Authors Electric

  Oysgeshsternt is a Yiddish word. It means crowded with stars. I heard it recently at the Purbeck International Chamber Music Festival as part of their Forgotten Voices programme. I love it – the programme and the word. We stayed on after the concerts had ended and had a few more days walking around various beautiful places in that part of Dorset, including the church at Moreton with its etched-glass windows by Whistler.   We’ve not been back home long, and I am spun out and all out of ideas, so having started with oysgeshsternt, I’ll go on with a theme of heavenly bodies and share some poems about the night sky and various planets. I’m not sure it fits with what Authors Electric is about, but it is the best I can do for now.  SKY-WATCHING   Out in the street as the evenings drew in that time between supper and bed, we lay flat on our backs, looking up at the sky,   naming constellations, tracking the moon from sickle blade to dinner plate, ...

I thought of calling this blog ‘Unusual sexual encounters’ to try to attract a few more punters, but on reflection…  It’s really about trying to capture a time in a particular place/ landscape. The idea was triggered by a recent challenge from the Hedgehog Press. They send out one a month and I usually manage a response, although I’ve never even been shortlisted for publication. Heigh ho. It just helps to have a nudge to my post-covid brain. I’ve written before about being inspired by landscapes, but the challenge gave me a different perspective – not so much inspiration as need to capture something   of the essence of that place, that time. Something to look back on, to invoke the same feelings as were felt then. If I had an ounce of artistic talent, I might have made a sketch – livelier and more personal than a photograph and from my own hand, but I have only words. The image from the Hedgehog Press’s challenge is of a dreary, grubby corridor reminiscent of a disused psych...