Also...

What am I doing,

Talking on skype chat,

To you?

(This poem

is not

‘to you’)

Just a little sonnet I wrote before I went to bed (!) I quite like it, but then it's late.

23rd December

Over the past few weeks, there are lots of

Events I’ve wanted to write poems about but

Haven’t and probably it’s better, cos

Even I don’t want to hear about

Trying to catch his rancid breath in my

Mouth. Staff room panics and feedback sessions-

‘I was surprised that you kept going out’.

Stupid dreams in dirty beds. Goodbye-less.

Bugs. Voices: Negative ones. Changing pace

And now, Christmas holiday, not working as hard

As I should, though outside the sky darkens.

The sea creeps over the rocks and black sand

And I look out as I work, constantly

Wishing, yes, that I’ll be able to teach this.

Today I feel trapped uniformly in a bad mood. Because of my cold, I feel like my ears, nose and mouth aren't letting the air in in a normal way.

Yesterday morning I went to a 'LATE' conference about poetry. It was great, especially the PGCE workshop with Michael Rosen, and Simon Armitage talking about music projects with women prisoners and young offenders. They were interviewed and Armitage wrote song lyrics from their words, mainly just their words, and then filmmakers made a musical video for the songs, where the protagonists acted out their own songs.

Today I listened to him talking about his favourite music on 6music.

When footage of children makes me shed tears, as the poem performed by a group of pupils on an interactive part of the London Grid for Learning website did, it makes me worry what I'll be like if I ever have children of my own.

Rachael and Laura were filmed performing their poem Rachael wrote about our living room ('Dirty mugs everywhere apart from in the sink' 'in our student flat' 'But hey, at least the mice are gone' 'From our student flat')

I started writing this 'Volcano bag' poem:

I would save

all my diaries, aged 10 til 23.

My name is Anne-Marie!

My parents picked it

because (they found it pretty,

though of an ex-girlfriend of my father)

it is

European.

I wish that no-one gets sick any more.

Being younger, I overheard as I was almost sleeping on a mattress on my cousins' floor,

'I liked it when she thought 'Sacrilege' was a person'.

Years later, Granny was still alive. She sits, we all sit round, distribute gifts.

On Christmas eve,

A tree with red candles.