Haadi

Exercise: 100 words on a bed you slept in as a child. The key is; keep it simple, evocative, think of using all your senses, not trying to be 'writerly' about it, rather instinctive 

Left-Behinds started as a flash about new beginnings. I've been encouraged to keep working on it, perhaps testing it as a poem. This is my first poem since I was a tortured teenager. Actually, it's two poems. But they came from one piece of prose. 

This was an opening to something that never really went anywhere, and I am wondering about picking it up again. 

All true. 

I wrote this for my friend's blog. He wanted perspectives on travel and the search for self. Subsequently I have returned to New Zealand and am making it my home. The temporal happiness of 'then' is bigger and richer than the day-to-day of now, but I had to come back and see. It reinforces the knowledge that "travel" is not real life. Still, New Zealand ain't bad. 

Based on a dream I had about two years ago I just found the notes I wrote down the morning after. Spent about 15 minutes turning them into this so really it's a flash poem for friday afternoon fun: 

I'm not a backpacker anymore, but an official person in a place I hadn't expected to stay. It's a trickier process than I expected, logistically and psychologically. 

Written for the theatre programme for a play, Red on Black, by Andrew Bridgmont . Meant to be about incursion. Criticised for try to be too clever, consequently might be souless....