2012 – The Year’s Poems

It was an unusually busy year, 2012, given many challenges with my ‘other’ lives, including a major move into sheltered accommodation for my elderly step-mother, care for whose affairs I have taken responsibility since my father died seven years ago, building works in our bathroom, which went horribly wrong and, in addition to my continued chairmanship of the Waldershelf Singers, taking on voluntary work as a Park Ranger at the very special and beautiful Wentworth Castle as well as, perhaps the most demanding of all, becoming ‘Puppy Walkers’ for the Guide Dogs for the Blind organisation. The latter was always a lifetime ambition of my wife, but we had forgotten how much hard work a puppy is, especially when it comes with a two inch thick manual of instructions on the multifarious things that we must introduce the puppy to in the first twelve months of its life, like traffic, crowded streets, shops, buses and trains.

So it is surprising that any creative work was done at all! Having said all that, I do believe that, whilst the quantity may be down on last year’s output, the quality of the poems I wrote in 2012 is better than before, but there is still a way to go.

As a footnote, I must say that the small group of close poet friends, who met on Twitter eighteen months ago, most of whom have met in person over the past year or so, the Grass Roots Poetry Group, has had a big influence on keeping me focussed on poetry. My humble thanks and love to them all.

Anyway, enough of life’s other demands and all the excuses, here are the year’s poems, well, you’ll find them by accessing the ‘Poems’ menu above and holding the mouse over ‘2012 – This Year’s Poems’!

John Anstie
January 2013