Month: November 2025

23 November: Ten Things of Thankful

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Ten things for which I give thanks this week…

1 – The sun is shining out of an all-blue sky today, in the midst of a run of rainy days…

The beautiful Silver Birches in the churchyard behind our house shining out against the blue…
Shafts of sunlight illuminating the Willow tree, which for some reason, is still wearing its Summer clothes…

2 – My rapper Grandson was up for a couple of days as he had a gig in Leeds and on Friday I cooked a sumptuous vegetarian curry feast for him and his cousin, and his girlfriend, which went down very well with all!

3 – Grammarly believes in the Oxford comma – yayyy!

4 – Barbara managed some housework and washing-up on two days!!!

5 – I have finally finished the list of topics for my A to Z 2026 which will be on Fabrics

6 – I therefore moved on, to step 2 – making some samples of weaving to illustrate the A to Z.

Using a loom made by a toy company in 1957, but which is nevertheless a fully functioning loom, Iprooduced this sample of Plain Weave at bottom, and Twill Weave at top. Twill is what characterises Denim, for example. The eagle eyed crafters amongst you will see that the tension is gradually curving the sides of the piece inwards – rooky tension error… Well it was my first ever weave!
Plain Weave – blue cotton yarn weft on red warp.
Twill Weave.

7 – I have bought a Christmas present for Barbara – in recent years, we have eschewed giving presents to each other on the grounds that we have most everything we might want but this year, I decided to rebel…

8 – Grateful to be doing this gratitude paractice and for all the kind comments it garners…

9 – I have had two poems accepted by GAS: Poetry, Art and Music, which will be published on Christmas Day!

10 – Barbara’s eldest daughter is on a solo trip to Bali for three weeks – she has been estranged for much of the last year, but bridges have been mended and we shall see her at Christmas…

A very good week ahead, to everyone!

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23 November: Ten Things of Thankful

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Ten things for which I give thanks this week…

1 – Snow was forecast this week, and sure enough, it came, but I was grateful it was just a dusting on the hills since it was a drive to work day…

The view from our kitchen window

2 – The weather forecast also alerted me to wrap the olive tree against frost, in good time, so we are now stuck with this ghostly shrouded prescence for the Winter…

3 – A giant toddler has been let loose on the sky with a white crayon – anyone remember Harold and the Purple Crayon?

4 – Last weekend I was in our local town, Keighley, and saw this shop window, and as you know, I love repetition and took the first shot, but then went inside for more repeated ballas of wool. However the best bit, was I got talking to the shop owner who turned out to be a mine of information about fabrics and I mercilessly picked his brains (he was delighted – really!) for my A to Z upcoming in April, on the subject of Fabrics. He was made redundant in the ’80’s, and turned to recycling waste from the fabric mills around Yorkshire – cardboard and polythene, obviously, but also waste fabric pieces. He started sorting the latter and sold them back to mills that reprocessed them and included a percentage in new yarns. In ten years, he went form having £200 in the bank, to £100,000! Where there’s muck, there’s brass! Best of all, he alerted me to the fact that so many fabrics are “Warp knitted” as opposed to older weaving techniques – think T-shirt “Jersey” material…

5 – It was my day to take the Micro-biology samples from work, for testing at a firm at Luddenden Foot, in the Calderdale Valley. I always love this drive and the drive home “over the tops” and this Thursday it was crisp, sunny with blue skies and mercifully, there was so little traffic, I was able to dart into the little quarry/layby on the wrong side of the road and take the following pictures and a video. It is one of those spots where you could point the camera in any direction and get a beautiful shot as proved by the panoramic video.
If any of you want to come and live in “God’s own county!” (Yorkshire) – you would be most welcome…

And further up, emerging onto the moors, this Wild Rose bearing rosehips…

6 – And no Ten Things of Thankful without a texture shot, this week, Autumnal, frosty leaves…

7 – We had a most enjoyable hour reading our poems at the dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night Live session yesterday – read a poem about COVID lockdown in Crete, where we were fortunate to spend 6 months out of harm’s way… https://how-would-you-know.com/2025/11/this-is-crete.html

8 – Our new business (by which I mean my boss’s family) – a Self-Storage facility, opened without mishap this week and we had the first customers! I did various bits of design in the run-up and may pop in to give a hand as it gets busy…

9 – Beverley had her birthday and was delighted with the brightly coloured inside, unglazed outside Tapas bowls I bought for her in Aldi six months ago, you have to buy then when you see them as when they’re gone, they’re gone…

10 – Despite her depression, Barbara has taken charge of buying Christmas presents for the family and has almost completed the task!!!

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This is Crete…

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We wake up to air as clear as water
sit on the terrace under the Carob tree
as the shadows move across the mountain
whose spine looks like a sleeping dragon
warming its reptilian blood in the morning sun
waiting its moment to arise and shake itself
free of olive groves, villas, and prickly pears

Plants are waging a defensive war
against heat and drought and hungry creatures
not only cacti, but the cups of Mediterranean
Acorns are tough and scaled with prickles
and dark green gloss or pale silver green
dress the trees from Olive to Eucalyptus

The absence of people, as Cretans
hide indoors in COVID lockdown caution
makes us feel like the last people on earth
as we drive the back roads where we are scarcely likely
to be caught by policemen sleeping somnolent in their station
in the Winter midday hour – blazing fierce, this close to Africa

No tourists to disturb the hibernating hoteliers
piles of nested chairs congregate in corners of kafenio courtyards
but supermarkets still shelter cars from the sun
while masked customers complete their weekly shop
but masks don’t stop the swapping of sparse gossip
at the open-air market—fruit and vegetables piled high as ever

This is Crete in COVID lockdown Winter
hotter than a British summer and dry
except for the occasional storm when Greek gods play bagatelle
bouncing thunderballs around the mountains
and drenching the lands in torrential rain
flash flooding the dry gorges and riverbeds

We steep like teabags in the many moods
from spectacular sunrises bursting up from cliff-bounded sea
sunrays angling through the odd cloudy day
resting tourist boats on the sparkling bay
awaiting their turn at the boatyard beauty parlour
purple bloom on ripening black olives

Family bubbles emerge for the olive harvest
for some things in life must go on as normal
and for a few weeks, the groves are as busy
as the centipedes that appear each morning on the terrace
– there is knocking down of olives, bonfiring the prunings
blueing the air with smoke plumes – testament to the busyness

And afterwards, the empty garden chairs doze off again
underneath the olive trees…

This is Crete

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Jennifer Wagner, hosted by Grace in Poetics, invites us ti write about Local Wonders in the shadow of Ted Kooser’s poem – So This Is Nebraska

16 November: Ten Things of Thankful

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Ten things for which I give thanks this week…

1 – As touted last week, we were “baby-sitting” Bev and Don’s young Border Collie – Winnie. With my hip grumbling more and more, I chose little and often walkswise and here is Winnie on a long training lead going round the churchyard (our house in the background)

2 – The good thing about walking a dog is that you go places and see things you might otherwise miss…
The bright berries wrapped around thegate pillar of the Old Vicarage caught my eye…

3 – Also this unseasonal Blackberry blossom – you’ve got ot hand it to nature – it does try…

4 – My Grandson, Dillon and his girlfriend, Izzy, arrived back from several months travelling in France, Spain and Morroco, safe and sound , and came over to take Winnie home after just 24 hours. Winnie’s enthusiasm for playing indoor fetch with an unfortunate soft-toy squirrel was inexhuastible and so it was a relief to let her go…

5 – Not on of my textures (though it could be…) but another thing I like to photograph – repeated patterns – in this case a batch of Oreo set Cheesecakes at the factory awaiting boxing up. I’m aware that in the World Heritage site – Salts Mill, the “museum” room, whatever facts and pictures of the mill it has, has not got a single piece of the fabric that was made there and these cheesecakes are destined to be equally ephemeral…

6 – I inherited this pot containing both Easter and Christmas Cactus from my late mother, although neither one blooms at the time of their eponymous festivals. Now the “Christmas” side has it’s turn. I would really like to repot them not so much because they have been in the same soil for decades – Baby Bio in their water keepd them healthy, in fact so healthy that I have had to raise the pot higher and higher because the leaves and flowers are trailing on the ground. I dare not repot them anyway, because the plant is fragile and leaves and more are easily broken off and besides, they are in a terracotta pot which I would have to break since I can’t envisage turning the plant upside down… Perhaps the maxim “If its not broken – don’t fix it!” comes into play and just keep raising the pot higher…

And flanking it are two money trees – one from my late sister – the grove on the right, and my choice of form – a single trunk at left – what’s your preference…

7 – The cat is still holding off it’s predations in the garden…

8 – I have finished my poem for the real-world Keighley Poetry Group which this month is on the subject of Kettle[s]

9 – Since Dillon and Izzy have asked me to teach them to paint (inspired by all the wonderful things they have seen on their travels) I ordered a (seconhand) book which I had but got lost along the way Thames and Hudson “A Concise History of Watercolour” and it has been like being re-united with an old friend… The pictures were (and still are) an influence on what I like to paint…

This one, by the American atrist Whistler, who did great work in England, has the abstract form in all its rectangles whilst still being completely realistic and this has led me to love doing paintings of doors and views through passageways…

10 – manged to fill my Ten Things of Thankful…

Neverland 13 to Mildly Nova 18

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Friendship

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What is the pot of truth to which we cleave?
Friendship is the balm that gets us through life
Soothes us when injured by all means of strife.

Whatever injury makes us now grieve
– For upsets and perils are always rife
What is the pot of truth to which we cleave?
Friendship is the balm that gets us through life

So turn to your friends and never you grieve
Be you troubled by husband, children, wife
True friends cut through troubles like a sharp knife
What is the pot of truth to which we cleave?
Friendship is the balm that gets us through life
Soothes us when injured by all means of strife.

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft invites us to write a Chaucerian Roundel with the following form:-

  • 13 lines
  • 3 stanzas divided into 3 lines (tercet); 4 lines (quatrain) 6 lines (sestet)
  • rhyme scheme: A B1 B2/a b A B1/a b b A B1 B2
  • usually 10 syllables per line as iambic pentameter

Postscript! – I wondered if there was a translator app. for Chaucerian (Middle) English and there is at https://openl.io/translate/middle-english
Here is Friendship translated…

What is the pot of soth to which we cleven?
Frendshipe is the baume that bringeth us thurgh lyf,
It soothen us whan we ben hurt by alle manere of stryf.

What so ever harm maketh us now to grieven
– For distresses and perils ben ever ryf,
What is the pot of soth to which we cleven?
Frendshipe is the baume that bringeth us thurgh lyf.

Therfore turn thee to thy frendes and never thee grieven,
Be thou troubled by husbonde, children, or wyf,
Trewe frendes sheren through wo as with sharp knyf.
What is the pot of soth to which we cleven?
Frendshipe is the baume that bringeth us thurgh lyf,
It soothen us whan we ben hurt by alle manere of stryf.

Round the Bend…

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I might even have dipped my toes
In the water of surfing
if I’d just stopped working sooner
left more time to get to Knock airport
if I’d chosen the main road instead of the back road
if I had been travelling slower
even though the road was dry
if the farmer had trimmed the hedge
on the blind bend
if the tractor was not pulling a wide trailer
if it hadn’t rained two days before
if the drain under the road wasn’t blocked
if I hadn’t braked just where
the water flowed across the road
if the van hadn’t skidded on the slick
I wouldn’t have worn this splint
for twenty-five years
I might not have done some teaching
I might not have become a draughtsman
I might not have moved back to England
I wouldn’t have opened that restaurant
joined choirs, made frozen yoghurt
made this house out of a stable
lived this life beyond the bend…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Melissa Lemay in Poetics invites us to write about pivotal moments in our lives…

My 2025 Poetry Postcard Festival Exhibition…

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There are two major blogging challenges that occupy my year, Te A to Z Challenge and PoPoFest and each year of each Challenge/Festival, I seem to heap ever higher expectations on my particpation, and this year has been no exception! For the postcards, I like to make my own and so in 2023, I used favourite photographs I had taken, in 2024, AI generated images that hadn’t made the final selection for particular projects but which were good in their own right, and for 2025, I decided to revive my very intermittent painting skills.

I have painted since my teenage years, which you can read about in this year’s A to Z here. However, whi;st I spent much of my life in applied arts, signwriting, graphic design and the like, pure painting languished – how many times did I take my paints on holiday only to bring them home unused – so making at least 31 postcard-sized paintings (in the end I did more for bonus cards sent to me on the International List) was a challenge. I produced about 4 on most weekends through July and August, sometimes working on 2 at a time as each dried. Many were watercolour, many acrylics, some mixed, and one pencil drawing.

I’ve decided to post them in a single Exhibition post (Exhibit if you’re American) together with their handwritten (excuse the writing, please) poems, which according to the aims of PoPoFest, are to spontaneously write an epistolary poem to a stranger, preferably one which references the image on the postcard. I blew up photographs from years past, which I had hoped would make paintings and in particular, pictures from Crete where we spent 6 months during lockdown in 2020 – enjoy…

The sky here is watercolour, the rest acrylic, but even in this scan, it’s possible to see the greater luminosity of watercolour…
Watercolour, which enables the “tunnel” to glow with reflected light
Watercolour
Watercolour – the subtelties of the sky didn’t scan well…
Watercolour
Watercolour
Watercolour. The link is https://www.rte.ie/archives/2016/0729/805794-yeats-summer-school/ where you can see me painting a mural of WB Yeats
Watercolour and gouache on yellow, Elephant dung paper (I like its absorbency)…
Watercolour on buff, Elephant dung paper (this colour paper was a little too absorbent – too grabby)…
Watercolour with masking fluid. There should only have been 3 rails but I painted along the horizon line by mistake!
Watercolour
Pencil
Acrylic and watercolour on yellow, Elephant dung paper.
Acrylic and watercolour on yellow, Elephant dung paper.
Watercolour. The challenge here was to give the headland 3 3-dimensional form and not just make a flat cliff…
Watercolour
Watercolour
Acrylic
Watercolour
Acrylic
Watercolour
Pencil, Watercolour, Acrylic.
Watercolour
Acrylic
Watercolour
Watercolour
Acrylic. This allowed the nearly dry brush technique to create the reflections on the water.
Watercolour
Watercolour
Acrylic
Watercolour
This is the same subject as the previous painting but done in acrylic.
Top left is the photograph from which I made 3 different paintings…

08 November: Ten Things of Thankful

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Ten things for which I give thanks this week…

1 – After a pretty rainy week, Saturday morning dawned sunny…

2 – The reservoir above the village is now brim full, although the Yorkshire hosepipe ban is not yet lifted, it shouldn’t be long 9not that we need to water now lol)…

3 – I am always grateful to live in such a beautiful place and so, the sun out, I went up to “The Nab” to take a photo of Silsden village for you…

This is the reverse of the view from our house – The Nab is at top left…

And turning the camera round, here is the outcrop of Millstone Grit that forms The Nab. And yes, there is a quarry up there where agricultural workers with little to do in Winter, would carve millstones, water troughs and the like, out of the rock.

Whilst I was up there, a fog bank rolled in below me to the right…

And one more shot…

4 – Gratitude my daughter’s quite young Border Collie, Winnie, is sweet-tempered and settles down after initial excitement at greeting a visitor, quickly enough fo next weekend we shall be baby-sitting her at our house…

Winnie

5 – By dint of Harrisa pepper, Dragons teeth deployment of sticks and thorny rose clippings, I seem finally, to have deterred the nameless cat who has been scratching in my bulb containers…

6 – I finished the very last task of my Poetry Postcard Festival participation for this year – a Cento poem using lines from each of the 43 poems on a postcard I received during July and August this year – it’s the post before this one, here on the blog…

7 – My friend who runs Collaborature – an online journal for collaborative poems, and I, have now topped 1,000 lines of what is turning into a novella written in Pushkin or “Onegin” sonnets after his book Eugene Onegin. You can read our epic “Shipmates” here.

8 – I shall have a busy but different week at work since my bosses are opening a self-storage warehouse in an old office building and they want me to be there for the first week to help get it running.

9. My grandson Dillon and his girlfriend Izzy, will be living at home with their parents Bev and Don in the next village, Addingham for the next year, having spent the Summer touring in their small camper van. They have asked me to teach them how to paint which will be fun…

10. Grateful to have been inducted into The Hall of Hostinae of Ten Things Thankful and for all the lovely messages of welcome from you all…

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Destruction and Redemption

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Poetry Postcard Festival 2025 Received Postcard Cento

I: Destruction

People are waking in the night
hearts racing, blood pounding
dreams, fantasies, deceptions, escape
The future is – unexplainable
I try not to disturb them
when I slowly reach my hand toward
the culture that informed my values…
Cruel and crude, greedy old man
— shouting, destroying
the Bad King who demands from him,
the Good Kingdom
his world has become much smaller
a pretty close second
Puppets! Who is pulling the strings?
Like my heart, they did not weep
another missed connection, warped, failed
shouting colour into gray
streets where no one listens
the beauty of the Badlands

We know so little – despite knowing so much
Consumption society has chewed up
spit out this vast and beautiful continent.
transported in cardboard boxes
to lockers at Hub Food
discouraged now as our progress is torn down,
a government being dismantled
thinking then it can’t happen here. But it does
I’m not sure there is enough of me today
bobbing movement of nature
you are missed daily
somewhere unknown,
another world away;
it was there
….no more
what if I told you
still, I hope for forgiveness…
the suggestion of brokenness
the promise of wholeness
we are all a part of everything
– I can’t help hoping

II: Redemption
if humans could fly,
would we ever walk?
around my imagination
whatever you want’s okay!
I close my eyes
and breathe in fireweed
your magic encapsulates me
waiting for the perfect day
that clear blue sky
is here year round
stairway to heaven
sun drops sparkle air
to reach, always, for the light
someone is thinking of me
remembering gratitude’s
call to learn what
was above and
below
today’s sun reluctantly begins
to set…

Poets and lines:-
Penelope Moffet 1-2, Jerrold Narland 3, Kerfe Roig 4, Susan Montgomery 5-6, Lawrence Pevec 7, Nancy R. Parr 8-9, Emily Bernhardt 10-11, Anon. 12, Grant Swados 13, Margie Ripperger 14, Anon. 15, Akua Lezli Hope 16, Jeannine Jordan 17-18, , Mary Mueller 19, Cassandra Bissel 20, Suzanne Harris 21-22, Karen Keltz 23-24, Ruth Vanklstine 25-26, Laura Gamache 27, Anon. 28, Lulu 29,  Dava Wharton 30, Margaret Roncone 31-32, Rebecca 33-34, Muriel Karrr 35, Lisa Humphrey 36, Anon. 37-38, Nitya Prema 39, Karen Loeb 40, Amy Leonard 41-42, Donita Ries 43, Sandra Gadjewski 44, Diana Kolpak 45-46, Margaret Hill-Daniels 47, Cathy Wetter 48, Mary Skeen 49-50, Lynn Caldwell 51, Susan Vespoli 52, Julie Naslund 53, Angela Marie Ebba 54, Lula 55, P. O’Neill 56-58,Pence 59.

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in OpenLinkNight invites us to submit a poem of our choice…

This cento poem takes lines from all the postcard poems I received during the July-August Poetry Postcard Festival (POPoFest) run by Cascadia Poetics LAB out of Seattle, USA. Most of the participants are American but it seems that many want to send a postcard to poets elsewhere and so all the no-US poets are sent out on a separate list – so that I, as a UK resident, was lucky enough to receive 24 from my Group 4 list and 19 “bonus ” cards from the International list.

Taking a line from each, two poems emerged, which I have chosen to present as Parts 1 & 2 since the bleakness of the first needs amelioration by the optimism of the second…

Serendipitously, Björn’s optional prompt on this occasion was the writing of letters and the idea of the POPoFest, is to write Epistolary poems to the recipient that reference the image on the postcard, to write spontaneously without editing. I chose to reclaim my painting skills this year and sent 31 original paintings out, one of which is shown below…

Collaborators in the Craft

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You have done it on your own
the craft of poetry
garnering your words
identifying your voice
never mixing metaphors
unless you mean to
accenting with alliteration
tackling subjects
from waxing lyrical about nature
to sounding the clarion calls
to activism in a world gone mad…

Now, why not try the delights
of collaboration…
a dance á deux
a menage á trois
an orgy of poesie
with multiple poets
if you will
bat stanzas back and forth
ekphrast a painting
or photograph by a friend
why do it on your own
when you can do it together
become a collaborator…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Ten months ago, our very own Melissa Lemay, started an online journal of collaborative poetry, Collaborature so why not head over there and have a gander at all the exciting poems that have been submitted and then reach out to another poet to have a go at collaboration…

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Lisa or Li in Poetics invites us to write about Getting Crafty…