Of salt and gold

Spent yesterday evening and this morning sorting out the first forty poems of my meditation series for an upcoming chapbook. I've decided on a provisional title of "Salt and Gold", which popped into my head while I was reading through the work. I rather like it, but I'll see if anything else comes up. So I've submitted to four possible poetry chapbook publishers and, if they don't want it, I'll go for the self-publishing option as usual.

And speaking of poems, here's this morning's offering (which, due to its numbering, won't be appearing with its friends just yet):

Meditation 45

Where is your treasure?
Your flesh burns

with rubies, emeralds,
carnelian, amethyst

held by a single blue cord:
what you think

your life should be.
Find first

where you laid your heart,
breathe in

its long-remembered richness.


Lord H and I have spent the rest of the day in London having lunch and seeing the matinee performance of Twelfth Night. Not my favourite Shakespeare play ever, but it was pretty damn good, I have to say. I loved it. Derek Jacobi was outstanding as Malvolio (a part which, I feel, always tails off somewhat in the second half ...), and Orsino was pretty hot. My dears, we must get ourselves to the London theatre more often, you know. It's a different world out there ...

And I've had another rejection for The Bones of Summer, which is rather upsetting. These things always dent the confidence so. I've decided I'll give it to April to see if my other possibilities for print publication might bite, at which point I'll try the remaining two I have in mind. If that fails, I'll try eBook only publishers, as that may be the best option for this one. We'll see. As you can see, I'm trying to keep my spirits up. That's the trouble with a sudden bout of confidence and submission frenzies early in the year - the rejections one then receives are so much more numerous. Sigh ...

Anyway, tonight we've watched the Jesus the Jew (interesting but it rather overstated as a case for the actively evil Christian, I feel. Surely we'll all just human? Jew and Christian alike. Though I did love the idea that Christians need to rediscover the Jewish nature of Jesus, and Jews need to reclaim Jesus as a great teacher. Inspirational indeed). And of course there's the glorious Larkrise to Candleford. I loved the way the wonderful Dorcas lost the election but won the battle. Fabulous ...

This week's haiku is:

A quiet winter.
I lay my heart deep in earth
amongst daffodils.


Today's nice things:

1. Getting the chapbook together
2. Twelfth Night
3. TV.

Anne Brooke
Anne's website - a delightful concoction of salt and gold, naturally