Author Archives: Judy

Pandemic prompt – remember when?

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Small child at Bristol City Museum by Judy DarleyLooking through a few ancient photos, I found this one snapped in Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery. Seems like a different lifetime!

Remember when we could go to museums? Remember when we were allowed to indulge our curiosity and actually touch? Do you think you’ll ever take these freedoms for granted again?

What narratives could you spin from this scene?

If you write or create something prompted by this, please send an email to judydarley(at)iCloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I may publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

Poetry review – dare i be gentle by Susan Hitching

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dare i be gentle cover_web1Susan Hitching’s debut poetry collection, dare i be gentle, alights on moments glimpsed and spins them into observations that feather outwards to encompass entire worlds.

A line of bras on a washing line offer up the soar, sway and surge of garments, and perhaps people, pegged out over boglands, while ‘The Shirt You Left Behind’ becomes a lover’s tender lament. Storytelling weaves its spell in ‘DIY Wizard’, deftly evoking the quirky magic of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood, in lines such as “The screeching of owls is heard/ in his dreams as an orchestra of power tools…”

Like Thomas, Hitching has a knack of hooking the glory in the overlooked and the extraordinary grace in the apparently commonplace.

Details are harnessed and hoisted into prime position, such as the ‘Little Red Shoes’, laboriously and triumphantly buckled onto the wrong feet.

In fact, our well-intentioned mistakes are celebrated throughout. One of my favourites in the collection is ‘Stealing From The Arboretum’, a perfect micro story in 20 vivid lines. Hitching describes the ‘stolen forest’ with humour and affection – a gleeful, rueful anecdote aglow with wit and vivacity.

Word are harvested and arranged with a delicacy that imbues more than is written, creating expanding ripples of understanding. In ‘Feral Shadows’, it’s the vulnerability of the infant lying “peeled/ between feathered and cottony sleep’, while the act of pincering “the dissolving/sherbet lemon/ from between my fizzing teeth” in ‘Kissing At Barking Station’, crows of the delights of a rebellious attitude, regardless of age.

Dreamier, briefer poems appear in clutches like hedge-snagged sheep’s wool, with larger font and plenty of clean white space to flutter against on the page. Evoking the County Kerry scenery that Hitching lives amidst, these poems are deft sketches of time and place. ‘lone tree’ is an ode to a solitary stalwart:

lone tree

you survive

a symbol
drawn in the land

catching the moons
on shannon’s hill

where

reed and wire
play for you

all        year    long

In ‘Tonight I Feel Uneasy’, Hitching harnesses whispers of folklore, mentioning the shadowy “long tailed furries” “while rats and hares in guises/ rustle the gorse and grasses, and “a monstrous cow” that “coughs an echo”.” Eerie and beautiful.

Hitching’s poems invite us to stray from signposted footpaths and explore the sun-dappled, mud-fringed shadows. In the quiet pleasures of her words I glimpse hints of Sheenagh Pugh’s  http://www.skylightrain.com/poetry-review-afternoons-go-nowhere-by-sheenagh-pugh/ playful poetic prowess, while Hitching’s talent for the more painterly arts gleams through in colourful strands.

Susan Hitching

Susan Hitching

These are poems of that strive to, and succeed in, capturing the wild beauty of the south-western toes of Ireland, while shining up the wonder to be found in the mundanity of everyday life and all its glorious oddities and follies. Hitching is a writer, and a human, with a passion for her surroundings, in all its forms, and through her gaze we can learn to delight anew.

dare i be gentle by Susan Hitching is available to buy from: https://www.facebook.com/dare-i-be-gentle-102586724779527/

What are you reading? I’d love to know. I’m always happy to receive reviews of books, art, theatre and film. To submit or suggest a book review, please send an email to judydarley(at)iCloud.com.

A short story – The Go-Get-Gone

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The Go-Get-Gone by Judy Darley
My short story The Go-Get-Gone, about a teen trying to enjoy a night out despite the best efforts of her dissociative identity disorder symptoms, has been published on the Lucy Writers’ Platform. I’m thrilled!

I’m delighted to see Amanda and her so-called friends coaxed out of the shadows!

This story has taken a long while to grow strong enough to fumble its way into the light. I believed in it from the start but needed to translate the story in my mind from its nebulae state into something other people could understand. Somehow that seems really apt, given the topic, and now I’m cheering for Amanda and Bim for remaining resolute throughout.

My editor Hannah at the Lucy Writers’ Platform introduces my story with the following words:

Amanda is out for the night with her new school mate, Lea. But when her so-called friends – an assortment of symptoms from her Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) – turn up, she finds it hard to determine who and what is real.

You can read the story in full here.

A short story – Rocked Awake

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Earthworm by Judy Darley
I’m chuffed to bits that my mini myth Rocked Awake has been published as part of Dear Damsels‘ nature theme.

In the story, a mother attempts to solve the riddle of why her baby daughter is usurped in her crib by wild flora and fauna. Nature’s clues lead her to a fresh interpretation of the changeling myth. 
Here’s a fragment from the centre of the tale:

This morning, it was an earthworm, fleshy and pale, curled into a shape like a shepherd’s crook.Sometimes it wasn’t even a creature that breathed – last week my daughter had been usurped by an acorn.

You can read my full story, and the other fabulous words published by Dear Damsels, here.

Pandemic prompt – more wine…

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More Wine by Judy DarleyThis heartfelt plea on a pavement near my home caught my eye. As the lockdown continues, the parameters of our world narrow, along with our viewpoints on essential and non-essential items.

Could this post-it note provide the prompt for a story for our peculiar times, with a focus on our shifting priorities? Alternatively, use it as part of a found poem.

If you prefer, use this prompt to jump forward to when our country is run by the kids currently being homeschooled by day-drinkers.

If you write or create something prompted by this, please send an email to judydarley(at)iCloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I may publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

A 75-word story – Other residents’ symptoms confine you

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Perretts Park during lockdown by Judy DarleyMy 75-word story ‘Other residents’ symptoms confine you’ is the story of the day on the excellent Paragraph Planet.

I often use writing to soothe myself, and this small piece is a response to my worries about my dad, now confined to his room in his care home due to other residents’ Coronavirus symptoms, with no way of understanding why. It’s a situation that makes me feel powerless, so all I can do is wish him memories of tree branches and leaves, and transform his four-wall cell into a forest.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’m writing rather a lot of Coronavirus fiction at the moment.

Stories published by Paragraph Planet are live for just 24 hours. In case you missed mine, here it is:

Other residents

Pandemic prompt – tap

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Porto green tiles by Judy DarleyWe’re often reminded at the moment of the dangers of proximity and touch. The coronavirus can survive for a surprisingly long time on hard, shiny objects, which means an unwary touch could spell danger.

Imagine if the risks are not of falling ill, but falling in love. Perhaps a polished pebble passed between two strangers could result in instant friendship, or a hand wrapped around a contaminated railing* could give a careless passerby the ability to fly. Maybe a finger tapped against a tiled wall could mean hearing the thoughts of every person who trudged by in the past day or so.

There are endless possibilities. Where will your imagination lead you?

*Don’t try this anywhere but at home…

If you write or create something prompted by this, please send an email to judydarley(at)iCloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I may publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

Pandemic prompt – immortal

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AC is immortal by Judy DarleyThe current lockdown has necessitated exploring a local walking routes in an attempt to retain sanity. Recently I wandered alongside a housing estate with the above graffiti.

Who could Anna Campbell be? If you look closely you’ll see that the original texted stated ‘Anna C. is dead’, with the word ‘dead’ painted out, perhaps by Anna herself, or a loyal friend, and replaced with ‘immortal.’

What’s the story behind this message and the change made to it? Is it a defiant shout-out or a warning?

If you write or create something prompted by this, please send an email to judydarley(at)iCloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I may publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

Pandemic prompt – dismembered

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You may have spotted the #WritingPrompt I published a while back, featuring a beautiful old-fashioned rocking horse spied in a nearby playground.

Shortly after taking that photo, I strolled past and noticed that the steed had been moved onto the grass surrounding the play area. Not only had it been knocked over, but it looked a bit odd.

Dismembered horse by Judy Darley

The poor creature’s straw-filled head had been brutally torn from its shoulders.

Who might have committed such a pointless act of violence against an innocent toy? Was it someone with an equine phobia, a terrible childhood memory involving a fall from a rocking horse, or a general desire for destruction spawned by the current stresses of the pandemic? Might they have hallucinated the dinky woollen rocker into a terrifying hell-stallion?

If you write or create something prompted by this, please send an email to judydarley(at)iCloud.com to let me know. With your permission, I’ll publish it on SkyLightRain.com.

 

Guided visualisation – Amidst cherry trees

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Guided Meditation_Amidst Cherry Trees by Judy DarleyMy second guided visualisation has been published by Planet Mindful as part of their issue 11, aka Planet Mindful 2020 issue 3.

Planet Mindful 2020 issue 3The print magazine industry is being hit hard by the coronavirus, as in the UK most people still prefer to buy from newsstands. As a result, publishing companies across the country have cancelled freelance contracts. It’s understandable, but difficult! I’ve only recently returned to freelancing so am unlikely to benefit from government measures to keep the self-employed afloat.

On the upside, you can help by buying magazines online, and have some sunshine delivered to your door. Planet Mindful is a gorgeously positive magazine, and my guided visualisation in 2020 issue 3 will hopefully give you a few moment’s respite and serenity. It’s set in a Japanese garden and accompanied by one of my original paintings, pictured above.

‘The path guides you towards a pool shaded by cherry blossom trees. As you stroll amidst the trees, petals fall and alight on your skin.’

I’m pleased to say that writing and painting these guided visualisations is a pleasure I’m able to continue.