26 October 2010

Tuesday Poem: 'Grey'



I'm so late with my Tuesday poem today, so I thought I'd post one of mine, rather than sort of waste someone else's. 'Grey' was in Abstract Internal Furniture. I find now that I've gone off quite a few of the poems in there - one does that after a decade I suppose - but I still have a fond spot for 'Grey', and believe as much, if not more, now in the importance of grey, of that grey space, than I did then.

Check out all the other Tuesday Poems here: http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/

7 comments:

Emma said...

I really like how you have laid this one out. Beautiful.

harvey said...

Helen

This one's good. And never discard those early poems. Every now and then one pops up again as underestimated.
Cheers
Harvey

AJ Ponder said...

I love the way this poem is structured.

Helen Lowe said...

An oldie maybe ... but still with interesting things to say.

Helen Rickerby said...

Thanks everyone! I shouldn't really dis my own book, and actually there are lots of poems I still like in it.

Tim Jones said...

I like this one too -and the layout works very well with the content of the poem.

After my second collection was published, I tended to think of my first collection, "Boat People", as being early work that wasn't quite up to the mark. But, now a few more years have gone by, I can see good and bad things about both collections - and some of the poems from "Boat People" are those that get the best response when I read.

So I agree with Harvey about not underestimating one's first collection, and I agree that "Abstract Internal Furniture" has many fine poems!

Mark Pirie said...

Hi, as publisher of Boat People and Abstract Internal Furniture, I thought they were both good collections to publish. I've published over 20 books of poetry myself and funnily enough there are still poems of mine written when I was 19 that are turning up in anthologies, even though I think I've done better stuff since. Poems have a life of their own. One of my 19 year old poems turns up in Harvey McQueen's These I Have Loved just published. Another in Siobhan Harvey's Our Own Kind: 100 NZ Poems about Animals. Don't worry too much about what you've published. Who really knows what will stand the test of time.