English Rain. When it rains it pours. Or drizzles and mistles. It pelts down, raining cats and dogs, in stair rods…

For the past month I’ve been fortunate enough to be part of a fantastic new writing community in Bristol – the Mothership Writers.

Mothership Writers

The brainchild of Bristol based novelist Emylia Hall, we are a community of 40 mums who have agreed to meet up fortnightly for a year to talk, learn and workshop our writing.

Most of us attend clutching our babies, our notebooks and pens and in the space of a couple of hours we create, we write. Despite of, because of, but most importantly perhaps, with our babies there. And it’s amazing how peaceful it often is, how much writing gets done.

Poem

My little poem below was created in about 10 minutes. The exercise set was to write something on the basis of one of four song titles. In the first few minutes of the exercise Abraham was feeding, on the right side no less. So, with my left hand (I’m right handed) I carved out a list of all the different words I could think of to describe rain.

It wasn’t much but it was the best I could do given the circumstances. It was something else as well – fun. Just playing with words, not focusing on the idea of writing or having to create anything. Then Abe announced he was finished feeding and out of nowhere, the words came like rain…..

It’s not a masterpiece, it’s not an amazing piece of poetry. But it was written in ten minutes, with my baby in my arms. For any of its faults it expresses how inspiration feels for me. Which is appropriate as the focus of the session that week was on….inspiration!

 

English Rain

Words come like rain
Teeming, fresh from eager clouds;
Words hang like a fog
A thick mist of tiny droplets
Saturating my skin, seeping in;
Words huddle together
Puddling in notebooks
Waiting for your splish, splash, splosh.

I love the rain.

 

For more information on the Mothership Writers click here:

#mothershipwriters #poetry #sketches #writing #amwriting #writingmum #pluviophile