To read Tracy's short story, 'Growing Pains' on the Showcase, click here
Tracy Patrick is the founder/editor of Earth Love poetry magazine; a small press publication featuring nature/environmental poetry that donates all its profits to environmental charities, built up around the idea that nature and poetry are interlinked. Tracy is currently working on an anthology of the best of Earth Love so far, due out in July this year. She also performs poetry, is attempting to write longer prose pieces, and is studying for an HNC in Professional Writing Skills in attempt to widen her scope and hopefully, one day, make a living from the pen.
TRACY'S CURRENT INFLUENCES
MUSIC: PATTI SMITH
Click image to visit the Patti Smith Babelogue website; for the Patti Smith Land website, click here; to visit Gung Ho 2000, the official Patti Smith website, click here; for Patti Smith.net, the official and authorised Patti Smith site, click here or for related items on Amazon, click here.POETRY: ‘STAYING ALIVE’, edited by Neil Astley
Click image to read about the book on the Bloodaxe website; to read Neil Astley's 2005 Stanza lecture on the University of St Andrews website, click here or for related items on Amazon, click here.FICTION: 'BRICK LANE' by Monica Ali
Click image to read Zadie Smith's interview with Ali on the Observer website; for Natasha Walter's review of the book on the Guardian Unlimited website, click here or for related items on Amazon, click here.FILM: 'A ROOM FOR ROMEO BRASS'
Click image for Mark Kermode's review of the film on the BFI Sight and Sound website; for Rob Blackwelder's interview with the film's director, Shane Meadows on the Spliced Wire website, click here or for related items on Amazon, click here.NON-FICTION: THE MODERN ANTIQUARIAN’ by Julian Cope
Click image to visit the official Modern Antiquarian website; to visit Julian Cope's Head Heritage website, click here or for related items on Amazon, click here.
Did she gaze through her window
at people spilling their lives
onto city veins; Grassmarket,
Haymarket, Portobello, Leith,
her ink, her blood?
On Waverly Bridge,
did she scratch verse,
watch the sleek trains sliding below,
commuters’ hands, leaves in the breeze,
waving goodbye, hello?
Did she wait for a lover
who never arrived, who left her
stuck miles out on a ribbon of track?
Or did the smooth black cobbles
of the old town, push round fists
through her worn soles,
hard memories seeking attention?
Did she feel old, slow
singing her rhyme
against the Royal Mile’s steep climb
while Morningside mothers
transport fat, peachy babies
in four-wheel drives?
Did she measure the spiny tower
of the Scott monument
piercing a grainy eastern sky,
think of setting herself in stone,
her skin, her tongue, hardening
like clay in a mould?
At the last full-stop did she pause,
feel her bones flutter like a bird?
Or was the sheet blank,
pen bleeding from her hand,
glass misted up,
her going, the final tough word?
MUSIC: PATTI SMITH 
POETRY: ‘STAYING ALIVE’, edited by Neil Astley
FICTION: 'BRICK LANE' by Monica Ali 
FILM: 'A ROOM FOR ROMEO BRASS'
NON-FICTION: THE MODERN ANTIQUARIAN’ by Julian Cope
