Why another poetry blog?

I've thought about setting up a blog for my poetry for many years. There was a long time where I didn't write anything, but lately I've been feeling the desire to write again. I don't say that I'm a great poet by any means, but sometimes I feel like I've got something to say that I need to get out. In due course I'll probably also include links to the fanfiction I've also started writing again, but I won't post that here.

I called my blog "Deep water" because I love water and I especially love deep water. A lot of my early forays into poetry involved water (both my solo efforts and some collaborations). My most recent effort (which I have yet to transcribe) was born out of a reflective time by a beautiful lake on a family holiday at the beginning of the year.

You might notice that the URL for my blog is not "deepwater" - that's mainly because it was already taken, but also because I remembered a particularly fun collaboration back in the 90s with another online poet. We wrote just a few poems together, but the first one was called "Water for two", so that's where the URL name comes from. Water for two is also a reference to shared love of hanging out at beaches and lakes with my husband. He's pretty much my favourite person to do everything with, which is just as it should be!

I started publishing my poetry to a Usenet group called rec.arts.poetry back in the 1990s. Times were simpler, www did not yet exist and online communication was pretty much confined to email and news groups such as "rap" (as we referred to it in shorthand). The group still exists - it's now called rec.arts.poems - you can find it on Google groups now: https://groups.google.com/g/rec.arts.poems. I no longer frequent the group, so I don't know what it's like these days.

I thought I'd start by posting one of the first poems I ever published on Usenet. These poems were all published under my first married name - a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then, but I have a fondness for those early efforts. My new poems will be published under my married name now - confusing perhaps, but that's life.

Oddly, my first poem was not about water!

Sunrise

The sun gave birth to today:
Blood streaked the horizon.
She screamed,
The sky rippled with her agony.
Earth-child wailed, expelled from that swollen womb.

The stains of labour faded,
Became the artist's dream:
Pink, pretty.
Earth-child gurgled, content with her playground.
The pain of creation was forgotten.

The tourists were unmoved as they departed,
chattering of picturesque sunrises and airline bookings.

Cathy Newberry, February, 1990. Copyright.

*The idea of Earth-child came from another poem based on
this one, by Gerald Chick. (g.c...@trl.oz)

(The evolution of this poem can be found here: https://groups.google.com/g/rec.arts.poems/c/FXW4Bji8YQc/m/MAKbK_1vYboJ)