Alan McKean Poetry and Photography

Not posted too much recently, life has a habit of giving you stuff to do, so here’s a bit of an update on my scribblings

I’ve been working on my collection “The four o’clock in the Morning Moon”, and converting it to a kindle format, it’s a bit rough and ready, but it works, and is now available to buy on Kindle.

I have also been working on my collection “81 Kites” and converting that to a format acceptable for the KOBO platform, and this has now been sorted, entered onto their catalogue, and is now available to buy there. Again, a bit rough and ready, but it works.

On Saturday 18th April, I’m taking part in a 2 hour live poetry broadcast on a Manchester local radio station – North Manchester FM”. There are around a dozen poets on the Hannah Kate programme, – Hannah’s Bookshelf – between two and four in the afternoon. I did one last year – it was great fun.

Trawling through a couple of old data files, and I came across a complete manuscript of a collection of poetry that I’ve performed at open mic nights, that I put together a few years ago, and had completely forgotten about, so I’ve resurrected and tweaked that a bit with a view to publishing it in the near future – watch this space.

Alan

Writing dialect poetry of any local region can be difficult. Words and phrases can vary within a few miles of where you live, and there will always be discussion as to just what any specific word can mean.

I have read, and still do read, a number of 19th century Lancashire and Yorkshire dialect poets, and find that their words are not just rhyme, but tell stories of life as they encountered it – life, death, poverty, good times and bad times. no embellishments, just honest observations, unless it was intended, as in the poem/song “Eawr Market Meet” by Sam Fitton (as sung by The Oldham Tinkers) or “Bowton’s Yard” by Sam Laycock (as sung by Harry Boardman)

A recent listen to a piece called “T’Coaler” read by Jenn Reid, a balladeer and collector of dialect writings (including a few of mine – thanks Jenn) has nudged me into digging some of my attempts at writing Lancashire dialect out of the archives (I suspect that, in reality, it is a hybrid of East Lancashire/West Yorkshire, because of where we live), so I will be posting a few of them over the next day or so. They will be on the “Lancashire” poetry page.

I hope you like and enjoy them

Alan

Just added another painting by my friend Simon Footitt to the Art/haiku pages.

I love Simon’s really quirky approach, and the “wonkiness” of the buildings.

Alan

Not written a lot recently – “stuff” happens and takes over for a short while, so I thought I would post a photo I took from our back door recently, along with a short poem/haiku I wrote to go with it. I like taking photos, but I am not exceptionally good at it and, from a technical/photographer’s point of view, I would call myself “an enthusiastic amateur”.

The photo and poem is called “Sunset” and will be on the haiku, photopoetry, and general pages shortly.

I hope you like it.

Alan