This one is a quick scrawl in response to this week’s Sunday Scribblings prompt.
A New Leaf
I am the blank page.
I tempt you and I challenge you
and I terrify you.
Pick up your pen and write on me.
I dare you.
Write me a poem, write me a story,
Write me your day’s deeds and your to-do list,
Write me your dreams.
And make me something new.
© 2010 C Sharp
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It’s National Poetry Day, so what better excuse to post one of my recent poems?
And if anyone wants to comment with a theme I can use for a poem to be written today, please do!
Baby Birds
My fledgling aspirations tumble from their nest.
Woven of words and wordless longing,
lined with hopeful fluff,
it can shelter them no more.
They are pushed out into the wide-open spaces
and left to fend for themselves.
Cruel nature takes them one by one.
They succumb to the cat’s pounce of jealousy,
to the bleak cold of apathy,
to neglect and self-derision and a lack of confidence.
Found years later,
a lone feather reminds me of what might have been,
of the beautiful things that might have flown free
if only I’d learnt to nurture my dreams.
© 2009 C Sharp
It’s Over
It’s been nearly three weeks since I decided to give up and leave you.
Things just weren’t working out any more.
I realised that you were never going to be everything I wanted you to be;
You could never fulfil my dreams.
It was all too much hard work, with too little to show for it.
But time with you wasn’t time wasted.
I’ve learnt from you; I’ve grown.
I know now how to sift out the good from the bad.
These past few years haven’t been completely for nothing.
I don’t have to repeat my mistakes.
I do miss you though.
© 2009 C Sharp
This is a true poem. But before you all start wondering if I’ve left my husband or something, let me reassure you – this poem is dedicated to my former Work in Progress.
I came to the conclusion the other week that what I was writing just wasn’t going in the right direction, and wasn’t going to be something people would want to read. So I decided to reboot, with a new central character instead of the one I’d been writing about for the past 3 or 4 years – because yes, this novel has been languishing for that long! Immediately, I saw how to tighten the plot (which does still remain, in its essential parts) and how to separate out the chaff. What’s more, I did this without too much sense of regret or disappointment, and that pleases me almost as much as the sense of hope I’ve regained.
So now I just need to finish rewriting my outline, and do up some more character sketches, and then I’ll be ready for November…
Yes, I know, I haven’t been posting much lately. Not sure why; it’s not that I’m otherwise busy, that’s for sure. I’m sure I’ll get my groove back soon. (I hope I will.)
But I finally finished this poem, mostly to my satisfaction, so it’s time to post it. First though, a bit of background.
Last November (as blogged elsewhere with more photos), I drove down to Sligo to meet Susan – ostensibly for a NaNoWriMo meeting, but we got very little writing done! Between Donegal and Sligo towns lies the village of Drumcliff, where William Butler Yeats is buried. I’d passed it before, but this time, on my drive home, I actually stopped and paid a quick pilgrimage to his grave.
The beauty and simplicity of the spot really struck me, as did the the piece of art put there to commemorate him – I can’t call it a monument, as it’s a visual representation of one of his well-known poems, He wishes for the cloths of heaven, as shown in my photo (click to enlarge).
I started thinking about this sonnet while driving home from Belfast one dark night in early January, and I actually recorded it on my MP3 player/recorder so as to not lose the words and rhymes. I had intended to post it on the 70th anniversary of Yeats’ death earlier this year (January 28th) but the demands of the poem’s structure were a bit too much, and I ended up putting it aside until this week. (Plus I had some fact-checking to do, and I was a bit lazy.)
Writing to such a tight structure, of both metre and rhyme, is definitely more of a test of my ingenuity than writing free verse is, even if I don’t then tend to exercise/indulge my liking for varied imagery. But I’m fairly pleased with the result anyway.
However, I’m stumped for a title and will happily accept all reasonable suggestions…
(Untitled Sonnet)
It’s not the first time that I’ve passed this way,
And I remember well this bend of road
As it curves through the land of his abode
Beneath Ben Bulben high above the bay.
I stop the car and walk the paths in search
Of that one grave which calls me to this place.
His words carved in the headstone’s plain grey face,
He lies within the shadow of the church.
A solemn resting place for him, it seems;
No monument among these leafless trees.
But then I spy a figure on its knees,
There laying down its cloth of words and dreams.
A metal statue and a cloth of stones,
In this quiet spot where long lie Yeats’ bones.
© 2009 C Sharp
I hate mornings; I hate waking up and getting out of bed, especially if I have to do it before about 8 o’clock. After that, I have a lot less of a problem, even if I do just like lying there for ages feeling warm and drowsy and full of ideas. Unfortunately, on my commuting days, I need to leave the house well before 8 (like today), so the only way I can manage it is to set my alarm at least forty minutes before I need to get up, and hit the Snooze button multiple times, to fool myself into thinking I’m having a lie-in of sorts.
Nine Minutes
My finger stabs the Snooze button
and my nine minutes begin.
These are my moments of defiance,
and telling the day that it can’t start yet.
My moments of refusal and denial,
half-waking half-baked ideas,
and the sleepy warmth of my bed.
My nine drowsy minutes end with a shriek of static
that slowly becomes a voice or a tune.
My finger stabs the Snooze button
and my nine minutes begin again.
© 2009 C Sharp
My creativity didn’t so much dry up in my late twenties as get redirected. From about 1995 onwards, I wrote very little fiction or poetry and even gave up on my journals. It wasn’t until the start of this century (doesn’t that sound grand?) that I started to write again, soon after moving to Northern Ireland. Everything around me was new – experiences and sights and people – and that sparked a couple of years of writing again. A couple of weeks ago, I found one of my notebooks from 2001/2002 – and it had a couple of poems I’d completely forgotten about! But I think my favourite poem from that time is probably this one (October 17th 2002).
Winter’s First Touch
Ice on the windshield for the first time today,
and my car’s reluctant to start.
The hills are sunk into mist
as thick as a feather duvet.
The river is placid,
the glowing reflections of the buildings
disturbed only by the tiny ripples of wind against tide.
Blue sky, bright sun
and winter’s wolf-bite in the air.
(© 2002 C Sharp)
I had another few dry years, but I’ve had a good 18 months now of being enthused about poetry again as well as novel- and story-writing. The evidence is on this blog!
One of my aims this year is to read more poetry, and with that in mind, I picked up some Penguin anthologies of 20th century poetry (from the charity shop, I admit it, despite Jim’s encouragement that we should buy new). These books were put together in the 60s, and fit nicely with the copy of The Penguin Book of English Verse that I stole years ago from my Mum (it was one of her English literature texts at college).
Before flicking through the poems themselves, I read the introductions. And by the time I was halfway through the introduction to The Georgians (a particular school of poetry in the early 20th century), I was baffled. Although I can completely understand that people can prefer certain styles of poetry over others, I was surprised to realise that there were those who dismissed and denigrated whole schools of poetry – in the same way as happens with schools of art, I suppose.
I freely admit that my reaction was a very naïve one. But it made me think. Because I’d been so exposed to poetry of all sorts as a child, I really couldn’t care less in what style a poem is written. Old or modern; rhyme or blank verse; short or long; flowery or matter-of-fact. I like strong imagery and clever uses of words, and I definitely like poems that pose some sort of question or contain a mystery. But on the whole, I take each poem I read on its own merits regardless of when, how or why it was written.
And I’m pretty sure that doing that means I get to read and enjoy an awful lot more poetry! It also means that I get to use a whole lot of different styles in my own work. Perhaps it’s better for a poet to have a particular voice, and I do think there are certain consistencies in how my poems are formed, but I like to experiment too. (Maybe that way I’ll gather more admirers?!)
Anyway, time for a conclusion of sorts. I don’t think my love of poetry has ever waned, although my enthusiasm for writing it certainly has at times. Or perhaps it’s more true to say that I simply forgot about writing poetry for long years at a time.
However, at the moment, my poetry-writing-enthusiasm is at a peak. Every day, I have ideas that I know could become poems, and I’ve got pretty good at making sure I write down even a few words as a prompt for later (for when I run out of ideas, in other words). Of course, I’m still not as disciplined as I should be; I had some great ideas before falling asleep last night, didn’t take the time to write them down, and now of course I’ve forgotten them already.
I’ve also developed more of a critical eye, even just over the past year. I remember posting something a few months ago, and afterwards seeing places I could have edited it – but being reluctant to do so. Now, I’m unlikely to post something unless it’s had at least a few days to one side and then a revision or two. And that has to be progress – doesn’t it?
So I’ll keep on writing poetry while I’m still keen on doing so… and more importantly, I’m going to start tossing it out to magazines and competitions, to try and get some pieces published somewhere other than this blog. And who knows?
