Richard Westcott's poetry

A strange new structure has landed in a farm just near us – not very high, it’s domed with no windows, a bit like a flying saucer.    Leading directly up to it, there’s even a spanking new road, complete with kerbs, new drains and proper passing places. Our little lanes round here are quite different.     It’s as if they’ve never been built at all, winding their apparently inconsequential ways round the hillside: disinclined to follow a straight line, they seem to have just grown.   Sunk deep in the ground, the width of a cart, dependent on a gateway for two vehicles to pass each other they do their job well enough.   They take a car, a single car for sure, but it’s necessary to drive slowly, hesitating at bends and being prepared to find one of those gateways.   As for larger vehicles – they and their loads scrape and scour both sides, which at least has the benefit of maintaining such narrow width as the lane provides. I know and love these lanes well from walking and run

Of Mice and Men Fragments have been in my mind recently. It’s partly because I’ve been reading poetry to people with dementia, when memory literally fragments – thoughts and words becoming blanked out, lost temporarily, if not permanently. Which itself reminded me of those pages of text we’re becoming accustomed to, where chunks have been redacted – heavy black lines descending and obliterating what was once there. It’s not original at all I know to suggest that we’re living in disintegrated times, not so much in terms of being separated, aware of differences, even broken apart, but arguments get blocked, discussions halted and attention spans seem shorter.  Rushing on to the next thing means an extended line of thought is at risk of fragmentation.   Still, we can live with, if not on, crumbs as well as wholeness: they might even offer an opportunity for creativity. My poetry study group is presently reading Ezra Pound.  Here is a poet interested in scraps, pic