On Marking, Yeats and Buyukader

1. I mark six assignments and it takes all day just about. I am really envious of some of the writing. It is hard to keep your own writing voice in your head when you are trying to understand and comment on someone else's. I wonder if others find it as difficult or is it only me.

2. I hear Yeats reading 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' - apparently he was always asked to read that and in the end he hated it. The presenter rows to the island with a trowel and some beans. I start thinking about islands and how romantic they are. Then I rush upstairs to my other laptop to type up the poem I drafted before about the Turkish island of Buyukader. I am quite pleased with the fluidity of it though I can't tell if it will be any good.

3. Later I think about how this poem emerged: I caught a travel piece on the radio which mentioned the island P & I visited about ten years ago, a rare peaceful day at a time when our marriage was already under pressure. It mentioned the custom of taking a ball of ribbon to the monastery, which gave me the wishing/unravelling metaphor to play with, and I end the poem by wishing I could wind up the ribbon back into the ball (so it tapped into some underlying emotions as well).