I’ve spent a bit of time over the last few months moving house and into a new State, learning more about craft, editing and marketing. Although it has taken me away from sitting at the desk and writing, the upside is that my work is improving. I know more about Point of View than I ever knew was possible and I am re-editing one of my books to look for shallowing and deepening words.

For relief from that, I’ve written a couple of poems for the upcoming Jugiong Writers Festival. The poems were both critiqued by three family members not afraid to tell me when I got the voice or imagery wrong. It became one of those “kill your darlings” episodes where I was really attached to the opening stanza of one of the poems only to be told bluntly by all three critics (independently) that it just didn’t work. I rewrote it, they were happy, so I’ll go ahead and submit it. Those of you who would love to have critical family to bounce ideas off – be careful what you wish for!

The last poem that I entered on the blog was for the A-Z blogging challenge in April last year. The 2017 challenge is only a month and a half away and I’ll have to come up with a new theme for that one soon.

For now, I’ll leave you with a poem that I wrote last year about my daughter. FYI a ‘ranga’ in Australia and New Zealand is colloquial for a red-head drawn from hair like an orangutan!

She calls herself a Ranga