Fishing for Birds

Fishing for Birds is a collection of poems written by me between around 1973 and 1996 (though there are one or two after that date too). The explanation for the title is given with the poem of the same name which starts this online reading (scroll to the bottom).

The intention of Podcasting the collection was to provide people with a poem a day throughout the whole Christmas and New Year period from 2008 into 2009.

Those who followed the collection as it built up day by day will have heard the poems in the intended order. If you’ve come along now then you may prefer to listen to them that way by scrolling to the bottom and working up. Alternatively why not choose one of the category options on the left (eg Humorous) to pick the sort of poems you’d like to hear.

Well, it’s been quite a discipline to record, edit, write about and publish 35 poems for this collection in the last few weeks, but I’m glad I did it. The original intention was to provide a little something each day for people feeling lonely over the festive period, so twelth night seems a fitting day to end.

This last contribution is short but sweet. If you’ve been along for the ride and picked out some of the themes then I hope it makes a fitting close though. And don’t forget that the Equality and Diversity Podcast, “Just Plain Sense” continues to run over at podcast.plain-sense.co.uk

Best Wishes Christine Burns

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“It’s the mind’s new dimension .. a world without edges..”

This poem was written at the height of the mid nineties hype about the World Wide Web, at a time when the papers were full of talk about the “Internet Highway”. Looking back, some of the hype was justifiable. The WWW has altered our lives in undreamed of ways. Yet my aim was to challenge the idea that it could do everything. Although we knew nothing then about things to come, such as social networking and Second Life, I still think it’s important to challenge to remember that we live for real in the physical world, and that there are some things that can’t be substituted in the virtual one.

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If you write then you’ll know about Writer’s Block. This case is possibly a world record contender though.

The poem was begun in 1974 but I couldn’t find the words to finish it and put it away. Then, around 1994 - when I was ready to write again - I got it out and finished it off.

You can definitely see the join - the second half has a different tempo and the style is changed. Still, the moral is to never give up!

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Calling all Jobsworths! This one means you!

We’ve all met them of course; the people who’ll say “Yes, but it’s more than my job’s worth to help you”. This poem is connected with the previous one. They were both written the same angry, tearful weekend, when I crashed into that barrier at full speed. I was younger then, of course. Now I’d know what to do rather than writing a poem about it.

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A short and cryptic one today .. which dates back to an argument which I had many years ago with an organisation I used to volunteer for.

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I have a soft spot for this poem, which was written many years ago at a turning point in dealing with some personal demons. The title is a mock newspaper headline and contains a word play about Councillors (the elected kind who would be concerned about dangerous streets) and Counsellors (the active listening kind). It was a positive action statement about doing something to deal with the dark places that frightened me and was written on the day I had found the just the right Counsellor to work with.

As this is New Year’s day - a time when everyone reviews their lives and makes resolutions - I thought this was a fitting time to read such a poem about making positive steps towards change. Personally, with all those years of hindsight, I can say that the day I wrote this poem was a really positive one, from which I’ve never looked back.

I hope everyone this year gets to clear up the dark alleyways and banish the shaddows this year.

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