Author Archives: K Morris Poet

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About K Morris Poet

The purpose of this website (kmorrispoet.com) is to showcase my writing. For details of my published works, please click on the 'About' page of my blog.

Should an Author Blog?

I agree with JD, that there is no right or wrong answer to this question. In my case, many of my posts are first drafts of my poems, which doesn’t take away from my writing time for obvious reasons. Kevin

Jay Dee's avatarI Read Encyclopedias for Fun

I just want to throw this question out there for everyone. I assume many of you are bloggers. Some of you are authors. I have seen this question a few times out there, and the opinions tend to be mixed.

Should an author blog?

My answer is yes and no. There are many who say that an author shouldn’t blog because it sucks away too much time. For some people, I agree. They could spend a huge amount of time on their blog. For those people, maybe blogging does take away too much writing time. But I think it depends on the person.

As for me, I enjoy blogging. I do it in my free time and at times in which I cannot concentrate on actual writing. I only spend about fifteen to thirty minutes a day blogging most days. I try getting to the comments every day, but usually…

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Check before you hit that “Publish” button in the WordPress dashboard!

The importance of checking prior to hitting the “publish” button on the WordPress dashboard was brought home to me this morning. I had (as is my usual practice) composed a poem entitled “Birds that Fly” using Microsoft Word. I then cut and pasted my poem into the edit field in “compose a new post” and, having selected tags and categories hit the “Publish” button. Up popped the dreaded “Mozilla crash reporter” indicating that something had gone awry. Having saved my poem in Word I wasn’t unduly concerned and restarted Firefox. Great! My draft had been automatically saved and all I had to do was hit the “publish” button for the second time. This I duly did only to find that “Birds that Fly” had (despite the earlier crash) in fact been published, leaving me with 2 posts with precisely the same content, including tags and categories! Had I taken a moment to check, prior to hitting the “Publish” button whether my earlier post had gone live, I could have avoided having to delete the extraneous copy thereby avoiding potential confusion among my readers. I will, in future double check when the internet crashes as to whether a post has, in fact gone live rather than merrily hitting the “Publish” button!

Kevin

Reprieve

Is a poem a thing of art
Carefully crafted in every part?
Or does the poet roughly ssing
Of Cupid’s sting
And pages wet
That he may not forget
His unrequited love?

The heart
Finds expression in art.
Rough hewn or not
The poet has got
To find a voice.
He has no choice
Other than to obtain a brief
reprieve
From grief
In the words he doth weave.

The Play

Sitting on a bench in the school playground
With children milling all around.
Yes, I remember it as though it was yesterday,
The actors came to perform a play.
Me weak
With a longing only half understood.
Unable to speak
And gawkishly shy,
I would
Die
Where I to address
The girl in the summer dress.

I recollect nought of the play
Yet thoughts of the actresses with me stay.
With age
‘Tis said one becomes a sage.
Today
Different actors perform upon the stage
And now my hair is grey
I pay
To see the players play.
As with the actors of yesterday
They too, will fade away.

Burning

The fire
Rages
In stages.
At times it burns low
And I know
Sleep
Will creep
Into my room,,
Her sweet perfume
Rendering me
Free
Of desire.

Yet at other times the fire
Doth burn
Bright.
My thoughts turn
To delight,
Which slippery as eels
Itself reveals,
Then, a fleeting satisfaction seals.

Midnight steals
Away.
The hot coal
In my soul
By day
Burns low
Yet I know
The glow
Is always there
And will, once more, flare

Squire and Peasant

I see a vanished land
Where the squire held command
Over the countryside,
Before the tide
Turned
And paternalism was spurned,
Or merely ebbed away
Ushering in a new day.

To hounds he rode
Or through his estate strode
In search of grouse or pheasant.
With countenance pleasant
Or severe
He ruled his peasants
Far and near.

Sometimes a thinker
And often a drinker
He felt a connection with the whole
Estate, his soul
Was as one
with generations long since gone.
Frequently inarticulate
He did hate
The untried
And cried
Out for the preservation of the old ways.

Nothing stays
Unaltered.
The rock-like squire faltered
As the wind of progress
That does redress
All ills, brought salvation
To the nation.
Now those who the price of everything know, hold command
While squire and peasant stand
Bemused, upon this altered land.

“The Dead Man Walking” by Thomas Hardy

Thank you to my colleague Alison, for drawing my attention to Thomas Hardy’s poem, “The Dead Man Walking”. It is a powerful piece which does, I believe speake for itself, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP1v54SeHY4

A review of my latest collection of poetry, “Lost in the Labyrinth of My Mind”

Thank you to Emma Lee for taking the time to read and review my latest collection of poetry, “Lost in the Labyrinth of My Mind”. You can find Emma’s review here, https://emmalee1.wordpress.com/2016/05/11/lost-in-the-labyrinth-of-my-mind-k-morris/.