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CALEB PARKIN

Poetry. Play. Possibilities.

Forming Groups, Grouping Forms

Jan 15, 2015
3 min

Forming Groups, Grouping Forms

This is the first of what I hope will be a series of blog posts to do with my post-grad course in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes, with Metanoia Institute. So I’ll be using this space to explore and expand my notes, which I hope might prove interesting for others. This weekend just gone, we looked at group dynamics and ‘form’. Here I’ll talk about the former – and come back to the latter (there is always a LOT to say about Form…). By choice or by imposition, we’re a

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Oct 13, 2014
1 min

Bristol Death Cafe

Here’s a short piece I wrote about my experience at the first Bristol Death Cafe. The next event is at Cox and Baloney on Sunday 29th November – hope to see you there. #writing #death #TEa #Bristol #CoxampBaloney #cake #Events #DeathCafe

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Caleb’s Canal Poetry Month (CaCaPoMo)

Jul 24, 2014
1 min

Caleb’s Canal Poetry Month (CaCaPoMo)

Our route from North to West For the next month, we are on the move aboard Reenie again headed back towards Bristol…Where I am starting a new job and an MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes. So I thought I would set myself a writing task: CaCaPoMo. Yes, my own NaPoWriMo. But just me, about this journey. I will do my best to post something for each day. We have made it through all 42 locks on the East side of Standedge Tunnel, through the tunnel today, and down to

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NaPoWriMo 2.30: try

May 6, 2014
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2.30: try

lizard fish bird mammal shrimp brain innit Here’s something for the last day which – (YES I CHEATED but I had nothin’ left for April, ya hear!) – was written on Saturday at a workshop. So there. I’m gifting it to April. But, as it’s my response to a prompt ‘When I Write…’, it seemed apt to finish on. And being completist, I had to have that 2.30 title up there to finish. So, finish it will – with NaPoWriMo 2014’s final… try to keep up with the pen pen with the hand hand pulle

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NaPoWriMo 2.29: Conviction

May 6, 2014
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2.29: Conviction

Twisty Tim Burton Trees… Yes, I know I’m nearly a week late – but I really haven’t had the chance up to know to be a Completist and put the last couple of NaPoWriMo efforts up. Here’s my 20-line poem in which I’ve done most of the things the prompt demanded…And was having a very flat day, as demonstrated by the rather bleak imagery. It being the end of the month last week, I was running low on inspiration and so outsourced some of it to Facebook, as well as to the rather fun

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2.28: Big Deal

Apr 28, 2014
1 min

2.28: Big Deal

The Sloth: A Big Deal (for real) Here’s my news story-based poem (using pretty much just words from the article itself). The story was from the BBC Science & Environment site and you can read it here and concerns new discoveries about the energy-saving anatomy of sloths. So I felt any sloth poem demanded to be quite short and minimal. And noticed the scientists had used the phrase ‘Big Deal’ twice. Which, for an animal so energy-conscious – many things must be… Big Deal There

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NaPoWriMo 2.25: Leisure

Apr 27, 2014
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2.25: Leisure

Your orders… Friday’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to write something using anaphora, a way of repeating the same phrase in a poem to explore and expand the different ways it might be read – and of course adding a pleasing repetition and musicality to a piece. There was an excellent article from the Poetry Foundation, which you can read here. One way of using anaphora in a technological way is Google Search Suggestion poetry, which I did a bit of last year – in this post. This time I

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Apr 23, 2014
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2.23: Mary, Mary

I’ve been at a poetry course tonight (with the marvellous Rommi Smith) and we’ve been talking about syllables. So we wrote a cinquain, a form which goes 2/4/6/8/2 syllables in each line, 22 in total… Mine was written from a postcard illustrating a well known nursery rhyme: Mary, Mary It grows From neon beds: These luminescent suns Rising in your contrary eyes So dark. #writing #creativewriting #poetry #nurseryrhymes #cinquain #NaPoWriMo #poeticform

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NaPoWriMo 2.22: Barb

Apr 23, 2014
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2.22: Barb

“Her name is Barb. She’s never shut. The one-sided sign on the door reads: OPEN.” So a ‘children’s poem’ very much in the vein of Roald Dahl or Tim Burton’s Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy (OK, maybe that’s not even for children). My partner noticed a handwritten sign yesterday (in the small town we’re presently based), advertising ‘Hairdresser’s chair for hire’ (in my head, it then said, ‘by the hour’). It was directly above a butcher’s shop. And so, with Demon Barbers in min

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NaPoWriMo 2.21: Low Angle – a ‘New York’ poem…?

Apr 23, 2014
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2.21: Low Angle – a ‘New York’ poem…?

Maybe that’s how New York would want it: rude and random. I’m not sure – but here it is, anyway: Low Angle Monday 21st April, 17.59. ‘The moon is waning gibbous. There is no interesting historical fact for today.’ Your Suzuki engine is stuck in slow reverse while you systematically, starting at A, one-way sext your contacts. Jonny Cash rumbles on, dead: ‘I hung my head, I hung my head, I hurt myself’. A one track mind one minute, ‘We’ll meet again’ the next. Fuck you, Japan,

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NaPoWriMo 2.20: Sparse

Apr 20, 2014
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2.20: Sparse

Caught up! Here’s my take on the shell name, ‘The Sparse Dove’…This one was rather fun to write. Sparse I realise there’s a lot riding on these delicate feathers, but what few of you get – well, those few that are left – is how hard it is to remain this pure, white and pristine during a global apocalypse. It’s quite a few furlongs across the flotsam and jetsam of what you fondly thought of as civilisation. (That’s not to mention those without arks, without wings this untainte

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NaPoWriMo 2.19: Stopping Above Huddersfield on a Sunny Afternoon

Apr 20, 2014
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2.19: Stopping Above Huddersfield on a Sunny Afternoon

The view from Castle Hill above Huddersfield Here’s my rubaiyat (though I think I lost the rhyme scheme in the last two stanzas – gah!), inspired by how sound carries on a bright day, above an urban setting…The title is a nod, of course, to the Robert Frost poem mentioned on the NaPoWriMo site. Stopping Above Huddersfield on a Sunny Afternoon From the great lawn below, sounds shine up: each dandelion instant, each buttercup that dots the afternoon, this warm air’s stave wi

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NaPoWriMo 2.18: Good Friday 2009

Apr 20, 2014
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2.18: Good Friday 2009

a tall empty form... Something that started as a sort of ‘mock poem’ but I thought I’d turn it into a slightly less mock-poem…Based on a little moment five years ago: Good Friday, 2009 I’ll straighten my tie, press the shaking red icon to hang up, glide a straight line towards the light coming through the door. It will knock twice only – slowly, precisely. A back-lit cut-out, a tall empty form: “Do you want any fish?” he’ll enquire. “I’m sorry,” I’ll reply, “this i

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NaPoWriMo 2.16: Pet Shop Boy

Apr 17, 2014
2 min

NaPoWriMo 2.16: Pet Shop Boy

“She’s the actual one, you know, who hooted through the hall of Hogwarts. In the film. Really.” Up to Wednesday! The prompt/challenge was to write a ten line poem in which every line is a lie. Here’s my poem, which seems to be part of the same ‘range’ of weird shopkeepers as last year’s The Pies of Awareness (a sinister existential baker) or this year’s A Charm Against Losing It As Spoken by Debonair Metapharmasista Crisby LeFross (who is, as it sounds, an eccentric pharmacis

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NaPoWriMo 15: Bloodshot Moons

Apr 17, 2014
1 min

NaPoWriMo 15: Bloodshot Moons

A blood(shot) moon. Further poetry catch-up. Here’s my terza rima from Tuesday…From which I learned that terza rima is HARD to make sense and execute elegantly. I’ve done my best! As you may be able to surmise from the title, it’s about the current tetrad of blood moons – although not in an apocalyptic way – and about eyes. (If you’re reading this and also wear contact lenses, perhaps the odd experience of looking into your eye and wiggling the plastic retina back and forth (

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NaPoWriMo 2.14: Questions To The Huddersfield Broad Canal Fishing Lady

Apr 17, 2014
2 min

NaPoWriMo 2.14: Questions To The Huddersfield Broad Canal Fishing Lady

But is she among them…? It’s a catch up day again – I’m finding that poetry gathering- and writing-binges are how I’m doing NaPoWriMo today… So here’s the all-questions-and-a-statement poem which – without knowing about the imminent terza rima (which I’m doing next) – has a similar-ish interlocking rhyme structure. The subject for my questioning poem is a lady we see fishing in the canal near where we’re moored. Fishing being largely dominated by white blokes, she stood out i

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NaPoWriMo 2.13: Upmarket Sunday Kennings

Apr 13, 2014
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2.13: Upmarket Sunday Kennings

Upmarket Sunday. Nom nom nom. Today’s challenge: to write something with the Old Norse tradition of kennings. These are a kind of compound-noun, which evoke a particular thing, ie. “Whale-Road” for “Ocean”. (I’ve also head them done with a noun and verb – “Bin-Diver” – but not mentioning the name of the thing itself.) As we went to the market in Huddersfield today for Upmarket Sunday – and had a very nice time talking about delicious things, trying delicious things and buying

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NaPoWriMo 2.12: Hilarity Crash-Lands in Japan

Apr 13, 2014
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2.12: Hilarity Crash-Lands in Japan

Or become hysterical – but do go to Japan, it’s great. Yesterday’s word adventure was to think up a concrete noun – a word for a solid, everyday thing – and look it up online. Then, the idea is to replace that word with an abstract noun – love, fear, sorrow – and see what emerges: a ‘replacement poem’. It’s a nice way of forcing an unusual perspective, a form of remote association (which poetry depends on) – wherein one has to draw together two disparate elements and seek wh

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NaPoWriMo 2.11: After Anacreon or, Loaf and Whine

Apr 13, 2014
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2.11: After Anacreon or, Loaf and Whine

Hangover evidence… Day 11: the challenge to write something Anacreon would approve of. Well, I’m not sure how much he wrote about hangovers, as it sounds from reading on him that his work was about wine and love (rather than – as mine is – whining and loafing, the day after). Still – I’ve kept to (one idea of) Anacreontic verse form of seven syllables to a line and in couplets. Which I don’t claim to make it any classier. Ah well. After Anacreon or, Loaf and Whine Ah the rust

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NaPoWriMo 2.10: Did You Use Any of Your Own Bags?

Apr 13, 2014
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2.10: Did You Use Any of Your Own Bags?

Someone else’s crackling sausage. It’s a catch-up day…I’m aiming to get 10, 11, 12 and maybe 13 on here this afternoon – eek! Here’s Thursday’s poem – which was supposed to be an advertisement, but came out as something (also prompted by 52) both to do with consumerism, identity and an overlooked object… Did You Use Any of Your Own Bags? or, The Crackling Sausage I unstuff it onto the floor, in search of the gaping chaotic drawer of childhood. This cylinder, a test tube in wh

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