POETRY AND PROSE
This morning the air carries the essence of brown leaves. They are there mixed in with the wet yellow on the ground while a few are still to fall from their twigs. Some are holding their shape, and others are beginning to fold and soften. As the sun rises it brings orange and purple.
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Alt text says this week’s photo is: a book on a colourful blanket. I say it is My Humming Bird Father by Pascale Petit on a hexiflat blanket made from left over wool from a vast array of projects and designs by my lovely wife. I loved spreading out the reading of this book over a week and finding different places in which to read it. I saved the final hour of reading for a sunny courtyard in Bakewell while Kath was teaching a knitting workshop at a yarn festival. It felt good to finish reading in the open air. It never ceases to amaze me that I see a film of the book in my head as I read, and I loved watching this one unfold. There is a poetry to the prose of the storytelling here and the images are strong as the story reveals itself.
This week I am particularly glad for social media and the community of people I have connected with there. Without it I might have missed the fact that Todmorden Literature Festival was bringing together Pascale Petit, Joelle Taylor and Andrew McMillan. All three are poets whose work I love, and all three have recently published prose books. I swear when I checked the location on my phone before booking tickets it was an hour away, but it was actually an hour and a half. Not sure what happened there, but it was a lovely drive to a wonderful town for the perfect immersion in time and space for thinking, listening and laughter. It felt like being part of a conversation even though we were listening in.
Such very different books and so much to whet the appetite for reading. I love listening to the process writers use to get the words set down, and it resonated with me when the authors talked about the difference between editing and redrafting novels compared to poetry. One of the things I love about poetry is that to redraft it you can read it from beginning to end in a short space of time and sense how it works as a whole. The contrast of doing this when working on a novel had us laughing at the very thought. It also reminded us that writing each day might be particularly useful for a novel to ensure the characters were not left hanging and the plot went in the direction the author wanted.
I am not sure I am really ready for writing a novel, but on the drive home I remembered that I once wrote a 50000 word piece to see if I could. I am tempted now to dig that out and reread it to see if it holds potential. I get the feeling I will need to glance at it through squinted eyes because I think I’m recalling that it’s a piece of writing that seemed like a good idea at the time! Worth a look though...
Without social media I also might not have been at ‘Crafty Crows’ this week enjoying the work of two headliners and remembering what it is I need to do to perfect the sharing of my work out loud. I struggle sometimes to lift the words from the page and recognise that I need to ensure that my drafting process is as tight as possible. Beginning to explain this out loud helped my thinking when I heard myself say that sometimes because I like the essence of a poem when it first emerges into a finished form of some kind I then consider it to be fully baked. Building in extra time for reading out loud will definitely help with this. I am a page poet that wants to share my work, and having just said that it is easier to contemplate redrafting a poem compared to a novel I think I have found exactly where my focus needs to be.
Remembrance Day brings to mind the roles played by family members who are no longer with us and today I share a poem that frames a moment in time. Before writing the poem I listened to the retelling of this as set down by my Great Uncle for the Imperial War Museum. I also remember my Grandad recounting it to me and my brother when we were young. It had a pathos then that I couldn’t put into words, and I remember how this felt odd and disconcerting to me. When sharing this for the Places of Poetry project in 2019 feedback included: “I particularly like this piece, pinned to the coastal village of Reculver, Kent, which juxtaposes the everyday labours of fishermen with the brutal, dehumanizing reality of death at sea.” That I think sums it up effectively.
TRAWLING ON A DAY'S LEAVE, 1943
Too waterlogged to haul over the side
even for the strong arms
of you and your father.
You roped him to the boat,
tied him on the stern for towing behind.
He couldn't be left to float;
he needed to come out trawling,
the dead man.
You took him with you to catch the tide.
For the living, for the food.
As the boat picked up speed
you couldn't help but watch the almost enthusiastic
movement of his legs as he rode the waves
the three long miles to Reculver.
Back in town, the pineapples you brought from The Azores
were lined up in shop windows for all to see
while you delivered your German airman,
a line of bullets across his back,
to the coastguard station.
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