Magic realism and the kitchen floor

Snowdrops in the Pavilion gardens, but the best I've seen so far were in the garden of a student house this morning doing my daughter's paper round because she's ill. The bin bags set them off perfectly. A couple of yellow crocus in my front, no more yet and I'm feeling about as blank as the garden but excited by a new drive to abandon the first person in my writing, not this writing, obviously, but the poems. I've been attached to it for so long and wonder if I've been misusing the power of it, and certainly leading people to think that everything I write is autobiographical. This may be a mistake. It'll be sods law that when I decide that the first person is out of the window, poetry will find its way back to the kitchen and cleaning the floor will be all the rage again. But maybe if you spend your life cleaning the kitchen floor, it's not such a good idea to write about it, too. I'm drawn back to those magic realists and particularly Angela Carter and Amos Tutuola. They deserve re-reading. So I'm going to fling the pinny out of the back door and put on red riding hood's cloak.

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