Lottie

In Eglesfield Road their once lived a gran
That always laughed and always sang

Her house was modest, small but neat
With one simple rule, ‘Please wipe your feet!’

And in the kitchen her magical hands
Did magical things with pots and pans

With ovens and hobs always ready and hot
This wonderful woman rarely paused or stopped

Creating fine pies stuffed with tatties and mince
Cheese and onion, apple, pork and quince

Scones, biscuits, tarts, thin fat round and tasty
Our eager thieving hands were often too hasty

‘Get off you daft sods!’ she would often scold
‘You’ll burn off ya gobs, please wait ‘til they’re cold!’

And when we would eat, oh my what a feast
Chomping and gobbling like terrible beasts

Crumbs spreading everywhere never caring a less
But gran would just smile and clean up the mess

And after the feast we would all have to go
With bellies so full they felt ready to blow

It’s now many years since gran breathed her last sigh
She’s off to new kitchens upstairs in the sky

And watching us always whilst making more stotties
Is the legendary spirit on our great Nana Lottie.

NaPoWriMo 2026 - Day 3: The Teacher

Registration, in they come
Dismissive, rude and slumped
Eye contact is not engaged
But fists are often bumped.

Names read out, grunts come back
Listed down and ticked
Jimmy says that he was late
'Cos me dad's car got fuckin' bricked'.

Bell goes off, out they slither
To classrooms far and wide
Replaced by more who do the same
A never ending tide.

I try to teach, I try my best
It quickly becomes a chore
As nothing ever registers
Because I'm 'a bastard bore'.

What rules we have are always broke
The kids, they rule the school
Us teachers are invisible
To pupils often cruel.

The day will end, I trot off home
And ask myself each night
Why do I bother? Why do I teach?
It's an everlasting fight.

NaPoWriMo 2026 - Day 2: The Tea Table

Today, a challenge to write your own poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be.

A lot of people stared,  
A small boy scared,
A tea table full of pastries,
Of scone mountains,
Of sandwiches towers,
Of jam tart monuments,
Of fizzing pop of every colour.

A lot of people smiled,
A love that seemed to fill the room,
A welcome,
Of hope,
Of a future,
Of less pain,
Of family.

A small boy smiled back,
A cuddle from a stranger,
A comfort that crept inside.

And so my life began.

NaPoWriMo 2026 - Day 1: Town Tanka

The tanka is an ancient Japanese poetic form. In contemporary English versions, it often takes the shape of a five-line poem with a 5 / 7 / 5 / 7 / 7 syllable-count – kind of like a haiku that decided to keep going.  

 

An angry man chased
                                        whilst the thief laughed and mocked him.

Shopping basket sits

on top of a bus shelter. 

What happened to this proud town?

Kennings

A kenning is a compressed, two-word metaphor used to describe an object, person, or concept, often found in Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse poetry like Beowulf. A common form of a kenning is a "noun + -er word" compound, which describes what something does.  

Compass
Pocket finder
Layway discoverer
Lost leader
Boyscout owner
Precisive pointer
Navigation player
Geographic gatherer
Magnetic searcher

Harpoon
Fish darter
Unbelievably sharper
Pointed destroyer
Ocean digger
Flying torturer
Evil whaler

Monument
Stationary poser
City dweller
Always taller
Famous stoner
Concrete loner
Graffiti gatherer
Pigeon hotelier

 

Looks Familiar

He has a familiarity about him, standing all of 5ft something, thick-set frame and legs that have done the rounds on most council football pitches on a Sunday morning. Something of the 1960s or 1990s with the hair, kind of not sure if it wants to be a fluffed up '60s mod crop or a swept over early '90s John Squire or Paul Weller type chop. No doubt a man who's style is heavily influenced by music. A rounded face, with pink cheeks and always smoothly shaven, it's difficult to pinpoint an exact age but he is perhaps threatening to belie a man that's well into middle-age. Always the same t-shirt style (usually a band name or some retro football reference) and always black, dark blue and on the odd occasion, green. A bomber-style jacket is usually the outer wearing of choice, perhaps with a logo such as Weekend Offender, Sergio Tacchini or CP Company. 'He's a wannabee hooligan', some might say but others may say simply an appreciator of decent clobber. Blue jeans, straight cut, never too tight or too baggy and threatening to be a little too short at times, with a neat pair of 1980s Adidas terrace-wear trainers on his feet. Yes, he certainly looks familiar.

Skill, Rope, Worm

As he awoke he just couldn't shake it off; worm was bored. He came to realise that he'd spent the last 3-months of his life (that's how long he had been alive if you were wondering why I was being so precise) doing exactly the same thing: manoeuvring in a random direction in the earth, eating soil, avoiding obstacles and on the rare exciting day (if nearing death can be classified as exciting), avoiding being dried out (as he often broke the surface and ended up out of the soil) or even worse, plucked from the earth by a blackbird. Yep, boring.

But alas, an idea. Just yesterday, worm had discovered a piece of string on his soil-ridden journey and remembered where it was. With haste, worm set off on the 90-minute journey to the end of the cabbage patch he occupied. Pushing it to the surface - and ensuring that it was behind the cabbage leaves - he decided to learn a new skill. 

It was a struggle at first. Acknowledging he didn't have hands or fingers (the challenges of being a moving pink tube), it was a big challenge just wrapping his two end pieces around the string. It took around 3-days to learn that. But no pain, no gain! Onwards, worm developed this new skill and with a flip of his head and tail, the string flicked into the air and in one circular motion, revolved around and smacked him on the underside.

With a grunt and a strain, worm attempted a jump. It was pathetic as far as jumps were concerned but it was enough for the next flick of the 'rope' to fly underneath him as he jumped. Encouraged, he tried another. And another. Exhausted, worm would carefully hide his new toy under a wilted and fallen leaf and return the next day to persevere. 

Within two-weeks, worm had learned a new skill. He had achieved what he finally wanted from life after discovering that string, fame and notoriety as the world's first rope skipping champion. And worms, bugs and other creatures of the soil would gather each day around the cabbage patch and cheer their new hero along. Worm was never bored again.