September and my attempts at writing new poems. An update of sorts.
sketchbook page from 2018(?)
Instead of writing a poem a day I have got stuck into writing one long - thing.
I seem to have stepped into a world that has always existed in my head, a world that feels so eerie with familiar scenes, despite being far away from now. It is a world of a past that I have no lived memory of yet seem to know in my heart. I have began one long sequence that will just rattle on and on until I stop, it seems. Is this the most futile of self-indulgence? I wonder! But, well, I am enjoying the process. I find snatches of time to write but it is not easy to make time.
There is no knowing if the whole will be any ‘good’. I just have to wing it, like I do most things, I suppose. I turn up to the page with a certain amount of bravado. I like the writing and the challenge of writing very brief scenes. Glimpses into a world that feels just real enough to keep me interested. I have to be careful in a world where anything is possible. I don’t want to step too deeply into magic realism. Keep on just keep on, I tell myself and don’t start editing too much now. One line leads to another, that is all.
It’s a bit like chasing butterflies. Or perhaps cats. There are various creatures in this poem-thing, including dogs, cats and angels.
I’ve written about (and drawn and painted) angels, on and off, for many years now. Angels as motifs and imagery escaping from paintings etc… Back in the 90’s I won a chapbook/pamphlet competition run by a small press and had my collection titled ‘Orbital Angel’ published as a small booklet. At the time I had a very young daughter with an ear infection and never did get to travel to make a reading appearance, much to the dismay of both publishers and myself. But such is life. I can’t remember how much money I won but I think it was a few hundred quid which came in handy with a new baby and not working myself at the time.
Back then I co-edited a (very small) literary magazine with a friend. It was a lot of work with a small child and yes I found less time to write then. Perhaps that was when I realised I wanted to do other things besides.
**
Here is a the opening of the poem I have been working on and will continue to write through to the end of September, and maybe beyond. I am not sure if the end of the month should be ‘the end’. I do have a tendency to over-edit poems into oblivion. So perhaps an arbitrary ‘handing in date’ is required. Even if it just my drawer I am handing it to.
Here goes then, a part of the opening - I have given a working title of ‘birds in a pie’ - from the nursery rhyme, because this is a recurring motif / idea in the poem. I don’t think I will call it that ultimately
Birds in a Pie
A wife kneads pastry
on a rocking table, hissing rain beyond
window drapes; cat pissing in the herb patch.
Babe stirs against the wife’s breast.
Almost ready to hunt, dogs yelping
furiously and men coughing,
spit blood on their hands for good luck.
Birds in a pie, whistling.
A child sniffles as she sweeps,
a babe alone in a heap of wool crawls
about, not shy of the mice.
A wife labours; a husband skins something
he pulled from the river.
Holy men mending rainbows with willow and relics
and whispers. Children rushing uphill
to chase angels that appear, both fierce and moth-like.
A babe teethes on a mossy stick.
Birds in a pie screaming in steamy confusion.
The sun sinks low. Bees hum about an empty house.
A woman sits mending a basket to take on her travels
to where she does not know.
Her child and a dog kicking broken apples.
(…. And so it continues on… Thank you for reading - please subscribe - next week I will be giving away a handmade acorn so watch this space…)
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I love Birds in a Pie— it has a bit of Virginia Woolf’s stream of consciousness feel. I particularly like that you don’t overwork the details, you keep the line moving. And your angels have always intrigued me— I have a couple of them and they seem to represent something that I didn’t know I was looking for. That is the best feeling for me, when art brings me home.
Great, I love it ♥️