
So, on our current visit to their ranch, Mas la Chevalerie , I asked Bill if he would like to post some of his poems on this blog. He’s currently working on a collection of poems, drawn from different phases of his life. You can find more posted on his weekly Facebook Poet page at www.facebook.com/BillHomewoodsPoemAWeekByMeForYou?fref=ts
And keep on reading down the page to see Bill's three strong tips for writing poetry!

How nice to be asked to contribute to someone else’s blog!
Cherry and I share a love of language – and a love of horses.
Let’s begin with the language... Throughout my career as an actor and director of theatre, I have also written – often in my theatre dressing rooms – sometimes even during performances ! - I wrote a whole novel (as yet unpublished) during my year in Phantom of the Opera! My writing work has been varied: poetry, which I have had published in a number of magazines like Country Life, commissioned stage plays including Kafka’s The Trial for the Young Vic in London and many screenplays including Romeo & Juliet for Yorkshire Television. I have taught writing workshops in UK and America and was for a while a roving workshop director for the Poetry Society in London.
I am especially interested in Form. I believe that a difficult convention enforces inspired invention. Rhyming schemes, scansion, sonnets and variants on sonnets – these are bread and butter to me, and some of the writing I am most proud of uses complicated forms which took an awful lot of getting right! I was raised as a Shakespearean, by my Shakespearean father – so you don’t need to look far for my influences.
I have recently started publishing a series of poems on my Facebook page, as Cherry mentioned. Here are two examples, with their introductions...
Losing a friend - In 2004 we had our beloved, brave horse Patou euthanized. Inevitably, witnessing a death makes you think about dying, about loss of loved ones, about losing your partner. Patou had been Estelle’s main horse, and I wrote Before You Turn Your Face and Go Away for her. Our farm is set below the ancient ruined Chateau de Fressac in the foothills of the Cevennes. The Chateau, partly built in the 8th century in post-Roman Languedoc, and completed in the 13th century for the Crusades, must have seen a lot of deaths: “the ghosts who skitter down the hill” in my poem. I don’t believe in an afterlife, but it is fun to pretend. I imagined that, whichever of us goes first, we will eventually be reunited in death, and “fly together, dove and dove”. If only...
BEFORE YOU TURN YOUR FACE AND GO AWAY
It was as quiet as barn or crypt in there,
The alley door asleep against the chill,
And stone-cold ghosts whipped down the granite hill,
Its oaks and broken fortress all bone-bare.
Some day in far-off meadow or white room
Perhaps I’ll stroke your cheek, kiss you and say, Before you turn your face and go away,
Thank you - for hauling me from ordained gloom.
The mistral blew, the alley door stayed tight.
Stock-still he stood, his tired bones and heart
And gaze all stoical. He did not start
When gloved arm probed. His eyes were just half-bright.
Some day on some stone floor or stair or bed
Perhaps you’ll cool my brow, kiss me and give
Me drink. I’ll whisper thanks; the will to live
Less sweet, I’ll slip to nothing, sweet and dead.
Thank you, you whispered, kissing him once more,
And left us three to take a gallow’s walk.
The kindly executioner did not talk
But gently held ajar the alley door.
Some day down path or corridor we’ll go,
One on foot, the other boxed and still,
To join the ghosts who skitter down the hill –
The ghosts we knew and ones we both shall know.
We shuffled to a fine and private place.
OK bébé, I whispered, stroking him.
His eyes were heavy now, and milky-dim.
Before he fell I kissed his good old face.
Some day we’ll fly together, dove and dove,
Perhaps, my dearest partner, some day soon;
Perhaps, my darling, by the bowling moon
Or spinning sun. Who cares. The sky’s all love.
Ocoa is the stage name of a dancer-clown-actress-singer-poet whom I met in Bogota, Columbia, in 1979. She was always smiling and positive about the future of her country, despite the terrifying poverty, crime and mess all around.
SONG FOR OCOA
In an aeroplane, after Bogota
Under the blue, this blue spread of water,
Under the blue there are eyes:
Eyes oiled in brine
Film in pale, shifty blinks
The sea stills, the dead freezes,
The frieze of the deep, still sea.
Behind the sea in Bogota -
Where playtime is cut-throat in shadows,
In leather dust, donkey must, where
A city is folded, half-cooked in filth,
Stuffed empanada of dirty small legs
Tripping trolleys or donkeys
Or grey by the sacks of scraps
Or still in the grey dusty gutters
Where blood is mud and grey in a day -
Behind the sea in Bogota,
Ocoa sees pictures.
Ocoa the dancer, Ocoa sees pictures,
Ocoa the singer, Ocoa sees pictures,
Ocoa the poet, Ocoa sees pictures,
Ocoa the queen is a clown.
Under the blue, this blue spread of water,
Under the blue there are wars:
There is pain, there is blood
In the blue, there are teeth
In the roaring, muffling mouth,
In the baffled throat of the sea.
Behind the sea in Bogota
Where dusk is rhythms of rage
In the streets, in the files of men, where
The rank and vile pavements are startled
With hands, grey hands,
That ask, that need, that take -
Bogota, Bogota, Bogota - my guitar,
My white gringo fingers, play Bogota
Its Fall, dead-fingered leaves
Falling dry, falling cracked,
Broken chords at Montserrat's foot.
Ocoa the dancer, Ocoa makes pictures,
Ocoa the singer, Ocoa makes pictures,
Ocoa the poet, Ocoa makes pictures,
Ocoa the queen is a clown.
Under the blue, this blue spread of water,
Under the blue there are whims:
Red hesitations,
Yawned inspirations,
Capitulations (te quiero,
Te quiero, te quiero...)
Behind the sea in Bogota
Where morning was sweet with games,
Ocoa the Clown makes faces, her body
Is painting a song, and she feels
For her voice, for her place, her heaven,
And melts herself with a scream
In the wind, the wind that plays
Bogota down the beat
Of the poncing boys on the pavements
Flung with umbrellas
And broken, festering fig sweets.
Ocoa the dancer, Ocoa makes pictures,
Ocoa the singer, Ocoa makes pictures,
Ocoa the poet, Ocoa makes pictures,
Ocoa the queen is a clown.
Under the blue, this blue spread of water,
Under the blue there are dances:
Teasing and weaving are bobbins of silver,
Flags of all colours flirting
Or furled and unquestioning partners
Embraced in quick black snaps.
Behind the sea in Bogota
Ocoa sees the creviced roads,
Ocoa sees the wretched wrecks
Of houses, tastes the smells,
The meat, the dust, the sweets, the boys,
The thieves, the rain, the caracol
Of industrial dew that sweats
On the broken stones of Bogota;
And klaxons curse, the air is hell
And slashed with sound and savage
On Ocoa's laughing eyes.
Ocoa the dancer, Ocoa makes pictures,
Ocoa the singer, Ocoa makes pictures,
Ocoa the poet, Ocoa makes pictures,
Ocoa the queen is a clown.
Were I to offer general advice to poets, I would say:
(i) get your poem down in rough form without worrying too much about it. Then, if a couple of rhymes have jumped up all on their own, pursue this. See if you can make this a rhyming poem.
(ii) If you are writing a “lyric” poem without a stanzaic, rhyming or rhythmical form, remember that there must be a reason for finishing or beginning a line on a particular word. It is not enough – in fact it is lazy and clumsy in effect - simply to divide up a prose sentence and call it verse.
(iii) Sit on your poem for a while before you show it around or submit it for publishing. As a rule of thumb you will need a three-day “cooling-off period” to make big or small corrections to a “finished” poem, and three weeks before you can be fairly satisfied that you don’t want to make changes!

Bill lives with his wife, the actress Estelle Kohler (leading lady with the RSC for forty years) in the sunny South of France, where they have a small ranch.
You can find out more about Bill on his website: www.billhomewood.com