I love January. As you might have guessed if you visit here regularly I am a beach person and a water person  and January here is peak summer. It’s hot and fine and I can walk on my precious beach every day and swim swim swim, in beach or pool.  If you haven’t seen my beach, here’s a reminder of just how gorgeous it is:

And yes, its often that deserted, though this morning I encountered perhaps 20 other walkers, fishers and swimmers.  When we were in lockdown last year I was lucky to be able to keep up my walks, because this beach is a kilometre from my house, and I continue to share glimpses  and videos through Instagram, in the hopes others who perhaps aren’t so lucky  find some of the joy I feel.

The other thing I love about January is time. My day job, at a university,  is less full-on in January and I have extra time to devote to my writing and research. And, this year, that means poetry – and lots of it! I am working on trying to get an annotated bibliography of Australian verse novels for children and young adults finalised. This project, with three other wonderful volunteers (including Kat Apel), will, when it’s done appear on the NCACL site as a resource for  teachers, parents, researchers and anyone with a passion for verse novels. As part of this most of my reading so far this year has been verse novels – some new to me, some revisited.  It’s felt luxurious to spend so much time reading poetry, and considering it work.

I’ve also been writing new poetry, and working on a new verse novel, as well as  revisiting some of my unpublished poems with hopes of finding homes for them.

In short, I’ve been swimming in poems, and loving it. Which leads, of course, to my poem for this poetry Friday (you did know this was going somewhere, didn’t you?).  I wanted to bring together the two things my January has been all about – the water, and poetry – and here’s where I ended up:

Drowning 

 

I’m drowning in poetry

onomatopoeia

bubbles and burbles

through my lungs.

 

I’m drowning in poetry

rhythm

beats and sways

through my veins.

 

I’m drowning in poetry

rhyme

keeps time

with my heart.

 

I’m drowning in poetry

metaphor

is my life force

my every breath.

 

I’m drowning in poetry

alliteration

measures my  movement

swimming saves me

 

I’m drowning in poetry

and that’s okay with me.

Pound me with poems

make me a victim of verse.

 

(Poem copyright Sally Murphy 2021)

 

I was pretty happy to see that this week’s Poetry Friday host is the amazing Sylvia Vardell and that she is sharing a sneak peak of poetry to be published in 2021. I can’t wait to swim though more of those titles.  Head over to her post to also see what other poetry goodness is being shared this Friday.