GHOSTS

Taken from Middlebrow online magazine

Ghosts of Haworth

Vivid autumn courses, bringing unwelcome news
of unknown but compelling forces
shrouded in time and season,
a world where myth and reason collide,
the magnetic pull of frost and fog,
bleak landscapes where gothic heroes speak.

A timeworn house and desolate downs, set amid
the rushing and moaning of the wind,
hear tortured souls howling from parchment pages.
November bites, draws in the chill of winter,
overnight frost and snow settle and fall,
thoughts and feelings call and clash along the way.

Those most encumbered ones of Haworth,
all slumbered before their thirty-eighth summer,
unconventional, unwell, grave and quiet,
living in a limbo close to hell, clinging to one other,
happiness not brought about by change
on the bleak moors of Yorkshire.

Walk in the wilderness, the featureless and solitary
that haunts with hints of the extraordinary.
Pictures frozen in time, every twist having a turn,
each hillock of heather with scent sublime,
like elusive thoughts during sleep.
Those coldest pine for Haworth’s beloved heath.

Snowdrops and Secrets               

Waxen woodland strata,

born before the typical time,

anxious blossoms can’t wait for the melt,

thriving beneath a February cover,

waking early from a lovers’ sleep.

Wintery secrets rise up when snows thaw,

emerging like corpses buried shallow.

About the Author

Patricia Williams
I write poems on a variety of topics and have recently had several of them published. I earned my PhD from Leeds University, England, in Textile Design Studies. My Bachelor and Master degrees were earned in art and design at the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point, USA. I retired from the University of Wisconsin as a Professor Emerita after 27 years of teaching culture and design and live with my husband in the Wisconsin countryside.

Silence

Taken from Pulsar Poems.

Worlds of Silence

There’s a world in silence,

like that of a poem

insistent upon a page.

The silence of a dictionary

that flirts with anyone.

The silence of a question

from yesterday’s photograph.

The persuasive silence

of dust in an empty house.

The desperate silence

from a mirror’s truth.

The expressive silence

that could be the voices

of you and me.

Gordon Scapens

Penwortham, Preston

LION

The lion remains barbaric even in play
because the lion kills-
it does not negotiate nor establish treaties
or seek to rule except over
any area that includes
female lions and plenty of substantial prey.
like humankind it desires sex and food.
We are different only
in that we need a place to stay, walls and roof,
and an oven.

Ying Cao

dog

The dog is at the bottom;
snivelling, crawling, the last in the pack
watching the new born child,
the runt it can sink its teeth into.


ying cao

CAT

The cat sits by the window
watching the wind,
barely making a sound
peaceful, at ease with itself,
while in the garden
are ravaged birds.
The cats does what it's nature demands
and has no conscience or thought.
The cat kills.


Ying Cao

ethnicity

The head of my department, although previously in Cumbian University admin., appears unwilling to acknowledge the reality of the college. On the one hand she acts as if everything was above board, referring constantly to the bogus principal as professor, supporting her immedioate, incompetent unqualified staff, while on the other hand attacks and patronises genuine staff members. In these private colleges it is not unusual for properly trained and qualified staff to be marginalised.

I want to view another matter that is considered sensitive and difficult to highlight. The Academic Head of the college appears not to have sufficient experience or qualifications to warrant that position, only he shares ethnicity with the owners. All or the majority of senior academic positions also have been apparently awarded as a consequence of ethnicity not qualifications. This is common!

Patronise

A colleague is considering giving in his notice at the college I am working in. He spoke to the Head of Department concerning low standards only to be patronised. This is what they do and its infuriating. To be patronised by someone with poor or bogus qualifications lives qualified people in an apoletic state. Do they genuinely feel they're the real thing? Horrors. Do this bunch of unintelligent opportunists really belive they are academic?

Ying Cao

Watching the sea, fixated on waves
Touched by its beauty
The tsunami overwhelmed the land:
Consumed me.

Ying Cao

Achievement

I am pleased to report that many of the present students, not undermined by the appalling behaviour of many of their peers, such as the previous group, and by some barely qualified tutor, are doing extremely well and I hope that at least 7 will achieve distinctions.

BASKET CASE

It was a hazy day
under a fierce sun
when she passed my way
carrying a gun.

i loved her from the moment she shot
her old colleagues in the supermarket
i knew then she was not
the complete basket.

i followed her proclaiming my love.
with blood-soaked hands she nodded
I revered her like a god above
well and truly besotted.

She smiled at last and kissed my lips
I gave her an embrace
She said: "How I admire your quips".
And shot me in the face.

Joe Haines

How do people like the aforementioned principal get away with it? This man was awarded an OBE! Crazy! In his job in Grimsby there seems to be allegations of fraud, which I daresay may have had substance. When he left the college, under a cloud, apparently all the small companies he set up to exploit the college's provisions and reputation collasped and the college, as a consequence, then owed £250000.

August principal

Ah the principal of this college! Our esteemed professor! I have researched and researched him but I cannot find which university he attended. How strange. it seems possible that our august leader has only an ACCA to his name. He has done remarkably well with such limited qualifications, pulling the wool over the eyes of one organisation after another.

The Highly Educated Programme Manager

The programme manager, who wrote this, claims to have an MBA. If he does so, he didn't write the essays himself.  

Case Study 1

Mr A is a young man of 25 years old in ABC Care Home. He was admitted in(this is not right! Surely into) this care home following an assessment by the manager at (not right again! ‘Of’.) the (no 'the'. This does not require an article)Kingston Hospital in the presence of the doctors, nurses, social worker and next of kin. Mr A has had an accident by (by isn’t needed and this is past not perfect tense) falling off a ladder while performing the task of window cleaning. He has his skull almost half damaged (My ten year old could do better! Past tense not present perfect. You cannot have something half damaged) , cannot speak, but can still understand and communicate by using sign and symbol and the assistive speaking keyboard and other devices. He has broken legs (his legs are broken) and needs to be transferred onto his armchair, electric wheelchair and bed using the transferring equipment. He has food intake problem (s) and is on peg feed. However, he needs drinking using thickener (Is this written by a child? Anyway if he’s on peg feed, he can’t drink). He needs to have(wrong tense again!) clinical care with change of dressing and medication as prescribed by the doctor.

Case Study 2

Ms R is a young lady of 30 years with learning difficulties and has been admitted in (to) ABC Care Home on the first floor in the Young Physically and Mentally Disabled unit of the care home for rehabilitation. She never likes to have (wrong tense again!) personal hygiene and wanders throughout the home thereby causing discomfort and inconvenience to other service users through her awkward (what do they mean?) clothes and stinking (wow) body. Four staff members are required to use restraint to be able to attend to her (this isn’t English) personal hygiene as she is very much (liable to extreme physical aggression) physically aggressive. 

PASS THEM!

One of my friendly colleagues reported that the new programme manager asked him to check another lecturer's work as they were, in the higher management's view, failing too many students. He asked my friend, who has been with the college a long time, to have a quiet word with her to relax her standards. He refused. The programme manager writes English with all the competence of a pre-GCSE student. Has he actually any standards?

Don't go to private colleges!

The principal of the private college I work at is called 'professor'. He was an accountant who moved into college admin. and then ran a government college to turn it towards a business orientation. This of course does not suggest an academic. And-trumpets, etc-he has only a Master. He says that his professorship came from a Chinese university and therefore is an hononary one for services rendered.

Surprise! Surprise!

Last week the other lecturers told me that the management, including the above professor, had a meeting for all the staff to teach them how to teach. Many of the lecturers are qualified, experienced people. They told me it was very patronising.

The problem with the college is the employment as programme leaders fraudsters like the one whose English is like a child's. The propagation of low standards and too many fraudalent and dubiously qualified teachers like the 'professor'.

Don't go to Private Colleges

Back to teaching-

I was in front of my class lecturing on procedures in health and social care. In this college I cannot write the material myself, as I would normally do.

Half way through my lecture I gave up and told the students the material was rubbish. Which it is! The compiler puts up copy and paste American articles on health matters, apparently unaware that the two systems, British and American (USA) are vastly different. Worse he provided case studies for the students. The English in each one was pre-GCSE. On the level of a 12 year old. I felt embaressed and ashamed. My students began to laugh.

The writer is supposed to have an MBA. What can I say? -Buying essays and presenting them as his own in order to achieve a high level qualification?

That afternoon I went to a teacher's meeting to discover that the compiler of the above said barely literate material had recently been made programme manager! Don't go to private colleges unless you check them first!

psychotherapist

After a few weeks I realised all the other students had problems of various kinds. Some were clearly depressive, others recovering from abusive childhoods. But one, a woman of 60, stood out. Judgemental, egotistic, unbalanced. These were her good points. Having psychotherapy with her was like having a cuddle with a rattlesnake.

psychotherapy1111

I was offered an interview, which was to be in Ipswich. It was for a degree course under the indirect auspices of Midddlesex University. I was more concerned then about cost.

The gentleman interviewing me suggested we meet first on Ipswich Rail Station. I agreed arriving there about 4 pm. I expected to go to their facility for the interview but instead was interviewed in the eatery on the platform. WARNING! WARNING!

The gentleman wore the obligatory earrings although he must have been about 50. He was a bit of an aging hippy. I went along with the whole charade convinced that this was for me.

psychoanalysis

A few years ago I decided to train in psychotherapy. Mistakenly, I chose not to do this at a university as getting on to a course I knew would take time, perhaps as much as a year. I therefore looked at alternatives. I found one based in East Anglia which was both cheap and accessible. A huge mistake, but an interesting one.

PSYCHOTHERAPY

In the coming blogs I will detail my experiences training in and acting as a psychotherapist.