Prompt: Tell us your life story in 30 words.
Thoughts before creating:
Shipwrecked me – emotions I did not want from memories I keep at arms length…
Tell us your life story in 30 words…
If only it were that simple. Condensing 64 years into 30 words, one for each two years.
I have struggled with this and it is no one’s fault but my own.
The Creation:
I cannot tell this particular story in thirty words: Widnes son words blind dreamer owa’ Barry’s the clever one I bobbed in his wake a school somnambulist dreamed my first poem at twelve until till I.C.I. bad poet for many years cold reality woke me up a tradesman? a fitter...forever? NOT ME my parents thought me puddled giving up a good job for this but I threw myself in started to get the hang of it and I swam got serious and Marjons opened my mind and I met my wife then Somerset by accident I had intended to return to the North Comm. Ed to social services seconded social work student still writing to hostel manager to network manager father once then twice and two years later widower it kept me sane LOST no career trajectory now poor paul LOST wrong time Fire River Poets wrong woman wrong marriage a hell I fought my way out of and I wrote slow rebuild First book: Burning Music amazing children through all this I held their horizons open you can be anything right time right woman I met my third wife happiness two children at university redundancy twenty four years services shown the door resulting bitterness scuffled Juncture 25 Blessed By Magpies then back to Marjons student support a poet in Torquay nearing his retirement...
Thoughts/notes post creation:
I make it 50 lines but don’t believe me dyscalculia makes numbers interesting and has gotten worse as I’ve got older. There you have it. Phew! That was difficult. Two areas I did not want to revisit my first wife’s death, though I think I have come to terms with that twenty six years on, and the bad second marriage. I have difficulty believing she was not a bad person. When I think of her at all. I have to say this was the most difficult prompt I’ve ever had, and I know that I made it so. I almost gave you 30 poems but I thought that was cheating.
