April #BookReviews @linneatanner @teagangeneviene @RobertaEaton17 @harmony_kent @ColleenChesebro @Marjorie_Mallon @mhurdle112

Posted: May 7, 2022 | Author: kayelynnebooth | Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Here’s a lovely review of Poetry Treasures 2: Relationships. Thanks to Jan over at Writing & Music for reading and posting. 🙂

Day 7 of the WordCrafter Poetry Treasures 2: Relationships blog tour – Introducing poet, Colleen Chesebro

Posted: May 1, 2022 | Author: kayelynnebooth | Filed under: Uncategorized | 12 Comments

Day 7 of the WordCrafter “Poetry Treasures 2” Book Blog Tour finds us at “Robbie’s Inspiration” with a lovely post by Colleen M. Chesebro. Join us to learn more about this amazing poetry anthology and the contributing poets. Comment at each stop for a chance to get a copy of your own for free!

Robbie's inspiration

Today, I am delighted to host Colleen Chesebro for Day 7 of the WordCrafter Poetry Treasures 2: Relationships anthology blog tour. Colleen is an accomplished poet and a leader in the blogosphere of poetry and new poetry forms. I am grateful to Colleen for everything she has taught me over the past few years.

Thoughts on relationships by Colleen Chesebro

Writing poetry about the theme of relationships for the second Poetry Treasures anthology took me on a thorough analysis into my past. It took me years to figure out I was an introvert.

Extroversion and introversion are at the opposite ends of the spectrum. How you receive and give out energy determines where you fall on this spectrum. But people can fall anywhere on the spectrum.

The other huge myth? Introverts are shy and extroverts are outgoing. Not so. In my younger years, I was an extroverted introvert, often slipping…

View original post 462 more words

Miriam & Robbie Visit the Bar – SoCS

Posted: April 30, 2022 | Author: kayelynnebooth | Filed under: Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Robbie Cheadle and Miriam Hurdle are also visiting over at “No Facilities” with Dan Antion, so be sure to drop by and check out their wonderful interview. It’s not part of the tour, but it fits right in. 😉

No Facilities

Today is a poetry day
I should open with a poem
But I got zip

Still, bonus points are on the line
Stream of Consciousness Saturday
Nothin' zero

Robbie and Miriam have poems
Not here - in the anthology
Me? Nada - zilch!

Because today’s post required more planning than Linda allows, I was going to skip the SoCS part. But then she offered bonus points.

“Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is ‘zip, zero, zilch.’ Use one, use ’em all, bonus points if you use all three. Have fun!”

If you follow my blog, you know I like poetry and I appreciate the work of poets. I have always had an interest in poetry, but only through the friends I’ve made blogging have I gotten to know poets. I have said it numerous times, but poets are the true artists in the writing world. The make…

View original post 2,456 more words

Day 6 of the WordCrafter “Poetry Treasures 2: Relationships” Book Blog Tour

Posted: April 30, 2022 | Author: kayelynnebooth | Filed under: Uncategorized | 10 Comments

Day 6 of the WordCrafter “Poetry Treasures 2: Relationships” Book Blog Tour finds us over at This is My Truth Now and I’m in the spotlight! I hope you’ll join us. Don’t forget to comment at each stop, so you can be entered in the giveaway for a digital copy of this amazing anthology.

“Poetry Treasures 2: Relationships” featuring Miriam Hurdle!

Posted: April 28, 2022 | Author: kayelynnebooth | Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Hello Everyone! Today we are over at Bay Dreamer Writes, where Lauren Scott hosts Day 4 of the WordCrafter Poetry Treasures 2: Relationships Book Blog Tour, with a delightful guest post by Miriam Hurdle in celebration of Pay It Forward Day. Please join us in sending this amazing poetry anthology off and don’t miss this very special post.

Baydreamer Writes ~ Lauren Scott, Author & Poet

Dear Friends,

This is day 4 of the blog tour for Poetry Treasures 2: Relationships, a beautiful anthology compiled by Kaye Lynne Booth and Robbie Cheadle. The tour schedule is below…

Day 1: Kaye Lynne Booth at Writing to be Read started the tour with a guest post from contributing author Lauren Scott.

Day 2: D. Slayton Avery at ShiftnShake shared a guest post from blog series host, contributing author, and editor Robbie Cheadle.

Day 3: Miriam Hurdle atThe Showers of Blessingshosted contributing author Lynda McKinney Lambert.

Day 4:Lauren Scott at Bay Dreamer Writesis hosting contributing author Miriam Hurdle.

Day 5: Victoria Zigler at Zigler’s Newswill host contributing author M.J. Mallon and share a review by Victoria Zigler.

Day 6: The publisher, Kaye Lynne Booth, will be in the interview spotlight with James J. Cudney over at This Is My Truth Now

View original post 824 more words

Poetry Treasure 2: Relationships – Launch Tour with Lynda McKinney Lambert

Posted: April 26, 2022 | Author: kayelynnebooth | Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments

For Day 3 of the WordCrafter “Poetry Treasures 2: Relationships” Book Blog Tour, you’ll find us over at “The Showers of Blessings” with a guest post by contributing author and poet, Lynda McKinney Lambert. Join us there to help celebrate the release of this delightfully unique poetry anthology. A comment at each stop earns a chance to win a free digital copy of “Poetry Treasures 2: Relationships”.

The Showers of Blessings

Welcome to the launch tour for Poetry Treasure 2: Relationships. It’s my privilege to have Lynda McKinney Lambert as my guest today. She is a contributing author to this anthology. I’ll invite her to tell you about her poems.

Please follow the tour and leave a comment at each stop to be entered in a random drawing for a chance to win a free digital copy of Poetry Treasure 2: Relationships. The tour schedule is at the end of this post.

Here is Lynda:

Walking by Inner Vision with Lynda McKinney Lambert

Presents

A BOOK LAUNCH and Blog Tour

of Poetry Treasures 2: Relationships (Anthology)

NewFromWordCrafter

Edited and compiled by Robbie Cheadle and Kaye Lynn Booth

Four of my personal favorite poems appear in this new collection created by Robbie Cheadle and Kaye Lynne Booth.

As a visual artist, I bring the unique skills of conceptual art into my…

View original post 739 more words

Robbie Cheadle reads! Poetry Treasures 2: Relationships

Posted: April 26, 2022 | Author: kayelynnebooth | Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Hello! We’re all over at the “ShiftNShake” blog for Day 2 of the WordCrafter Poetry Treasures 2: Relationships Book Blog Tour, with a guest post and 3 readings from contributing author and poet Robbie Cheadle. Thanks to D. Avery for hosting today. I do hope you’ll join us in celebrating the release of the Poetry Treasures 2: Relationships anthology.

ShiftnShake

Why I enjoy poetry anthologies

By Robbie Cheadle

I have always enjoyed reading poetry. My love started with nursery rhymes which I read repeatedly when I was a child. I had some personal favourites including The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly, and Who Killed Cock Robin. My enjoyment of nursery rhymes developed rather naturally into a delight in poetry.

When I was at school, we were made to learn certain poems off by heart. This was required for both English, my first language, and Afrikaans, my secondary language.

Astonishingly, some of the poems I learned impacted me so much, I can still recite them. Do you recognise these lines?

“When you hear it languishing

and hooing and cooing, and sidling through the front teeth,

the Oxford voice

or worse still

the would-be Oxford voice

you don’t even laugh any more, you can’t.”

View original post 582 more words

Treasuring Poetry: Meet poet and author, Chris, Hall and a review of Following the Green Rabbit

Posted: April 20, 2022 | Author: robbiesinspiration | Filed under: Uncategorized | 68 Comments

Today, I am delighted to host poet and author, Chris Hall. Like me, Chris is UK born and South Africa is her adopted country. We both love the bushveld and many of Chris’ poems and books reflect this love.

Which of your own poems is your favourite?

Call of the Maiden is a poem I wrote in response to a call for submissions to a poetry anthology by the wonderful poet and all-round creative, Tara Caribou. I was delighted when this, and another four of my poems, were accepted to be published alongside a whole host of amazing poets and artists in Creation and the Cosmos, edited and published in 2021 by Tara’s micro-publishing company, Raw Earth Ink.

Call of the Maiden

The breeze-caressed veld sways

sending dry waves to break on a distant shore

whirlwind dust-devils dance over bare earth

rising up to be scorched into stillness.

Evening swells across the veld

and the thorn tree’s shadow

reaches out with tendril fingers

to caress the smudge-blue foothills.

As daylight fades, the breeze quickens

and the new maiden emerges

standing on the threshold of the distant kopje

in that powerful place between hearth and wilderness.

She turns and kneels at the young man’s side

offering herself to him.

Limbs entwine and under the eyes of the ancestors

they become one.

Darkness closes in and the great African she-moon rises

pin-prick stars stab the violet-thick night

and now the once-maiden cries out

her triumphant ululation echoing across the empty veld.

What inspired you to write this particular poem?

The poem was inspired by the timeless feeling of being in wild, unspoiled places, and by what I’ve learned about the lives and myths of the ancient people who first trod the earth in the south-western corner of Africa where I now live. In composing the verses, my aim was to capture the atmosphere of the ancient and still-persisting African landscape, embodied in a timeless act between two people; the power wielded by a young woman on the cusp of womanhood and her celebration of the wonder of creation.

What are your plans for your poetry going forward?

I’ve been planning to put together a collection of my poems since mid-way through last year. I started reviewing my poems, and began revising and rewriting some of them with the idea of publishing the book to coincide with World Poetry Day on 21st March this year. However, ‘real life’ crowded in, and so many things slipped towards the end of last year that there was no way I was going to meet that deadline.

But now I’ve been consumed by the urge to begin another novel set in the same landscape as Call of the Maiden, and I’ve already started my new story, which takes up from where my most recent novel, Spirit of the Shell Man, left off.

Maybe my poetry collection will make it out for WPD 2023, but in the meantime, I’ll continue to start my week limbering up with Sadje’s weekly What Do You See photo prompts!

What is your favourite poem?

This was such a difficult decision and I’ve really agonised about this. In the end, I decided to reach back to my Liverpool roots with this poem by Roger McGough, a sound Scouse stalwart, and one of the leading lights of performance poetry, influenced by the popular music culture of 1960s Liverpool. I wonder if anyone remembers the song ‘Lily the Pink’ by The Scaffold, the band Roger was in with Paul McCartney’s much less well-known brother?

Let me die a youngman’s death
not a clean and inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
peaceful out of breath death

When I’m 73
and in constant good tumour
may I be mown down at dawn
by a bright red sports car
on my way home
from an allnight party

Or when I’m 91
with silver hair
and sitting in a barber’s chair
may rival gangsters
with hamfisted tommyguns burst in
and give me a short back and insides

Or when I’m 104
and banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catching me in bed with her daughter
and fearing for her son
cut me up into little pieces
and throw away every piece but one Let me die a youngman’s death
not a free from sin tiptoe in
candle wax and waning death
not a curtains drawn by angels borne
‘what a nice way to go’ death

Why do you like this poem?

I love the wit of Roger McGough’s words. His clever use of language has always made me smile, and I’ve always loved the sentiment behind this particular, and now very famous, poem. When I first read it in my early twenties, death seemed distant, but now later in life, having seen close up the sad decline of old age, the words really resonate.

I love the poem’s rebellious energy and its defiant attitude, the images it conjures up: the red sports car, the barber’s chair and the gangsters with their Tommy guns, and then there’s the reference to the Cavern Club where The Beatles famously first performed (although that was before a little before my time). The way Roger runs words together seemed quite anarchic at the time. How poetry has moved on!

The poem comes from a poetry anthology, The Mersey Sound, which included work by Liverpool poets, Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten. I acquired my copy in the early 1980s from the radical News From Nowhere book shop in Liverpool during my moody, student days. I have a vivid memory of sitting in the park in front of St Georges’ Hall, turning its pages and discovering this poem for the first time.

The collection made poetry accessible to a wider audience; me included. It also laid the foundations for performance poets like John Cooper Clarke and Benjamin Zephaniah, both of whom I was fortunate to see perform.

Finally, it reminds me of ‘The Dead Good Poets Society’ a group of poets and their supporters who met in The Third Room in the basement of the famous Everyman Theatre in Liverpool. I enjoyed going to the once weekly open mic nights but I never had the courage to participate. Had I stayed in Liverpool, I wouldn’t hesitate now!

Thank you, Chris, for being a wonderful guest. I love your choices of poems!

Following the Green Rabbit: A fantastical adventure

What Amazon says

Chasing through Bluebell Woods after a strange green-furred rabbit, 12-year-old Bryony and Bethany, her eight year old sister, inexplicably end up in the olden times. Life in the village where they find themselves is hard under the wicked lord of the manor. The two girls are thrown into a desperate struggle in which the evil lord will stop at nothing to hold onto his power over the village.

Soon everyone’s hopes are pinned on Bryony and her new companions, Toby, who is under a severe warning for humiliating the disliked village pastor, and Tommy, who mysteriously arrived in the village one day and can’t or won’t speak. Together, they set out on a mission to bring help from a higher authority, but their journey is beset with difficulties. Will they be in time to save their friends from the hangman’s noose?

A thrilling story for listeners aged 10 and above, and for anyone who enjoys losing themselves in a fantastical adventure!

My review

Chris Hall is a skilled writer and this book holds all the charm of classic children’s books like The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgson Burnett and The Railway Children by E. Nesbit. It is also aimed at the same target age group of 9 to 16 years old. That being said, an adult will also enjoy this lively and entertaining story about two young girls, aged 12 and 8, and their tutor, who go back in time and end up befriending the villagers from an earlier century who are labouring under the tyrannical rule of Lord Childecott. Fortunately for the children, they become separated from their tutor as soon as they arrive in the earlier time and are spared being arrested and imprisoned along with Mr Eyre. The girls, Bryony and Bethany, are taken under the wing of Toby, the younger brother of the village apothecary, and who, having being identified as a trouble maker, is on the run from Lord Childecott’s henchmen.

Bryony and Bethany, together with their new friends, must formulate a plan to rescue Mr Eyre and save the village from destruction at the hands of the despot.

I enjoyed the characterisation of Bryony who is a sensible young woman, and able to protect her younger sister and make sensible decisions involving not only herself and her sibling, but also other characters whose impulsive behaviours could put them in danger. As the story progresses, Bryony comes more into her own and uses her education and intellect to help solve problems and make plans. Bethany is more of a side character due to her young age.

Toby is a determined and resourceful young man, albeit a little hotheaded. He is guided by Bryony and makes the right choices despite his temper flaring on more than one occasion.

Mr Eyre is every child’s dream tutor. I can’t help wondering whether he isn’t a manifestation of the author’s idea of the perfect teacher based on less happy experiences with her own teachers. He is fun loving and eager to impart learning through proactive experience, but he is also able to maintain discipline and retain the respect of his two young charges. The historical knowledge Mr Eyre manages to impart to Bryony is instrumental in the successful resolution of the troubles faced by the village.

This is a delightful story, imaginative and interesting with a solid and well research historical flavour. I would recommend it to adults and children you enjoy tales filled with mystery and delight.

Purchase Following the Green Rabbit

Amazon

About Chris Hall

Chris describes herself as a compulsive story-teller, cat slave and hen keeper. Originally from the UK, she now resides in the Western Cape of South Africa.

Her most recent novels, ‘Song of the Sea Goddess’ and it’s sequel, ‘Spirit of the Shell Man’ were inspired by the charm and beauty of her adopted country where, in Chris’s vivid imagination, myth and reality collide on the southern shores of Africa.

Other novels:

‘You’ll Never Walk Alone – Thrills and Spills in 1980s Liverpool’

‘Following the Green Rabbit – a fantastical adventure’

‘The Silver Locket’ (published under pen name, Holly Atkins)

‘Song of the Sea Goddess’ and ‘Following the Green Rabbit’ are also available as audiobooks.

A selection of her poetry is included in ‘Creation and the Cosmos – a poetic anthology’, published by Raw Earth Ink in 2021.

She has also published a tiny taster of her work in a short story collection, ‘A Sextet of Shorts’.

More of her short fiction has appeared in ‘Adler’s Writing’ and ‘One Minute Wit’. Her work also appears in the ‘Writing My City’ anthology, published in Cape Town in 2019.

Visit Chris’s website at http://www.lunas-online.com to read her short fiction, fan fiction, mini-series, poetry and more.

Find Chris Hall

Amazon Author page

Bookbub

WordPress blog

About Robbie Cheadle

Robbie Cheadle is a South African children’s author and poet with 9 children’s books and 2 poetry books.

The 7 Sir Chocolate children’s picture books, co-authored by Robbie and Michael Cheadle, are written in sweet, short rhymes which are easy for young children to follow and are illustrated with pictures of delicious cakes and cake decorations. Each book also includes simple recipes or biscuit art directions which children can make under adult supervision.

Robbie has also published 2 books for older children which incorporate recipes that are relevant to the storylines.

Robbie has 2 adult novels in the paranormal historical and supernatural fantasy genres published under the name Roberta Eaton Cheadle. She also has short stories in the horror and paranormal genre and poems included in several anthologies.

Robbie writes a monthly series for https://writingtoberead.com called Growing Bookworms. This series discusses different topics relating to the benefits of reading to children.

Robbie has a blog, https://robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com/ where she shares book reviews, recipes, author interviews, and poetry.

Find Robbie Cheadle

Blog: https://www.robbiecheadle.co.za/

Blog: robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com

Twitter: BakeandWrite

Instagram: Robbie Cheadle – Instagram

Facebook: Sir Chocolate Books

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Want to be sure not to miss any of Robbie’s “Treasuring Poetry” segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress. If you found it interesting or entertaining, please share.

Happy Easter!

Posted: April 17, 2022 | Author: kayelynnebooth | Filed under: Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Growing Bookworms – Sir Chocolate Saves Easter #SirChocolateStory #Childrensfiction

Posted: April 13, 2022 | Author: robbiesinspiration | Filed under: Uncategorized | 30 Comments

Easter is around the corner and it is a time for spending time with family. If you are Christian, it is also an important religious holiday. I thought it would be nice to share a Sir Chocolate story with you today. It’s called Sir Chocolate Saves Easter and you can download it as a PDF here: https://robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com/free-story-sir-chocolate-saves-easter/

Fun Easter activity

Painting Easter eggs with food colouring is great fun. I used the white candy coated ‘hens’ eggs for this activity and liquid food colouring. Be careful to use aprons as the food colouring stains. Here are the Easter eggs some of the children in my Sunday School painted a few years ago.