Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Poor Neglected Blog

It has been weeks since I have had a few moments to sit and update my Blog. I have been so busy with children, gardening, husband and all my wonderful University studies. I have become an obsessive student. I am always busy writing essays, researching or just indulging the love of my life, writing poetry.

I have just critiqued and analysed a poem for an essay and handed that in on Monday, so I am now hoping that I have done well in that piece of assessment. I have a 1500 word essay to write on King Lear and have read about 15 books/articles on him, oh boy, I did not know that so much had been written on a single Shakespearean play.

I must admit to totally loving every minute of my 'intellectual' life. I find myself so absorbed, that I lose hours and days of time.

So sincere apologies to all fans of Vesta, I will try to be more diligent in future.

Check out Vesta poetry for some new posts over the next couple of days.

We have been challenged to enter a poetry course competition to write a Triolet. It is a very structured poem (see details on Vesta-poetry), the prize is a $200 book voucher from the campus book shop, what an indulgence.

I will be posting my efforts for some comments, wish me luck.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

The Fish Breeder


Earlier this year Sarah got a new Fish Tank. We have taken to calling her Mrs Noah as she is pet and animal crazy. Anyway despite a few losses, most of her fish have done really well. With a couple of pregnant female guppies, we have had a few mishaps (baby fish being eaten), so we put the most pregnant female into the breeding tank (a small plastic enclosure) and before we knew it we had about 14 babies.
Today we spoilt her with a second tank for her 14 guppies, but throughout the day, her female kept giving birth to all these live young and now we have a second tank in our dining room filled with about 60 baby guppies and guess what - we have a second pregnant female
Bubbles on the right and baby fish on the left. About 60 of them.
It was actually an amazing experience to see this female give a shake and out pop about 4 live baby fish at a time. All the other fish in her tank eat the babies, including the male and female large guppies, so they do need to be seperated, hence the news tank.
We are now hoping that Mrs Noah, will be satisfied at least for a while.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

I did it again!

Yippee!

All my hard work is paying off. Today I got my first essay back from my English course. My first assignment was a 700 word essay on Beowulf. I discovered the art of being concise in trying to write an academic essay in just 700 words and eventually after some hard work and 7 drafts submitted my essay.

My result was 95% - a high distinction. My only 2 errors were minor technical errors, that I did not even know about before this, without a single error in content. I am thrilled.
My tutor's comments were:
"This is a focused, thoughtful, and very well-constructed essay. No words are wasted. You use textual examples very well and there are some wonderful close readings. Keep up the good work!"

I have to say it is with so much joy and pride that I received this result. I am loving my courses, my poetry course is inspiring me to write almost everyday and this English course is developing my love of books and literature even further than it already is.

As I always tell my children, you get out what you put in, and this time it sure is the truth.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Live Life

My Mum visited the outpatient cardiology clinic today and has been given a clean bill of health. They do not know what caused her 'heart incident' and cannot give her any guarantees that it won't happen again, but they have told her to just live. The cardiologist told her that her heart is healthy, she is healthy and she should just live.

We are all celebrating, this is good news, so now she can just wake each morning, take a deep breath and live life. None of us know how long we have, when we will die, so I guess she is no different.

Mum, this is the best news ever, glad to have you around for a little longer.

Friday, September 4, 2009

The list is up


At the end of Semester One, I was sent a letter to say that I had made the Dean's List at Uni for my excellent results. This week the list was posted outside the Faculty of Arts office and Elizabeth took my photo in front of the board. It is a great feeling to see my name up. I think you need a GPA of over 6 to qualify, so it is quite an honour.
Just thought I would share my happy photo, wearing my lovely pink UQ sweatshirt.


Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Working at my craft

To be a great dancer, one must spend hours each and every day building the muscles and exercising the limbs. Learning the forms of dance and just dancing.
To be a great painter, one must draw, paint and study. Learning about colour and form, experimenting and just painting.
To be a great sports man or woman, the same rules apply, hard work and practice.

I have begun to realise that the same rules apply to being a writer, a poet. The inspirational thoughts and poems that I have written in the past can be improved. If this is my craft and my gift, then I must work at it. I must write each and every day. I must doodle with words, write dittys that will never see the light of day beyond the computer file in which they are stored. But, in doing this practice, I will learn, learn the form of writing, practice will give me the inspiration and hopefully out of all of this my great works will come.

So once more today I have been writing, writing poetry and working at my craft.

I am a writer, I am a poet.

Neglected Blog

Hours of poetry inspiration and writing left me with a 'mush brain' yesterday. By last night, I could no longer think in rhyme, meter or even words - my brain had just frizzled. Driving home from school Matthew asked what we were having for supper and I said a roast dinner. His question was: "Mom if you have been working hard all day, why are you cooking a roast?" I love my son, he is wonderful. I just laughed, thinking that he wouldn't care if I dished up toast, as long as I wasn't too tired.

I have my first exercise portfolio ready for submission on Monday for Poetry, I am happy with the results of my work and will be even happier if I get a good mark as it is worth 20%.

Life continues apace, with the children already counting down to our next short holiday, in 3 weeks time, it will be Spring holidays for 2 weeks and then we are in the final term of this year. Sarah has picked her language choice (chinese) for Middle School and Matthew will soon be chosing his subjects for his first year of Senior school. Time is just flying.

Someone had the audacity to point out the other day that it was less than 4 months to Christmas - Yikes!

Anyway enough rambling today, from a beautiful sunny Brisbane winter/spring morning I hope you have a wonderful Day.