Jane's Writing Shed.

Like slipping on ice, this is what happens past the shortest day at this time of year. The imprint of fairy lights, carols, spice. A comet just visible through snow or rain. The dog will lose her neckerchief. All past Christmases stirred into this one. Will all be over by twelfth night.

Continuing my theme of 'discovering' people and constellations, I picked up a copy of Michael Donaghy's collection  Conjure (2000) in a bookshop last week and on first reading knew immediately I'd love his poems. Doing some research I found that Donaghy had been born in New York to an Irish immigrant family in 1954 was already a successful poet when he moved to London in 1985. In his lifetime he published Shibboleth (1988), Errata (1990), Dances Learned Last Night : Poems 1975 - 1995 (combining both collections) and Conjure (2000). Very sadly he died of a brain hemorrhage in 2004. Conjure contains some wonderful poems including Refusals, Shooting their horses and setting their houses alight, The faithful struck out for a hillside in Sussex To wait for the prophesied rapture to take them At midnight, New Year's Eve, in 1899. (extract) and Resolution, The new year blurs the windowpane, Soho surrenders to the rain as clouds break over Chinatown. See ho

Praise for the cranes on their high mountain migration for the trudgers-to-work through snow praise for the journalist who wrote  there is no existential threat in the Islamic Maghreb praise for the woman from Stockholm who drove an empty commuter train off the end of the line for everyone who has lost their hope or sanity praise we're all we've got with no god to save us praise Copyright      Jane Aldous

( Sculpture by Helen Denerley) Astride the wide paved savannah giraffa camelopardalis reticulata black scavenged forged metal imagine their dark lashed eyes mother and calf heads flanks necks legs free to graze mimosa acacia wild apricot and to roam undisturbed through their own shadows camouflaged against the wide glass sky indifferent to passers by circumnavigating concrete to the stars girdled by a bronze eternal verse Copyright    Jane Aldous

but is more like grappling with a maths puzzle or stuffing a semi-wild animal. Why did I volunteer to make some shortbread biscuits as part of someone's Xmas present! If I was making a poem I would simply use the materials to hand or in my mind but with baking biscuits I have to follow a Recipe using precise amounts of the correct ingredients. So this morning I am making ginger biscuits and according to The Recipe I should be using not only Plain Flour but Corn Flour or Rice Flour. We have not quite enough Plain Flour so I've decided to top up with Self Raising Flour (not recommended). The Recipe  also requires Caster Sugar  but we only have Granulated Sugar... this will have to do.We have no Salt but we do have Dried Ginger Pieces  which I will chop up small to create Chopped Ginger Pieces.  Once all these ingredients have been combined (sort of) the mixture has to be rested in the fridge! My plea is...why are so many things in life like solving impossible maths puzzles? Ma

I haven't come across much poetry written about the world of work. I've attempted to write poems about different workplaces I've had first hand experience of...a women's alcohol counselling agency, a mental health project, a local council department and found the process well nigh impossible. Perhaps it's the conjunction of the grind of having to go to work however satisfying or not and the creative process that has eluded me. Trying to write about individuals seemed even more hazardous as I was always conscious about breaching confidentiality. A poet friend finds that she can write happily during her working day which I find remarkable given the impossibly high expectations of working people these days AND the switch I find I have to make between work tasks and my creativity. But having recently retired from gainful employment in the local council, I've really noticed how different I feel being out of the workplace. Like most people who have to go to work to

Another happenstance last week when I visited Cockenzie with my poetry group for our latest field trip to Cockenzie Power Station (recently decommissioned). It was another cold, beautiful winter day and after wandering around the circumference of the Power Station located beside The Forth we made for the comforts of the cafe in Cockenzie House where the Great Tapestry of Scotland was on display. This marvellous project is currently touring Scotland and consists of over 150 large panels of exquisite embroidery and tapestry depicting all the main events and people in Scotland's history. Many teams of stitchers and embroiderers from all over the country have been working on the individual panels for the last 2 years which were all designed by artist Andrew Crummy and historian Alistair Moffat. Several poets are represented (see photos).

Brechin. I was visiting the place between the old allotments and the Cathedral with its round tower and I walked into wraiths wasting themselves along the dog-leg path leaving their imprint like cleavers in the skin they were transients detached from any former existence pressing themselves towards me through the air in some nihilistic pursuit causing my thoughts to be more fluid than before how to describe the intangible that these haunters may be the most haunted ones after all trapped between the walls of there and here mouthing their unanswerable questions Conversations about animals, aged eight. We discussed the practicalities of keeping a boa constrictor in a garden shed. Then you said being a vegetarian would be the only way to go, for anyone wanting to be at one with animals. After playing a tiger prowling in her enclosure you watched a ladybird taking flight from your hand. All so abundant when I was your age, we cared so little when something d

When the news came through about the death of Nelson Mandela late on Thursday evening, I recalled the only time I'd seen him (from a distance) during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Edinburgh 1997. I was walking along Princes Street during the event, when Mandela's car stopped outside the Caledonian Hotel. Rather than immediately going inside, he stood on the steps for several minutes dressed in one of his fantastic coloured shirts, to wave towards the many people like me who were so delighted by his impromptu gesture. Thank you Nelson Mandela for your lifetime of fighting oppression and inspiring and uniting people across the world with your genuineness and love. * from Paradise Lost by John Milton

We brighten up the inside of the house at this time of year by turning on the fairy lights and lighting a fire when it gets seriously cold. Scotland is due to get a blast of winter by the end of the week so as Charles Causley wrote from the other end of the British Isles.... from The Seasons in North Cornwall My room is a bright glass cabin,     All Cornwall thunders at my door, And the white ships of winter lie     In the sea-roads of the moor.

More and more I feel as if I trundle along in life 'discovering' things that other people have known about for ages. But in case there is anyone who doesn't already know about Fredericks on Frederick Street, Edinburgh (opposite French Connection and close to the corner with George Street) then do go along. Look out for the A-board on the pavement and go up to the first floor. Fredericks inhabits a lovely spacious room overlooking Frederick Street and is furnished with a mixture of small sofas, tables & comfy chairs plus colourful cushions. But the decor apart, on first tasting the food and drink is scrumptious.We had Chai Latte (flavoured with Cinnamon...mmm!),Breakfast tea and two slices of toasted tea loaf.....more mmm! But take a look at the gorgeous looking cakes in the pic opposite...we'll definitely be back especially as the cafe has a homely non-chain atmosphere with very friendly staff. Fredericks  would of course also be a great place to pause and write

By way of star paths and synapses, convoy routes and Miller Dale. Three days late for my own birth. Motoring down the A38, feasting on ghosts in the Babbacombe woods. Falling backwards, falling in love, disco dancing in the Salutation in Attercliffe after dark. Harnessed deep within a glacial crevasse, blown into Edinburgh on an August storm. Catching myself one day in the rear-view mirror, feeling like a stranger in my own life. Walking over Wideopen Hill with you and into the oak-panelled room towards the Registrar. Here now, a child reading a child to sleep, a dog at my feet, casting at the stars. Copyright   Jane Aldous