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September 2024
HP Poet: Victoria
Age: 59
Country: UK


Question 1: A warm welcome to the HP Spotlight, Victoria. Please tell us about your background?

Victoria: "My name is Victoria, I'm 59 and from Wirral, North West England. I studied and had a career in social work, predominantly the field of Child Protection. I was married, I'm happily single. I am the eldest of 6 and have 5 children and 5 grandchildren. Home growing up was dysfunctional, I lived through my teens with my nan. I'm passionate about my family, Liverpool fc and my friends. I was addicted ******. My bio says: "Previously life was complex, I helped make it that way, now, I keep it simple and fun." It's true."


Question 2: How long have you been writing poetry, and for how long have you been a member of Hello Poetry?

Victoria: "I joined Hello Poetry in 2011 and that's when I started writing poetry. Mostly, I started with rhyme and then found that prose better fit my parlance."


Question 3: What inspires you? (In other words, how does poetry happen for you).

Victoria: "I'm inspired by my many experiences, with others and in nature. I'm inspired by poetry here, always. Many a poem has stayed with me, long after reading. Writing poetry was suggested to me and my writing developed, it gave me a voice to express, that which more often I had held silent."


Question 4: What does poetry mean to you?

Victoria: "What poetry means to me happens both in the reading and the writing. Poetry for me, gives and changes perspective, I gain new sensibilities and find through the writing, as in life there is, constant readjustment."


Question 5: Who are your favorite poets?

Victoria: "I have lots of favourite poets here, at Hello Poetry. I've made many friends and been fortunate to meet a few. I also enjoy discovering new poets and I am always amazed at the talent out there."


Question 6: What other interests do you have?

Victoria: "I enjoy fishing: music, photography and feeding my family home grown produce. I've rented an allotment plot for about 12 years, it is where I grow veg, fruit and flowers. My other pastimes are travel, walking, watching the footy and the occasional wild night out with close friends."



Carlo C. Gomez: “Thank you so much for giving us this opportunity to get to know the man behind the poet, Victoria! We are honored to include you in this ongoing series!”

Victoria: "Thank you, Carlo."




Thank you everyone here at HP for taking the time to read this. We hope you enjoyed coming to know Victoria a little bit better. I most certainly did. It is our wish that these spotlights are helping everyone to further discover and appreciate their fellow poets. – Carlo C. Gomez

We will post Spotlight #20 in October!

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Noun. sonder (uncountable) (neologism):

The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it.

Dear One:
it is one of those days, when everything becomes a poem,
every mundane, brushing my hair  be/is a philo-treatise,
& the errands of the day, starting  at 6:45am with an assessment,
a weighing of oneself on a numerical scale of justice,
requiring one to rethink his moral behaviors of a prior day,
a kind of confessional I guess, for I have never been inside one,
(a confessional and actually confessing) but my hebraic genetics
require Veduei (1),
constant awareness of one’s
everything deeds, making confessing a ongoing process 24/7
process unceasing, onerous and relieving,
by reliving our each~very individual action,
which means that I am in a sensory paradise / hell and
sleep comes in bursts of exhaustion,
as I misplace my compass
daily, and the re-search required to obtain, nay, reGAIN,  
my footing, my true directionS,
and it is worse than never ending, more akin to the
regularity of irregular breathing…

Thank you for “Sonder;”
restoring the awe for not knowing it, and occasionally forgetting, that there are words, ready, willing, and able to become poems, as I exegesis, excise, and exercise their purpose
to better to remember the worth of everyone and every thing within in a too oft / clouded, self centered
“I exist , therefore I am”
very limited filtering device….
so sonder becomes a poem, an essay, un écrivez,
and I study your photograph, and fly away,
I am in a garden,
you may have (no, probably!) planted,
(like the sonder word in my brain)
and the colors, the soils, the colorex (2) variety
teaches me you better than words…
while I am sundering, sondering, you,

and so many others
who give me the great pauses
of my existence,
the purposed understanding
of the arrogance of pre-judgement…

Surrounded,
I am breathing salt air, luscious greens, a variegated
bluey (love that show)
sky,
and all my voices rise, in a choir of one,
fo forgive me, forgive myself,
for failing not to be bigger than
than the distances
my aging weakening senses
and my low powered sensibilities
physically provide,

I hear you,
I sonder you,
and so many others,
and I
bind and bound myself to you
and
thus emboldened!

to go forth and walk in unfamiliar gardens,
to read better  and be,
between the lines
y’all provide

here’s where a a modest thanksgiving
is due and herein provided,
and the inspirations keep coming and
coffee need re~reheating, so the brain can
start
all over again,
S’wondering
S’ondering
just like a (wink)
An American in Paris,
the next poem is aborning,
jealously
demanding
it’s very own
birthing;
an embryo,
asking to be
imagined.

so thank you,
dear one…

City o' canvas built like a tent
Held together by strands
That can barely make rent
The poles hold is folky yet formal
These people sized holes, becoming too normal
I'd spin you a tale, but where to begin
A city of winners, **** stained in sin
Lord stretch thee almighty abundant in lands
Take it or make it, but never hold hands

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“rootless in shallows of momentary mayhem
and no matter the change in horizon,
there is always some thing to be found
that could remind me
of the worst ways I have ever been.”

from “Harlequin Days of Fecund Fervor” by Victoria

<>

rereading these your words, upset forces me to break a recent vow,
my own writing banished, now faceless in the ranks
of just another poet, busted in rank, chose my own
decommissioning but then your momentary mayhem
plea, fecund you, your third harlequin, states construct!

stay the constriction, the recalling of our worst worsts,
for there is always something to be found, recalled,
that the horizon’s only constant is constant change,
especially the worst worsts

I am colored by your treats, your word plums ripe even
out of season, and the mayhem is mine only mine,
robbed you for it is I, rootless, given up my planting, then
the cobblestones of old new york, trip me up, saying
even old things such as you, have a prime yet to come,
stones fecund seeding, predicting I am not done, just undone,
and fetuses within this dying body, may yet be carried to term,
may yet, maybe, may be, but may be caesarean stillborn

rambling this, mostly musty unclear, so summarizations a
sensible thing, a pardon requested for clarity is a sometime thing.

rare are the days that the terracotta colored soil
darkens my fingernails,
it is dried blood from my scratching deep beneath the skin’s topsoil,
but nothing grows that’s whole, warped are the word fruits.
my soup is hot water with salt, a tasty dish apropos for one
whose growths are rootless in the shallow, infertile dirt of stones
that reside in the shallows of a garden of mine own
fecund may-hem of the grey fall sky autopsy turvy

Oh Victoria, the colour red you loved
I wore them inside my body,
the colour of blood

I remember how you'd come running and sneak inside my house
To the secret sanctuary
in the small hill by the pond
We strode the gaping distance  
to our little paradise
There, I saw the loveliest sunsets,
such beautiful goodbyes
You beneath the glistening sunlight,
you taught me how to love

I never forgot, Victoria
the day you said goodbye
A grieving wave that drowned me
and buried in my heart
We laughed and said promises,
but it was your last
I did not know how you could do it,
to just leave it like that
All I saw was the rope hanging
from the window in your house
I wished I had told you,
forever you are loved.