There’s magic in weaving words. For a means of evoking one piece of a bigger picture, we look to poetry. While fiction is an escape. A way to enter a new world, experience new things, and walk in someone’s footsteps across the pavements of penned imagination.

© Sarah Doughty

For the ‘Support Insta Writers’ August Prompts
(based on books written by authors in the IG community)
hosted by Tracy and Journee.

Pens And Pavements by @pensandpavements

He collected dolls both black and white.

Twas his pain and his delight,

To hold them tight at night.

Few words where said,

As they lay upon his bed

With eyes cold and dead.

He touched their skin so real,

Though love they could not feel.

One doll his heart did steal,

But her passion was unreal.

His soul it turned to steel,

No longer could he feel.

Imagine writing a book only to have it safely stored unseen by anyone for up to 100 years.

This is the reality to which famous writers and poets are subjecting their work as part of The Future Library project. 

It all starts with a forest of 1,000 trees planted near Oslo, Norway, which we will be harvested in 100 years and used to print a unique anthology – for people yet to be born! The anthology will be from books, poems or texts submitted by one author per year (one piece of work only)  for the next 100 years and apart from its creator no other human being alive will have seen their work. 

The creator of this living conceptual artwork is Katie Paterson, a Glaswegian visual artist. Trust is central to this project: trust that there is a future; trust that there will be a future that cares about…

The Founder of Utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham once said, ” All poetry is misrepresentation.”   Pretty utilitarian concept in my opinion! How many of us who are passionate about reading and writing think this could be true? That poetry is nothing but words dressed in their Sunday best. In an age where STEM subjects get the bulk of attention in academics, poetry might be considered by some as masquerades to hide the truth.  Scientists and Mathematicians might not be moved by rows of daffodils or the many ways to love or the rolling hills or plight of a black woman running from her white molesters or even factual details of wars. But whatever garb poetry wears, its body is made up of facts from daily lives.

So is poetry an impassioned truth or is poetry misrepresentation? It depends on who you ask this question. But according to Bentham a game…