Monday, 26 March 2012
Reflection:
In this project I have produced work that I would hope is able to express a range of my experiences in a way that is transferable to a diverse audience. I have developed a collection of work that was inspired by three significant memories. Although they are all very personal, I have tried my best to make them unanimously accessible to everybody by using everyday imagery innovatively. I found that all of my poems were far more powerful when read aloud; leading me to believe my intended audience would be a crowd of listeners.
After Gwendolyn Brooks
“We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,
Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong
Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.”
Pedalo
We watched the pigeons on red clay roof tops as we drank apple juice, but what are we,
Restless in dusty sunlight, your 20th birthday and mushrooms are some of the things we are,
Not those seven days in September, but laughing at things
That you or I behind empty eyelids, could never think of
Alone, at 2am when we wake and our throats are dry
Going sleepless, not for days just a few hours
As we lie in our big white bed littered with grains of sand, and
Split ends, dead skin cells, the
Saliva stains from where I’ve slept with my mouth open, the patches my habit – involuntary
Nothing like you with all the answers; I don’t have a plan
So we sit and watch the ocean-lapped rocks, greyed
Eroded like what we fail to remember in
But we make new ones like the 18th of June and
Sponge Jelly fish in the water while a sun hangs grey
Above our Port De Sóller and its deck chairs holding bodies that don’t dream,
Unlike ours that do, and propel us on our yellow water bus that makes
Us laugh when we reach the other end of the floats, then the
Memory of a dream where handkerchiefs were pulled through my ears makes me feel giddy
And the metal pedal beneath my foot stops until I hear the sound
Of the contours of your lips saying that we’re not
Moving anymore, but the sapphire liquid beneath us is not as strong
As your legs that kick the pedals like
Time gone backwards, toward the man we paid five Euros for this Pedalo to rent
For thirty minutes, and watch fish feeding
On the stale white bread that we threw into a
Small school, and I consider what it might be like to be somebody’s wife
That sleeps in saliva stains, satisfying
A
Man
‘Pedalo’ moves from the present to a past reminiscence, a technique I have used in all three of my poems for two reasons: the one mentioned above, but most importantly to help me access concrete memories. By writing about places I am familiar with it is easier for me to engage fully with the senses, something that I feel is key in successful poetry. I have looked at Kate Tempest’s ‘Best Intentions’ where she uses lines like ‘the flames that make a furnace of my throat’ and ‘eyes that once looked sweetly gaze back empty’ to connect with her audience. Her phrases are no longer just words on a page; they hold significant weight through their concrete meaning and directness.
After my research I set out with the intent to include multi-sensory experiences within my poetry. I completed ‘Pedalo’ a 29 line poem, using all of the words in Gwendolyn Brooks’ first stanza from Kitchenette Building as my end line words. It would have been less demanding to choose a stanza that wouldn’t be a challenge, and the opening one contains some words that I am familiar with but scarcely use in speech not to mention in my poetry– involuntary, feeding and giddy for example. I really wanted to push myself with the task and initially, I thought it would be almost impossible due to the limitations of the exercise. However, found that working with words of a crafted poet made the task easier than first thought.
I started the process with a free-write about a visit to Majorca and soon found that I was documenting memories that I thought I had forgotten or completely buried. I made lists of specific events, conversations, flavours, and sounds that happened there – I was aware that the more material I gathered, the more flexibility I would have when being selective with what I wanted to include and what would work best with my chosen stanza.
Once I started to write, I found that keeping the end words in mind channelled me through rather than dictating the content of my poem. Although, during a meeting where I read both Nicolai’s and Matthew’s After Gwendolyn Brook’s we discovered that all of our pieces evoked natural landscapes, outdoor settings and water-based imagery. This left me with the impression that we all definitely were influenced by her voice and sense of narrative that is periodically raw.
Implosion is key in my poem because it allows the link to be made between nostalgia and the present. I achieved this by repeating ‘saliva stains’ in the same setting – a bed – but in a different contexts. Initially ‘saliva stains from where I’ve slept with my mouth open, the patches my habit – involuntary’ is a carefree memory symbolic of acceptance. Whereas ‘I consider what it might be like to be somebody’s wife, that sleeps in saliva stains, satisfying a man’, brings the reader/audience to the present through the change in tense, and connotes through the verb ‘satisfying’ that the experience in another time and place would be unpleasant.
As I have followed the outline in the brief, I intend to submit ‘Pedalo’ for The Golden Shovel anthology.
Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong
Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.”
Pedalo
We watched the pigeons on red clay roof tops as we drank apple juice, but what are we,
Restless in dusty sunlight, your 20th birthday and mushrooms are some of the things we are,
Not those seven days in September, but laughing at things
That you or I behind empty eyelids, could never think of
Alone, at 2am when we wake and our throats are dry
Going sleepless, not for days just a few hours
As we lie in our big white bed littered with grains of sand, and
Split ends, dead skin cells, the
Saliva stains from where I’ve slept with my mouth open, the patches my habit – involuntary
Nothing like you with all the answers; I don’t have a plan
So we sit and watch the ocean-lapped rocks, greyed
Eroded like what we fail to remember in
But we make new ones like the 18th of June and
Sponge Jelly fish in the water while a sun hangs grey
Above our Port De Sóller and its deck chairs holding bodies that don’t dream,
Unlike ours that do, and propel us on our yellow water bus that makes
Us laugh when we reach the other end of the floats, then the
Memory of a dream where handkerchiefs were pulled through my ears makes me feel giddy
And the metal pedal beneath my foot stops until I hear the sound
Of the contours of your lips saying that we’re not
Moving anymore, but the sapphire liquid beneath us is not as strong
As your legs that kick the pedals like
Time gone backwards, toward the man we paid five Euros for this Pedalo to rent
For thirty minutes, and watch fish feeding
On the stale white bread that we threw into a
Small school, and I consider what it might be like to be somebody’s wife
That sleeps in saliva stains, satisfying
A
Man
‘Pedalo’ moves from the present to a past reminiscence, a technique I have used in all three of my poems for two reasons: the one mentioned above, but most importantly to help me access concrete memories. By writing about places I am familiar with it is easier for me to engage fully with the senses, something that I feel is key in successful poetry. I have looked at Kate Tempest’s ‘Best Intentions’ where she uses lines like ‘the flames that make a furnace of my throat’ and ‘eyes that once looked sweetly gaze back empty’ to connect with her audience. Her phrases are no longer just words on a page; they hold significant weight through their concrete meaning and directness.
After my research I set out with the intent to include multi-sensory experiences within my poetry. I completed ‘Pedalo’ a 29 line poem, using all of the words in Gwendolyn Brooks’ first stanza from Kitchenette Building as my end line words. It would have been less demanding to choose a stanza that wouldn’t be a challenge, and the opening one contains some words that I am familiar with but scarcely use in speech not to mention in my poetry– involuntary, feeding and giddy for example. I really wanted to push myself with the task and initially, I thought it would be almost impossible due to the limitations of the exercise. However, found that working with words of a crafted poet made the task easier than first thought.
I started the process with a free-write about a visit to Majorca and soon found that I was documenting memories that I thought I had forgotten or completely buried. I made lists of specific events, conversations, flavours, and sounds that happened there – I was aware that the more material I gathered, the more flexibility I would have when being selective with what I wanted to include and what would work best with my chosen stanza.
Once I started to write, I found that keeping the end words in mind channelled me through rather than dictating the content of my poem. Although, during a meeting where I read both Nicolai’s and Matthew’s After Gwendolyn Brook’s we discovered that all of our pieces evoked natural landscapes, outdoor settings and water-based imagery. This left me with the impression that we all definitely were influenced by her voice and sense of narrative that is periodically raw.
Implosion is key in my poem because it allows the link to be made between nostalgia and the present. I achieved this by repeating ‘saliva stains’ in the same setting – a bed – but in a different contexts. Initially ‘saliva stains from where I’ve slept with my mouth open, the patches my habit – involuntary’ is a carefree memory symbolic of acceptance. Whereas ‘I consider what it might be like to be somebody’s wife, that sleeps in saliva stains, satisfying a man’, brings the reader/audience to the present through the change in tense, and connotes through the verb ‘satisfying’ that the experience in another time and place would be unpleasant.
As I have followed the outline in the brief, I intend to submit ‘Pedalo’ for The Golden Shovel anthology.
A Recollection
Now we’re down aisle seventeen and I see you with my eyes
Like the emerald centrepiece seen in the ring from a child’s jewellery vending machine,
I see your plastic eyes that cost about 20p.
Walking blind up and down the aisles in Sainsbury’s
You and your eyes ask why I don’t follow you
“I was just looking for pistachios down number 22”
Then I remember the time my brown eyes
And your green eyes counted the 9 moles on my neck
As I blew the hair on your shoulders
Beads of sweat pooling in the creases of my knees
And the small of your back
The grooves in the pads of my hands catching your hair follicles
Touching your shoulder blades and seeing your eyes
Falling down to your waist while the pale blue sheet
Pulled tight across your mattress stroked my spine,
Now we’re down aisle thirty-nine
And remember the first time I tasted your spit
And mine together as we sat in your car,
That distant look in your eyes
I am aware that I am capable of writing poetry that is unrestricted, but am inclined to struggle when working with form. Creating a Ghazal where each line shares the same meter, whilst retaining recurring rhyming couplets was extremely difficult for me. I attempted to edit my work so that it complied with the rules but this ended up altering the content, leaving me with a poem that I was unsatisfied by.
It has been said that ‘A Ghazal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain’ which I have achieved by combining the loss of a relationship with climactically sensual language, triggered by a memory. For example, the line ‘I see your plastic eyes’ is metaphorical of a person devoid of empathy, however ‘I remember my brown eyes and your green eyes, counting the 9 moles on my neck’ conjures imagery of a specific and intimate moment within the relationship and brings the colour back into the eyes. I also remained close to the rule of a recurrent refrain, my choice being eyes which was an aspect that pushed what I was writing towards that. Similarly, I made use of the supermarket as my chosen location which gave a strong sense of narrative. When read aloud, my classmates found the supermarket to almost navigate the poem, taking the voice on a journey through the aisles, while giving them a strong a focus on place.
I definitely need to challenge myself more by working with form that I find complex, instead of avoiding them with the apprehension that various limitations will boundary my creativity. It is also far more difficult to write to a brief but definitely more rewarding in terms of what you accomplish. Finally, using form in this instance has posed as an inspiration or a catalyst, rather than leading to a poem that strictly follows formulaic regulations.
Like the emerald centrepiece seen in the ring from a child’s jewellery vending machine,
I see your plastic eyes that cost about 20p.
Walking blind up and down the aisles in Sainsbury’s
You and your eyes ask why I don’t follow you
“I was just looking for pistachios down number 22”
Then I remember the time my brown eyes
And your green eyes counted the 9 moles on my neck
As I blew the hair on your shoulders
Beads of sweat pooling in the creases of my knees
And the small of your back
The grooves in the pads of my hands catching your hair follicles
Touching your shoulder blades and seeing your eyes
Falling down to your waist while the pale blue sheet
Pulled tight across your mattress stroked my spine,
Now we’re down aisle thirty-nine
And remember the first time I tasted your spit
And mine together as we sat in your car,
That distant look in your eyes
I am aware that I am capable of writing poetry that is unrestricted, but am inclined to struggle when working with form. Creating a Ghazal where each line shares the same meter, whilst retaining recurring rhyming couplets was extremely difficult for me. I attempted to edit my work so that it complied with the rules but this ended up altering the content, leaving me with a poem that I was unsatisfied by.
It has been said that ‘A Ghazal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain’ which I have achieved by combining the loss of a relationship with climactically sensual language, triggered by a memory. For example, the line ‘I see your plastic eyes’ is metaphorical of a person devoid of empathy, however ‘I remember my brown eyes and your green eyes, counting the 9 moles on my neck’ conjures imagery of a specific and intimate moment within the relationship and brings the colour back into the eyes. I also remained close to the rule of a recurrent refrain, my choice being eyes which was an aspect that pushed what I was writing towards that. Similarly, I made use of the supermarket as my chosen location which gave a strong sense of narrative. When read aloud, my classmates found the supermarket to almost navigate the poem, taking the voice on a journey through the aisles, while giving them a strong a focus on place.
I definitely need to challenge myself more by working with form that I find complex, instead of avoiding them with the apprehension that various limitations will boundary my creativity. It is also far more difficult to write to a brief but definitely more rewarding in terms of what you accomplish. Finally, using form in this instance has posed as an inspiration or a catalyst, rather than leading to a poem that strictly follows formulaic regulations.
Clay Cylinder
Sonnet:
I saw babies’ feet, a neighbour asleep behind windows
Where white paint still chips and curls
On the pink and grey slabs I know
This place, where I once played with girls
And wounded my pastel skin
On a clay cylinder, and remembered the scene
Where concrete towers lit my darkness tall and thin
In a mess that knocked down trees causing no more green
A copy of these landscapes that twinkled
In the twilight without excitement
But with exhaust fumes that still penetrate my lungs sprinkled
By hopscotch, chalked on dirty pavements
That turn the soles of your shoes
Heavy, and black with dust
I have, however, included a sonnet in my portfolio where I managed to remain close to the rules of its form. ‘Clay Cylinder’ is 14 lines in length, and follows an ‘ababcdcd’ rhyme scheme throughout; the penultimate and final line an exception to this rule. The ninth line ‘A copy of these landscapes that twinkled’ poses as the Volta because this is where the voice alters from childhood memories to what presently remains. Sonnets are generally associated with love and I have painted pictures of ‘babies’ feet’ and ‘pastel skin’ which conforms to this by expressing an attachment to a place. I wanted to demonstrate that the environment was sinister, and used nouns like ‘grey’ ‘wounded’ and ‘penetrate’ which highlight this. I listened to ‘Heartburn’ by Polar Bear Poet, which addresses issues around cultures in neighbourhoods. Descriptions like ‘you see, where I come from it rains a lot’ and the repetition of ‘my city ain’t pretty but it’s home/I love it’ were some of the lines that inspired me to focus on some of the more unpleasant but unique scenery around where I grew up.
SONNET 112
Your love and pity doth the impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
You are my all the world, and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue:
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
That my steel'd sense or changes right or wrong.
In so profound abysm I throw all care
Of others' voices, that my adder's sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
You are so strongly in my purpose bred
That all the world besides methinks are dead
I have looked at some traditional sonnets to compare how the original form differs from my own. The Shakespearean sonnet follows quite strictly rules of rhyme and meter. It uses a consistent ABAB rhyme scheme and each line is 10 or 11 syllables in length. For this reason, Clay Cylinder would be categorised as a contemporary sonnet, however the rhyme scheme is similar as is the Volta but the content of 112 is very dated with Old English such as ‘o’er’ ‘nor I’ which would not interest an audience at a spoken word event unless used appropriately.
This led me to believe that my viewers would be young adults who can relate to growing up in an urban setting. I have used simple language but made reference to ‘hopscotch’ and ‘concrete towers’ that distinguishes in my opinion, a lower class environment that speaks to my target audience.
I saw babies’ feet, a neighbour asleep behind windows
Where white paint still chips and curls
On the pink and grey slabs I know
This place, where I once played with girls
And wounded my pastel skin
On a clay cylinder, and remembered the scene
Where concrete towers lit my darkness tall and thin
In a mess that knocked down trees causing no more green
A copy of these landscapes that twinkled
In the twilight without excitement
But with exhaust fumes that still penetrate my lungs sprinkled
By hopscotch, chalked on dirty pavements
That turn the soles of your shoes
Heavy, and black with dust
I have, however, included a sonnet in my portfolio where I managed to remain close to the rules of its form. ‘Clay Cylinder’ is 14 lines in length, and follows an ‘ababcdcd’ rhyme scheme throughout; the penultimate and final line an exception to this rule. The ninth line ‘A copy of these landscapes that twinkled’ poses as the Volta because this is where the voice alters from childhood memories to what presently remains. Sonnets are generally associated with love and I have painted pictures of ‘babies’ feet’ and ‘pastel skin’ which conforms to this by expressing an attachment to a place. I wanted to demonstrate that the environment was sinister, and used nouns like ‘grey’ ‘wounded’ and ‘penetrate’ which highlight this. I listened to ‘Heartburn’ by Polar Bear Poet, which addresses issues around cultures in neighbourhoods. Descriptions like ‘you see, where I come from it rains a lot’ and the repetition of ‘my city ain’t pretty but it’s home/I love it’ were some of the lines that inspired me to focus on some of the more unpleasant but unique scenery around where I grew up.
SONNET 112
Your love and pity doth the impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
You are my all the world, and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue:
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
That my steel'd sense or changes right or wrong.
In so profound abysm I throw all care
Of others' voices, that my adder's sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
You are so strongly in my purpose bred
That all the world besides methinks are dead
I have looked at some traditional sonnets to compare how the original form differs from my own. The Shakespearean sonnet follows quite strictly rules of rhyme and meter. It uses a consistent ABAB rhyme scheme and each line is 10 or 11 syllables in length. For this reason, Clay Cylinder would be categorised as a contemporary sonnet, however the rhyme scheme is similar as is the Volta but the content of 112 is very dated with Old English such as ‘o’er’ ‘nor I’ which would not interest an audience at a spoken word event unless used appropriately.
This led me to believe that my viewers would be young adults who can relate to growing up in an urban setting. I have used simple language but made reference to ‘hopscotch’ and ‘concrete towers’ that distinguishes in my opinion, a lower class environment that speaks to my target audience.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)