Revising poetry drafts

 

Revising an earlier draft of your poems is an interesting process. I originally called this poem The Killing Field and it relates to a scene witnessed in  my back garden. The new draft is shorter and I think more effective. A new shape of the poem on the page started to emerge and I decided to play with that. 

The early title also probably conjures up that 1984 British Biographical drama film set in Cambodia. 

Titles matter and I often struggle with them.

 If the poem is meant to surprise you don't want to give too much away. 

However they can be a tad esoteric!!

And there is a practice these days of long titles like : To the boy who nearly won the Tesco Art Competition. Love that!

The Blackbird

 

His head tilted to the thrum of earthworm

He didn’t notice a shadow

hug the ground, or hear

the wing swoop propel 

the raptor forward

 

its long tail fanned out to break speed

 

The last thing

the blackbird saw

was the hawk’s yellow eyes

fixed in a deadly stare, before claws

descend, before shorn feathers blacken the air.

 

Concerning Emily Dickinson and That Fly

 

I hear a Fly buzz when I sit-

To meditate- and think of Emily

And how- put out she may

have been- when that Blue-

Stumbling fly- immortalised 

In her Poem-591

Interposed between her-

And Eternity.

Today-Someone would tell her-

It was doing her a Favour-

Keeping her present-

In the Present-

Where she still was-after all-

But I get it-Emily-

The darn Drone of it

Would turn a dying Saint-

Into a Murderer-

Or at least- a Fly Catcher-

Copyright Cathy Leonard 2026

Playing at Rodin's Thinker

 

The West Coast of Ireland is the place to be

if you want to ponder the meaning of life

for here there are no distractions to withstand.

And though I am now sitting in a bungalow

in a capital suburban sprawl-

No Atlantic swell to throw up

flotsam-jetsam wisdom from the deep.

No howling onshore wind crumbling the waves.

No sea mist veiling and unveiling the Skelligs

and its story of viking raids and monastic contemplation.

Just the DPD fellow making another delivery

and a woman out walking her reluctant schnauzer

and a great kerfuffle in the back kitchen

where the cat has just dragged

a fledgling magpie through the cat flap

and is now beginning to regret his bravado.

Making me, right elbow placed on left thigh,

back of right hand supporting chin,

ponder the folly of instinct

untempered by foresight.

Self Publish your poetry- your story

 

At last I have published a small collection of poems.

Available from Amazon.

Footprints by Cathy Leonard

I used Reedsy.com to typeset and the Amazon cover creator for the book cover. 

See my blog Self Publish 28th October 2024 regarding self publishing.

The theme of this collection is home. I grew up in Northern Ireland during the fifties and sixties. The troubles were already brewing during my childhood and finally erupted onto the streets in '68. On August 24th I attended the first civil rights march from Coalisland, my father's home town, to Dungannon where we lived in a council estate. In fact I remember, as a school girl, delivering leaflets advertising the event.

The aim of the march was to highlight discrimination in housing allocation in our area. Follow link below for the full story.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/the-lost-story-of-northern-ireland-s-first-civil-rights-march-1.3605463

Here is a piece on the subject written as a sort of Haibun

A Haibun is a Japanese genre that mixes autobiographical writing with Haiku.

Five pointers

KEEP PROSE SIMPLE

USE SPARSE IMAGERY

EVOKE THE SENSES

USE THE PRESENT TENSE

THE HAIKU/S CAN BE INSERTED ANYWHERE BUT SHOULD ADD MEANING

 https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-haibun-poetry

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-a-haiku-in-4-easy-steps#quiz-0

THE SKIPPING ROPE

 

It is a mean spirited town. At its heart the burnt out remains of O’Neill’s Castle  smoulder.

 

scorched earth policy

employed throughout history

our culture erased.

 

Centuries later and the town cry is still, “No Surrender!” 

 

Buildings have eyes. As I stand at McAleer’s corner eating Pagni’s chips out of vinegar sodden  newspaper, watching cats in the family hotel basement window, I feel their presence. Panoptic surveillance emanating from the RUC barracks at the top of the Square, bolstered by the Ulster bank beside it, and higher up

 

British armoured towers,

iron clad, cube shaped set to watch

we the occupied.

 

In 1968 the town is a battle ground flanked on two sides by council housing estates: the Ponderosa and the White City, pebble dashed rows and blocks built at right angles to each other on low lying bogs, inhabited by the poorest of both denominations who qualified for these after doing time in the vacated POW camp out the Moy Road.  Working class protestants occupy more salubrious zones to the south, Milltown and Moygashel, where red brick industrial cottages nestle at the foot of the Windmill Hill or around the linen factory, Dungannon’s industrial sector.

 

Bigotry runs deep in the runnels, in the rills, in the streams and the air we breathe will soon smell of metal and burning flesh. The town is tense

 

like a skipping rope

strung tight between two players

Irish and Scottish

 

 And we wait for one of them to tighten grip or loosen hold.

 

 Copyright 2026 Cathy Leonard

Ashes

 Following my recent impulsive request

that my ashes be flung

into the cove just below Blake's Drum

I began to wonder where

I might end up.

If  I dodged the jellyfish

and their stinging tentacles

in the Sunlight Zone

I might make it to Twilight

where octopus and sponges

would surely ingest some of me.

The rest dropping to Midnight

Where I could circumnavigate

the great wreck of the Titanic before falling 

into the freezing depths of the Abyss

and the clutches of the sea spider.

And finally if I made it,

or some of me anyway,

I would end up in the Trenches

Challenger Deep.

And after all this diving and dodging 

and conflicting messaging from my inner ear and brain

I'm thinking that a land burial might suit me better after all. 

Copyright 2026 Cathy Leonard

The Disappearing Skelligs

(On reading Billy Collins at the edge of the ocean)

Since I sat down with my stylus 

and unwaxed tablet

the Skelligs have appeared

 and disappeared several times.

Perhaps off on a space mission

with Hans Solo or Luke Skywalker in control.

Maybe circling the globe

at 17,500 miles an hour,

(don't ask me what that is in kilometres)

The fastest moving islands in history

passing over our heads

once every ninety minutes.

And here they are back again

looking just a tad outraged at my speculations

As if they haven't just now

in low earth orbit

witnessed sixteen sunrises

and sunsets

just for the hell of it.

Copyright Cathy Leonard 2026

House Sitting

 

 

House sitting for a friend in Tuosist

I awake before you to enjoy an hour or two

of creative bliss, if it happens to arrive,

and admire a panoramic slice of Kerry-

burgeoning rhododendron, sunflower-yellow whin

fields uninterrupted by high rise,

except for the distant peaks of the reeks

that etch a crooked trail across the sky.

 

And via WhatsApp I tell my friend in San Sebastian,

whose house I am sitting,

to look out for the dude wearing the traditional txapela

finger- thinned to a peak at the front

speaking Basque to his retriever and the waiter

while sipping his café solo.

 

And that I have researched the history of her house

and find that it was indeed a dispensary

doleing out physic and herbs

to the rural poor of the townland in 1856.

 

And that I have travelled even further back in time,

to the Bronze Age, in fact,

for here in Tuosist there are eight stone circles

and a plethora of fulachta fias, cooking pits of the deer.

 

And so I have imagined myself a bronze age dude

gathering stones the size of baby’s head,

heating them white hot and dropping them in a water pit,

now bubbling to a rolling boil, to cook my straw wrapped venison,

twenty minutes to the pound and 20 minutes extra.

 

At which point I begin to wonder

if you are ever going to get up

so that we can put on the kettle for tea

and maybe boil our eggs

three minutes each

and not a second longer.

Copyright Cathy Leonard 2026