INTERVIEW -EVERYDAY CREATIVITY: FINDING THE RIGHT SPACE TO WRITE
Could you complete the following: I write because… The urge has always been strong. As a child, I would staple pieces of paper together to form a book and fill it with childish scrawls. I couldn’t write yet but I sensed a kind of magic when pen met paper and felt fulfilled in doing so as my mind was always buzzing with stories. Not long after, those pages began to be filled with actual words in the guise of fairy tales. They were usually stories of witches laying curses upon villages; I don’t remember what was being read to
A POEM WRITTEN BY ZEHRA MUSTAFA AT 22 REMEMBERED 7 YEARS LATER ON THE NIGHT OF THE HONEY MOON
I was sitting here at my desk, window stretched open to its widest yawn, watching the trees on the horizon for the tiniest movement in the hope of the ghost of a breeze, but tonight, the night of the Honey Moon, there isn’t one. As I set about to get on with some work (that novel) the damnedest thing happened, I remembered a poem I wrote a long time ago. A pledge in a way, to write. I suppose my inability, be it a tired brain, shattered body but happy heart all owing to my sixteen month old, yes, sixteen
A Life Online (Published in Avrupa)
Avrupa Times A Life Online 29th April 2013 And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood, This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood, With all the numberless goings-on of life Inaudible as dreams! The desk now brandishes a muslin square, a pacifier and on my lap, a baby whose arms & legs remain contentedly animated, but wait, she is now falling asleep to the rhythm of my desk clock and the tapping of my fingers across the keyboard. How life has changed. Every single aspect of our lives has changed thanks to a beautiful twelve week
Hello Spring. Hello at last.
Life recently entails; sunshine at last and a dive into the garden with flowers planted and sun adored! Gosh, how long did we all wait for that one?! With the arrival of the sun, blossoms graced our trees, sandals made their way onto feet (not mine, I wear ,boots till June) shorts came out (the husband’s) and smiles brandished grey faces! It’s salad season as we shy away from root veg, we want greens, reds, pulses & watermelons! What else… writing at the desk with the baby on my lap, I’ve been working on an article for a week or so and
Hope, excitement, creativity…..oh and soon a baby
Time draws ever closer to the baby’s arrival, and doesn’t my body know it. I sleep in a half light, a half thought, a half here and half there mind where I have no control over my thoughts and excitement- this is all mingled by the countless visits I make to the bathroom in the night as the baby fluffs up my bladder like a feather pillow, or in my case, a foot stool seeing as our little one has chosen to remain breech (is this an insight into things to come? A naughty Cranmer?). At 38 weeks; I do
Slowly does it.
I’ve been at the desk today, desperately trying to focus on a review at hand whilst being physically propelled further away from it each week by a growing bump. The fact that I’m unable to sit comfortably for long spells as baby still insists on headbutting me in the ribs- bleeeessss-ouch! Please flip the other way baby, doesn’t help. But it’s so good to be at the desk. It’s freezing cold and yet I have the window in front of me ever so slightly open so I can inhale and feel the breeze (I’m wearing multiple layers of course). I like to hear the
Autumn…even in winter
On Friday night, I happened across this beautiful Baudelaire poem whilst hunting for the right one for a friend who had a beautiful baby boy! Congratulations Alison! I hope you manage to get some shuteye! Winter has swept through in a sudden swooshing swipe of a motion, crushing autumn like the leaves beneath our feet, so here is a lament for summer and a dread of the darkness to come. Tell me if you feel its magic too. Autumn Song by Charles Baudelaire (Penguin classics Selected Poems) i Soon we shall plunge into shadows colds; Farewell, the
Writing- or not writing- or trying to write
I seem to be passing through all three of the title’s stages! It’s dizzying, perplexing, and all over the place! And I don’t blame the baby which is not here yet, but is absolutely here, all the time and whom I love to absolute smithereens! Even writing in the diary doesn’t go uninterrupted- ‘ooh what was that?!’ A distraction is what it was- a leaf blowing in the wind, a flock of parakeets shooting across the reddening sky, the young ‘clubber’ postman passing by who carelessly lets his mail cart go and nearly swings into a parked car. My writing task at
WRITING FOR #AMWRITING- WHY I REVIEW BOOKS
I’m was so humbled when Johanna Harness asked me to do a blog post for #amwriting, and it’s up today . It’s all about why I chose to review books of all things.
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