Yes! And the title will be Lisbon For Lunch - I wonder what karma dog would make of that title.
If not would you ever want to come here?
Well, as I'd mentioned I was in Wales as part of my Atlantic Rim trip, but that was a flyby drop in...Did you ever make it to England and if so what did you make of us?
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Sadly, since joining Lit I have made 4 out of 6 computers obsolete, 1 is ill and now I have this one. I think I may have some more files on my external hard drive but I haven't gone fishing in there yet. Unfortunately, my online repository site for my erotica that isn't on Lit (these were just bits that were unfinished or abandoned and a few poemies that I've rescued...) has shut down before I had a chance to get in there and make sure I had back-up copies. <sigh>
Well, as I'd mentioned I was in Wales as part of my Atlantic Rim trip, but that was a flyby drop in...
The men's mess hall at Valley AFB was open for late night supper so we were abandoned there by the senior NCOs and officers for over an hour. Turns out, all that was available was a flat top griddle and some eggs. There was a pool of mutton fat lubricating the grill and the toast was so dry that there was no rescue for it and honestly, I don't think I'd ever seen tea of that particular shade of grey before. So, with no veggies, no real meat and just some eggs available, we chatted with some of the men that were there and chain smoked our duty-free cigarettes until the bus collected us again. The enlisted men were assigned bunks in this god-awful barrack block, seriously, I think prisoners must be treated better than Welsh Hussars! The sinks drained into a bucket, the mattresses on the bunks were stained and rolled up and there weren't any linens. When the guys came out and told the Canadian pilot who was on exchange there the deplorable state of their quarters, he had to go in to see.
I had a room reservation at a lovely little B&B downtown since there were no female quarters there. Well, they had to cancel that and book us ALL into a little hotel that had a pub and offered breakfast in the morning. We all were hungry since we hadn't had anything besides a box lunch on the airplane to eat, since we'd left Sondestrom, Greenland in the morning and it was now past 7 p.m. GMT. After asking the barmaid at the pub, we learned that there wasn't anywhere we could walk to that served hot food after 6, including this place (I think she was having us on). Beer it was and I think we found some crisps and a stale sandwich somewhere.
Later on, she asked me, "Oooh, are you the only woman with all these lovely men?" I had to laugh because I was, but "lovely" was hardly the adjective I'd use for them. We were supposed to stay for 2 days but we left first thing in the morning and added another night to our stop in Lahr, Germany.
At one point during my tour we were thinking about driving to Glasgow, to see my husband's aunts, uncles, and cousins still in Scotland, and I really did want to have a few days in London but alas, this never materialized. The time I was thinking about booking the trip for was during the Gulf War and all leave was cancelled. I'm sure I would have found Londoners as pale and interesting as did my friends the chef and his wife. They were there while he was in the Cordon Bleu school in the city. Maybe, I'll get there before we all need to use walkers, Annie
They were blissfully off being feted at the Officers' Club and totally unaware. When our host (the exchange pilot) was asked to meet us at customs, he was led to believe that the Jr. Ranks had a meal and a representative to welcome us and make sure all was warm and squishy love... So when we pulled up outside of the mess he simply dropped us at the curb and took the aircrew off to their party. I guess there was a bit of a confusion and mix up on his part, since he (and we) took the Canadian view of how things go and therefore had very high expectations of our welcome. As it turned out though, no one in the ranks was told to expect us so they were as unprepared as we were for feeding and entertaining 15 Canadian airmen (and me).
I can't really say how my writing has gone from innocence and good for general audiences to sidestepping unintentional pornography and managing to direct my words to nestle in to a pile of erotica pillows. When I sit down to write a poem, I don't neccessarily plan to write something a little on the porny side so I just start off and let the poem tell me what it wants to be.Thank you for the acknowledgement and kind words.
I have noticed that a lot of your erotic poetry is subtle, so actually erotic as opposed to overtly pornographic, I think it invokes femenine sexuality which is delicious to read. What I was wondering is, how long did it take to develope that type of writing, or was it instinctual to the way you think as a woman?
I haven't really felt very poetic about my military career, ever. I do find that occassionally a hint of patriotism or pride of country and the men and women who serve creeps in but, not much. I think there are anecdotes and story ideas from that side of me, though. Maybe I'll write a little tale about sex in a hangar while working overtimeYour military service is a fascinating side of you that I never would have imagined. Have your experiences from it shown up in your poems? And, more generally, are there any subjects or themes that you feel drawn to explore? If so, how do you push yourself into new territory when you write?
Also I am interested to know what is essential to your poet's toolkit. Do have have specific resources, print or digital, that you like to have at hand when you write?
Great interview btw Champy.
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Well, I just hearkened back to a couple of mine...I was asked which are my favourite 3 poems of my own so now I'm asking you the same
Ahh, 'tess! How can you worry about getting personal on such a thread as this. I swear, whoever reads this thread will actually come away with some bits of information about me that even my family doesn't know.
It's interesting that you attribute me with more effort in my writing than I actually expend. I have been practising poetry for a long time so perhaps this is why even my first drafts, my 30 minute wonders as it were, are a little closer to polished than some that get posted over in the index. It's a blessing to have a really expansive vocabulary with a relatively accurate recall. I wrote a poem using salience to describe a part of my brain. A friend took it as the military definition, which is still an interesting take on it but I was certain that it was a brain science term when I used it. So, he stimulated me into actually looking it up and voila! my first instinct was correct. This is why I can Gunfight! and hold my own, even though T-zed has shinier spurs and managed to shoot my pen write outta my hand...
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It's tough to pick your favourites out of anything you create. I love all of my poems, for different reasons, as you can imagine, so calling any of them my favourites is like I'm dissing the others that will supercede my current list spontaneously. For instance I just looked at Cat's Paw and I'm sure that one could slide into first place right easily.Great choices I loved them all
