I saw a bird once at 35,000 feet!

As I reach the early eighties of my ‘Ninety Day Challenge’, I began thinking about themes. As in, what themes have I returned to over the last eighty days or so of this challenge.

Whilst I’ve tried and succeeded in not repeating any poems, there are a number of recurring themes that have come up – alcohol, aging, the world being on fire to name but a few. Which got me thinking about the theme and structure of my next book and every time I think about themes I think of Alex Vellis 2021 book ‘I saw a bird once’. It’s a beautiful book of prose poetry that intertwines different characters, lives, challenges and tragedies then slowly brings them all together -  it’s masterful stuff.

My plan is to put out my next collection in 2026, a follow up to ‘What you missed’ published back in 2021. When I started this challenge it was just to get the creative juices flowing and (re) develop a ‘creative practice’ but as it’s gone on it’s become so much more. Mostly, the realisation that I can make time to write poetry every day. As I pointed out in an earlier post “there’s plenty of slop in there” but there’s also poems I’ve developed outside of the challenge that may make it in my next collection or just the set list of my next gig.

As I said, all these poems got me thinking about themes which in turn got my thinking about ‘I saw a bird once’. So much so I dug it out and read it from cover to cover on a flight to Milan.

As I type this, I’m not yet sure what the theme of my next collection will be (if any) but the last eighty days really has got me moving towards that goal. Maybe, when this challenge is over I will sit down and read through the ninety days of work and take stock, see what themes are between the pages, what subjects are between the lines.

I can’t promise you ‘I saw a bird once’ or equally as technically proficient and masterful ‘The Brubury Tales’ by Frank Mundo, but what I can promise you is honest work. My honest work.

Whether that’s enough or not, I’ll let you decide.