Some of my Poems

Plus the Vagaries of Poetry Publication

There have been many times over the last eight years when I've submitted a piece of poetry to a poetry magazine with glowing pride, in the belief that this was my best piece of work which would be accepted for sure. I guess you're anticipating my next sentence. Those much loved poems have a disappointing habit of being rejected. I accept that it is necessary to read magazines before submitting so that you get a feel for the kind of work they publish and I do that but still the rejections arrive in my inbox. 

On the plus side I have had twenty-four poems published during the last eight years, from 'Klezmer Men Dancing' in the 2018 'Jewish Literary Journal' to 'Mr Songwriter' appearing in next month's 'Allegro Poetry Magazine'. This will be the third poem that Allegro have published and you can view the previous two poems at this link: Allegro Poetry Magazine You can do a search on my name in the magazine.

Not all of my poems are music related. Some of my favourites have been ekphrastic, that is writing that reflects a piece of art or sculpture. I had loads of fun with my poem about the sculpture of a station master on the platform at Templecombe Station. It was published by the 'Ekphrastic Review' and, with permission from the three sculptures, Sioban Coppinger and Alec and Fiona Peever, and from the Friends of Templecombe Station (FoTS), they included a photograph of the statue. The Friends of Templcombe Station said they would post up a copy of the poem on their noticeboard. You can read the poem and see the photograph at this link: Ekphrastic Tempus Fugit

All writing is affected by personal experiences but my published poem that is the most autobiographical, and can still bring a tear to my eye, is The Passing of Time on Pedders Way. We used to regularly visit Blakeney in Norfolk and walk along a section of Pedders Way. As many of you may know, Mr A's eyesight has deteriorated and he can no longer drive. I have managed the drive to Blakeney once since they took his licence away, a final visit to say goodbye to a much loved holiday destination.

The poem was published in an online site called The Songs of Eretz Poetry Review which sadly no longer exists. I would therefore like to reproduce it below with many thanks to Steven Wittenberg Gordon for his kind words and for publishing the poem in his Winter 2021/22 edition. Below the poem is a very old photograph of me and our lovely old dog, Josh, on Pedders Way in 2003.

The Passing of Time on Peddars Way by Rosalind Adam

Clinking of masts undulate with the cries

of gulls, avocets and terns.

The sounds battle against the relentless

cheek-stinging gusts of wind.

Within sight of Blakeney we pause

at our favourite Norfolk spot.

Strange that the saltmarsh plants smell

less pungent than they once did.

I still have the photo taken of us at this spot,

both wearing waterproofs and sturdy boots,

standing beside the abandoned boat,

its blue paint crackling shabby-chic style.

Today its body is bare, its hull skeletal.

We hold hands as I falter on uneven ground

and I wipe away a tear passed off

as chafing from a North Sea gust.

The boat, me and Josh the dog on Pedders Way 2003

A 1950s English lesson

English was my favourite subject at school. Every Thursday a whole afternoon was devoted to it. We always began with silent reading while the teacher heard that week’s readers. I used to lose myself in Enid Blyton books, the ones about the famous five and the secret seven, where children explored and solved mysteries, a million miles away from my life. 

I loved composition writing, or story writing as they call it these days. Even now I can remember writing about a haunted clock and scaring myself so much that the hairs prickled up on my arms as I was writing it. 

Sometimes our teacher read poetry to us, about daffodils or boys on burning decks. My favourite poem was about a donkey called Nicholas Nye. It made me cry every time I thought about poor Nicholas Nye. I used to think about him a lot. I was a bit of a softie… I still am a bit of a softie when it comes to animals. 

I even enjoyed grammar, all those doing words and naming words. I still have a fascination for such word lists and love the podcast called Word Matters presented by a team from the US Merriam-Webster dictionary. They only produced about a hundred podcasts and I often re-play them. 

Handwriting in those books with special blue and red guidelines was tedious especially as we had to use old fashioned pens. These were just a wooden handle and a metal nib. The teacher would fill up a pot in the ink well on each desk with runny blue ink that always ended up all over my fingers and sometimes on my clothes too.

The best bit of the afternoon was the story just before home time. I remember our teacher reading all the Dr Doolittle books and all the Worsel Gummidge books, a chapter a week. This was before they were ever made into films or seen on TV so we could let our imaginations run wild. 

I may be wrong but I suspect English isn’t taught in such a holistic way these days. The UK National Curriculum changed many things and not necessarily for the better. 

Love you, big sis

I can’t believe it’s a year ago today that my lovely sister, Hilary Rifka, died. 

I know she wouldn’t want me to continue being this sad so I shall try to remember the good times when she was a mischievous, music loving, dancing, giggling big sis. 

Every year I used to send her a photo of a rose from the bush she once bought me. This year I’m posting it here instead.

Love you big sis 💕

The day the Rev. Kate Bottley had us howling...

...with laughter

It never sounds inviting, going for lunch with hundreds of women in an echoey hall on the other side of town, a hall with little fresh air and even less elbow room. And yet that is what we did yesterday and I have to say it was well worth the effort.

We were at the Annual LOROS Ladies Luncheon at Leicester's Winstanley House Hotel. LOROS is Leicester's hospice. Together with a group of friends I've been to quite a few of their events. The hospice has a special place in our hearts, especially after they took such care of a dear friend in her last weeks. They do it with warmth and compassion. It's a great shame that they've had to close part of the hospice due to lack of funding so this annual event is really important for them. 

It was a lovely day which began with a stroll round the statutory myriad of stalls selling everything from jewellery to paintings of jungle animals, but what made the day extra special was the guest speaker. They've had some cracking good speakers in the past but this year's was truly phenomenal. I've been to many dinners with guest speakers but this was the first time the speaker visited every table during the lunch - and there were a lot of tables. After lunch we were treated to an hour of hilarity, with anecdotes of warmth, humour, even some tinged with sadness. The Rev. Kate Bottley didn't hold back. From her first step onto the stage she had us hanging on her every word. When she finally finished her talk she whipped off her shoes, declared her feet were killing her and left the stage to ear-busting applause.

What an event and well done to Kate Bottley.

The Rev in full flow

A chair battle

How antibiotics led to a battle for the best chair in the house.

April has passed in a fug of antibiotics - three different lots to be precise. The GP called it a deep-seated UTI. In other words, I've had burning wee and the first two lots of drugs wouldn't shift it! It looks like the final course has done the job but this leads us on to the chair battle.

I normally love curling up on one of our two soft, squidgy sofas but in view of the above I just couldn't get comfortable. What I needed was a firm chair with a high back and lumber support, exactly like the striped chair in the corner that Sophie-the-cat claimed as her own soon after she arrived here. 

Yesterday I invaded her territory. I cleaned the cat fur off and took residence. Oh, the relief, proper support for my back and an instant easing of other symptoms that I don't need to mention again but were eluded to in the first paragraph.

The only uncomfortable outcome was an entire evening of this...

Yes, I know... she'll get used to it!

p.s. Betty-the-cat wants you to know that she's a good girl unlike her sister... 

but she does occasionally tell fibs!

A Prayer for Peace

I've hesitated for several days before writing this post. For the first time in my life I'm frightened because I'm Jewish. I don't understand why there is so much hatred in the world. In 2019 I wrote a blog post called 'Passover - a Hope for Peace'. I expressed the wish for humans to stop causing pain and misery to other humans. Well, that didn't work. Things have taken a turn for the worse. The world is far more consumed with violence now than it was seven years ago.

The Jewish Passover, which starts this evening, should be a time for positive thinking and hopes for a peaceful life ahead. It's when we remember how the Israelites were held hostage by Pharoah and made to work as slaves. We remember how Pharoah finally released them only to change his mind and chase after them.  We eat matzo (unlevened bread) for eight days to represent the time they spent in the desert with only bread that had baked on their backs as they fled. The festival often coincides with Easter because Jesus was Jewish and the Last Supper was the first night of Passover.

This year's Passover is fraught with concerns. The London police have increased their patrols and there will be drones overhead. The threat to Jewish people is high even though we are ordinary people going about our lives in an ordinary way. I'm only glad my Mother didn't live to see this. She lived through the rise of the Nazis and the possibility of that happening again always made her shudder. She truly believed it never would... but now I fear that it has.  Below is a plaque from our synagogue commemorating the six million Jews who died under the Nazi regime.

Yes, that does say SIX MILLION!

Sadly I have had to set the comments on this post to 'moderation only', so if you'd like to respond, there will be a delay before it appears. Whatever your beliefs, have a relaxing Bank Holiday weekend.

I called this post 'A Prayer for Peace' and here is my prayer: 

I pray with all my heart that we will soon see a more harmonious world, a world where everyone is free to pray and live as they choose and where we all have only smiles and kindness to offer to our neighbours. Amen

 

My Therapy Bear

I have resurrected and reworked a poem posted on this blog over ten years ago. Apologies for repetition but it feels like an appropriate time to repost this. 

My Therapy Bear

It’s ok to chat with my cats, so I’ve heard
and I know that my cats can hear every word
but I'd much rather talk with inanimate things
like my teddy, whose stuffing is held in with string.

I can tell that my cats don't care much about me
unless I'm preparing their breakfast or tea.

My teddy, however, absorbs all I say.
He collects up my words in his kapok each day.

My teddy bear holds all my wishes and thoughts.
He knows all my hopes, all those demons I’ve fought.
Don't tell me he's only a toy. Can't you see,

he’s the one true custodian of all that is me.

My poem in Allegro Poetry Magazine

A big thank you to Allegro Poetry Magazine for publishing my poem in their March 2026 issue. The magazine displays the poetry in a list and I'm sure you'll enjoy reading the various poems sitting above mine, but if you want to go straight to my work, you need to either do a search using my name Rosalind, or scroll down about three-quarters of the way through the list.

The poem is called A Chat with Marguerite Patten. It was originally called A Chat with Florence Greenberg, a Jewish cookery book writer from the 1950s/60s, but I wasn't sure people would know who she was, so I tweaked it just a bit before submitting it. 

The magazine can be viewed at the following link:  Allegro Poetry Magazine

The poem was inspired by an online poetry workshop that I attended several years ago. We were asked to find something that meant a lot to us and then write down a conversation that we might have with that object. What I love about those kinds of workshops is that my mind always seems to produce words that I didn't know were there. 

My Cat's Whiskers

I just have to share the news - which the cat owners among you probably know anyway - about cat bowls.  My recent purchase of a set of whisker friendly bowls have so far been a great success. It would seem that 21st century cats don't like their whiskers to be knocked by the side of a food bowl. These new bowls are shallow and wide and my girls love them. 

I've had cats all my life, from when I was a toddler to the present day with only the sad times between getting over a loss and heading for the rescue centre again. All my cats have come from a cat rescue centre.  I've never had any trouble with their feeding habits or, indeed, sociability... until Betty and Sophie arrived. 

I blogged about them in 2021. The rescue people assured us they were sisters and loved each other... wrong! To this day they will have a hissy fit if they pass too close and they have divided up the house. Betty has the conservatory, Sophie the living room. The dining area and kitchen are tolerated as shared feeding stations to be accessed when the area is vacant. They will never eat together!

Sophie on her striped chair in the living room and Betty in the conservatory.

Betty is rather overweight and tends to plod around. I do try to restrict her diet but she just eats her sister's food whenever I put her on rations. She will now allow me to stroke her when she's hungry. Any other time I'm likely to lose a hand, or at least a pint of blood. She is adorable in that 'only a mother would love her' kind of way.

Sophie will only eat dried food and is quite petite. She has benefitted the most from these new shallow bowls and it's a joy to watch her eating. She is much more loveable than Betty. I can tickle her ear and tummy with no fear of reprisals but if I try to pick her up then blood will be spilt for sure. The vet tells me that she has a heart murmur and possibly was born with it but I'm not going to subject her to tests, not while she is still performing zoomies up and down the stairs and in and out of rooms at record-breaking speed. 

With apologies to non-cat-lovers here are two more photographs of the girls:

Betty lounging in the conservatory

Sophie on a suitcase under the spare bed

Spring and new traditions

It's almost Spring... isn't it? So far this year the weather here has been grey and wet. At least we've had no floods... yet. Parts of Leicestershire have been under water for several weeks now. Is it climate change or is it the good old British weather? I don't know but I know that I need something to cheer me up, so I went into the garden early this morning and found a bed full of Hellebores. I took a photo of one. 

I love the way the petals show off such dainty spots, an artist's challenge if ever I saw one. 

So what has Spring got to offer? Lighter evenings and warmer days for a start. Mr A has not been able to work in his much loved garden lately and I've not been able to sit on my swing seat and watch him work! We used to have in depth discussions each Spring about which vegetables to grow for that year's harvest but not any more. Vegetables need such a lot of attention and it's time for a new tradition. We will discuss which flowers to order, plug plants to take the risk out of the seed sowing, and we will fill those beds with a mass of colour. There's too much grey out there.

Spring means that everything is beginning again, birds building nests, flowers preparing to dazzle but it's not all about looking forward. All that new life is tinged with sadness. It's so hard to accept that this Spring my sister won't be planting out her pots. My sister, who died last June, lived in an upstairs flat in Lyme Regis. She had no garden but the path beside her front door was packed each summer with all manner of flowers tumbling over the sides of pots. She spent hours each evening dead-heading and watering... until two years ago when her health deteriorated. I have a rose bush in our garden that she bought me for one of my big birthdays. It has the most amazing flowers every year and I have always sent her a photo of the first full bloom. This year I hope you will indulge me because I would like to post this year's rose photo on my blog. Like I said, it's time for new traditions. 

ABBA Voyage Show - a Trip to London

We’ve been to London to see ABBA Voyage, a digital, virtual performance by ABBA looking exactly as they did in the 1970s. It was strange seeing holograms of the four ABBA members on stage looking so young. At the end of the show they made an ‘appearance’… or rather a virtual appearance, looking like they do today. It was all very moving. 

Throughout the show they were accompanied by an extremely talented live band and an rather lively light show. The light show was so lively in fact, that I had to close my eyes for part of it as the strobe effect was too much for my ‘elderly’ eyes to cope with. There was plenty of singing along to songs we all knew and we even joined in with the arm waving.

The Arena was well organised and very welcoming from the minute we arrived. The photo on the right shows the brightly lit entrance:

Photography was, understandably, strictly forbidden once the show began but I managed to take one of the packed Arena before it started to try and give you a feel for the atmosphere:

We went down to London by train. This was not without its stresses. We ground to a halt somewhere near Harpenden and there we stayed for forty minutes. It would seem that someone had stolen leads from the signals on the track. It was a good job we’d given ourselves plenty of time.

We really splashed out on the day taking a taxi from St Pancras all the way to the Arena and back again after the show. It was a long (and expensive) drive but fascinating. It’s one thing seeing the names of places from the Monopoly Board on underground station signs. It’s quite another seeing them in real life. Being driven through the East End of London had an additional frisson for me. My Mum was born and grew up there and we drove along roads that she used to talk about.

Before getting the train home we treated ourselves to posh fish and chips in Searcys restaurant at St Pancras Station. An excellent end to a great day. Must admit though, it did knock me out just a bit. It took a few days of dossing in front of my iPad for me to recover.

Good Grief! The Comedian's a Bear!

I was listening to an old radio programme this week, Word of Mouth from February 2024. They were talking about things that families say, snippets and phrases that become original family sayings. I tried in vain to think of something original that my own family have created but ours all seem to be cliché phrases like, 'It's a bit black over Bill's mother's.' I'd love to know the derivation of that, who Bill is and why his mum always has storm clouds over her house. After much thought I came up with a few that I thought were originals but which turn out to be well-known phrases.

My mother-in-law was forever suspicious of new technology and her stock line was, 'We're getting far too clever by half.' She'd shake her head and fold her arms as she said it. She died many years ago but whenever we hear of a new technological development we chorus the words, 'We're getting far too clever.' Who knows, maybe we are getting far too clever.

When I was a child my mum would always say, 'It'll end in tears.' whenever I was too silly. Again, it's not original but I often hear her voice in my head, even now, if I get the giggles. That's rather sad but I know that Mum would never have meant to impose such a forever reaction on me.

I like to think that a phrase adopted by my son and myself is fairly original, even if we did copy it from a television show. The title of this blog may give you a clue. We were fanatical Muppet viewers and every time anyone said... and still to this day says... 'Good grief!' My son, me and family chant in chorus, 'The comedian's a bear. No he's a-not he's a-wearing a neck-a-tie!'

This is my only contribution to clichéd sayings. It's not very highbrow but it makes us laugh every time we say it and no, it doesn't end in tears. For those who have never seen the Muppets, it's a Fozzie the Bear joke. He was and still is my favourite Muppet character.

For those who are still wondering what on earth I'm talking about, here is the excerpt. It makes me laugh every time. Enjoy:    Muppet Show excerpt