The Weather etc.

Last night after slaving over a new poem, I had a look at Pomegranate and the Christopher Tower poetry prize. What amazing young poets there are in this country! How heartening for them and thoroughly depressing for me. Still, I've been alive longer. Top trump!

Today I have been wondering about re-engaging with the geology roots in writing. I think I've been a bit reluctant, maybe even a bit embarrassed. I don't know why. When I say Geology I don't suppose I really mean it - I mean things that interested me in my first degree: microfossils, earthquakes, tsunami's, oil, pipelines, field locations, fast winds, circulations...not really rocks at all in fact. I suppose Meteorology features more. Anyhow, maybe I will stop fighting the urge and just go with it, we all have our influences after all.

Today the snow has gone. I don't think there will be any more snow themed writing. It's one of those things that is inspiring while it's there but once gone is forgotten in my mind and the only residual memory is of white. Just white. I don't have this with rain which is indelliby stained on my memory. No one loves rain unless it's tropical and warm or you're being kissed in it. Maybe I will campaign for rain from now on...give it some due.

The continuing horror of Haiti takes me back to how I felt after the Boxing Day Tsunami. One of the affected areas was one of my fieldwork locations and I wrote about it after. But it was a really awful piece of writing that didn't do justice to the aftermath. How can any writing really do a tragedy justice? I don't think it can. It can probably only 'document'. Whenever these stories happen I rush to find out the size of the earthquake, read some of the journal papers that are quick to be released giving specifics of epicentres etc. There is some pull to need to know, tally and record. Compare. The long days of news watching, taking in all the photos and testimonies. I always wish I could do more because giving money never feels like enough. At the end of the day I go to bed and am just so grateful that I don't live on a plate margin, or over the Ring of Fire, embarrassed that while hundreds of thousands sleep in the streets, we can't even find ways to make our roads less slippery. We can prepare for nuclear fallout but we grind to a halt when there is frozen water. Our world makes no sense.