lost(from a prompt from Jo Bell)
    • Primroses(haiku)
    • Chant for SpringPrompted by Jo Bell, again

    And the new issue of Stravaig is now online. I don’t have any poetry in it, but there’s an essay about my territory, and a review of last year’s Dark Mountain anthology – a beautiful book, with an awful lot to say.


  • NaPoWriMo Day#5

    Anda Union

    Music from the grasslands.
    Thousands of horses
    will gallop through my dreams.

    I never meant to write so many haikus this month! But we’ve had to deal with an acute episode in a family health situation, and I feel very fortunate to be able to grab some quiet time to write anything at all! Anda Union is the name of a Mongolian band we heard during Celtic Connections. It was a wonderful night, not least because it took place in the Gllasgow Art Club, a venue of unbelievable elegance. Do check out the website – there are clips of their amazingly rich and complex music on it. Ever since then I have wondered how Scottish music relates to our landscape and our sense of home – wind music? rain? the sea? What do you think?



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