Posts by: Robert Ford

As I’ve previously talked about on here, back in 1999, I created and ran an online writer’s collective called The Final Carrot, which lasted for 3 years. Sadly, the platform that it was built on (Geocities) was acquired by Yahoo, which rolled the functionality into Yahoo Groups. With Yahoo’s dramatic decline in recent years, Yahoo Groups was shut down, and all of that content is long gone. I did try searching on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, but sadly, all you can see is a tantalizing list of entry headers, but none of the underlying pages are included in the…

I always find it interesting, to see just what serves to trigger inspiration, and then to watch what we do with it. All too often, we have ideas, but fail to do anything with them The inspiration for the following poem came from a long walk in a cemetery, which has always been something that I’ve enjoyed. The last line of a gravestone inscription, became the first line of this poem. While the grave was from the 1920’s, that line conjured up an earlier time for me, and a story of enduring love. After the night apart the dawn After…

About 20 years ago, I bought a Remington Deluxe Model 5 at a flea market for $6. I have long considered it an object of beauty, and it has been on display in my living room, but I never tried to type with it, as the 80-year old ribbon had long given up the ghost.

I have a weakness for journals and notebooks. If I’m traveling, and I see a store that sells stationery, I can’t help myself. I buy them with the intent to step up my writing (which I often do), but what often happens is that I then stumble upon them months later, full of scraps of poems, all pleading to be finished.

Like many others, I’m using these crazy times that we’re in to think about what comes next for me, particularly in terms of my next relationship.

I’d like a supersized version of what I describe below… pretty please!

This is something that I started three years ago, and stumbled across it yesterday, still in its unfinished form. I’m not sure that the ending fits seamlessly, buts that’s rather like the subject of the poem itself, isn’t it?

As I write this, I’m in Medellin, Colombia.  Yesterday, I spent far too much time reading my Twitter feed, inwardly seething at the incompetence of His Orangeness and his butt-licking minions in their mishandling of the coronavirus. He really wants to leave American citizens on a cruise ship, just so that the number of US cases doesn’t go up?? Anyway, I digress. I woke up early this morning, and came up to the rooftop terrace of the hostel that I’m staying at, armed with my journal, a pen and copious amounts of coffee… and here is what came out. Enjoy!…

2019 was a year of big changes for me… in both my personal life, and in my career. Some new doors opened, just as others closed tightly shut. Sometimes I was the one doing the closing, and other times, seismic changes took me by surprise. New and unexpected opportunities presented themselves, and while they offer new possibilities, they also mean that I have some important and consequential decisions to make.