In my previous blog I discussed some of my favourite poems and why I like them.
There are so many and they’re so varied. The longer ones get to develop the characters so you can identify with them.
The short ones are very different. With them it’s the concept and the joke that appeal to me and sometimes it’s the pun-groan it generates. The frog who can’t croak, why the quagga became extinct, the cannibals series, the best golfer in the world, Fudgie the budgie, Amanda the panda, what happens in children’s hell, the nervous butterfly, the insomniac’s revenge, and lots more still make me chuckle.
Luigi the p’liceman is a favourite for a completely different reason. I wrote the beginning and the end and then for nearly ten years I couldn’t find a logical way to link them. I would revisit it 3 or 4 times a year without success and then one day it came to me — a triumph for patience and perseverance!
With others it’s the names: a nurse called Penny Sillin, Horace Cope the clairvoyant, Hugh Middity the meteorologist, Polly Tishun, Cudd Lee the bear, a tiger called Spot. The names of my characters are always carefully chosen: e.g. a tick called Therra Pugh — as in therapeutic.
Do you have a favourite name? Let me know and why.