My Whitby Folk Week poetry workshops included writing invitation home poems, healing herbs poems, colour poems and a range of other ideas and hot penning prompts.
Here are a few more written by participants.
Three Poems from Fritjof Koerber
House Call
Hasten your steps, take down your tent.
Time from home is truly misspent.
You can fiddle right here in good company,
Even sit in the garden beneath your shady pear tree,
Whose ripening fruit, delightful in taste,
Without due care will go to waste.
Why do you shiver under canvas at night
When hot radiators are such a delight?
And two-pot meals are not much fun
When at home four hot-plates shine like the sun.
So hasten your steps, take down your tent.
Time from home is truly misspent.
Plantain
Oh plain plantain,
You saved my father’s life!
In World War II and nearly slain,
A prisoner away from his hive,
Fed on thin soup and bread,
He knew your healing skill.
Refused to die, instead
Bent nature to his will.
His wounds you cleaned,
Enriched his food.
He was redeemed,
You did him good.
Aquamarine
Aquamarine is a shade of blue,
Not red, not green, but a deep blue hue.
Look at the calm sea lit by sun’s light,
Slightly chilled and not too bright,
Spread like a cloth on a summer’s morn,
Out of which the day is born.
One Poem from Sarah Lough
Wrench Your grandfather's gone, he'll tramp no more Donegal hills, whistle commands to dogs, herd black-faced mountain ewes, nurture his flock, count lambs. These farming ways that continued, year after year, became the sound-scape, the fabric of our shared lives. Today, we pray in church. I watch you from a distance grieve, think about our lost years - yours and mine - the times we never shared and stand in line to sympathise, not knowing if you can bear to hear me voice my words, and take or shake my hand.
Angela Topping 