The Tremor Poem

Hello to anyone who is reading this.

You will find below a poem that I wrote for a homework 'assignment' from a good couple of months back now. It was not long after that earthquake hit us (I slept through the whole thing) and with it being a fairly recent event it was suggested that for our 'homework exercise' we write something to do with tremors. I did my usual trick of waiting until the day before the following meeting before bothering to try and write something to take along to the meeting to read out and ended up knocking this poem out in about half an hour before I went to bed. I decided to look at the concept of a 'tremor' in a more metaphorical than literal sense - as you will see when you read it I'm not actually going on about an actual tremor from an earthquake. No, I'm going for that old 'I saw the love of my life and the world shook' kind of angle. 

To be honest, I don't particularly care for this poem (it's all too obvious that it was a rush job) but someone in the group who has read it (and shall remain nameless) keeps telling me to post it on the blog. So now I have. And I suppose it is about someone I knew. But it's probably one of those subconscious autobiographical inflections that enters most people's writing. Or so I think...

Anyway, enough contextualising/jabbering, here it is:

TREMOR

As your eyes caught mine

I could have sworn

The earth shook with a tremor

Or maybe it was just me

My heart palpitating

When I looked at you

As you spoke to me

I could have sworn

The earth shook with a tremor

Or maybe it was just me, again,

As my voice quivered

Saying those 'three little words'

As you walked away

I could have sworn

The earth shook with a tremor

Or maybe it was just me, as ever,

As tears flowed

And my heart broke

Written by Andrew Marsden

This year's competition theme:

"THE GAMES"
Our competition this year launches in June, watch out for the date, and the list of prizes, which is better than ever!
You do not need an A level in English to enter, only the ability to express yourself either in a story or a poem. Just get a piece of paper and a pencil, start to write and set your imagination free. See what appears on the page before you.
Examples;
The Olympics/ Football/ Games you played as a child/ Mind games/Electronic games/Fairground games/ Card games.
No more than 2000 words.
Good luck to all who enter!

Congratulations to our competition winners!

Well done to everyone who entered our competition on the theme of Space, the winners were Martyn with his story 'Space-The Final Void', Jillian Farren with her poem 'Lost In Space' and Ben with his poem 'Fly a Rocket Out to Space'. All received their book tokens at the presentation Here is Jillian's poem:

Lost In Space

I could fall into the spaces between your words

And slip through the gaps

As though meanings were floorboards

With their chinks like mouths lying in wait

Hungry to swallow me down

Into the half lit world beneath

Full of dust accumulated through years of silences

To drown in the depths of indifference

Spaces stretch out

And words lose their way

In their solitary track

Lost in a wilderness of words

And the spaces between

A communication gap

That we both fall into

But not together in the same place

Different worlds that sometimes touch

Orbiting each other in our lonely circles

Sometimes approaching

Sometimes retreating

Two separate bodies

Lost in space



Due to an administrative problem we are, at present, unable to post any more of the winning entries. We shall hopefully be able to rectify this situation soon. Hopefully Jillian's superb (now officially 'award-winning') poem will whet your appetite for more winning entries. Keep checking this blog for further posts!

Hello and welcome!

Hello there. We are a writing group based in the Wheatsheaf Library in Rochdale. We meet every other Monday at 5.30 until about 7.15. The next meeting, for anyone interested in coming down will be on the 12th Jan.2009. We meet up and discuss writing issues (you know, like how to get inspiration and any competitions we have heard about and stuff like that!) and we also do 'homework' (but don't worry it's voluntary! We won't yell at you if you don't do it!) to get us writing. Tea and coffee and biscuits are served too!