woolymonkey | my pomes wot i wrote

Being stuck in bed feeling ill and not doing very well at drafting my next creative writing assignment, I thought I'd ~~procrastinate~~ catch up with posting the previous one. It's two poems--one about Zil--and a commentary.

1. Poems

Generations

The old white cat is dead.
To a different house in a different town we carried her, cradled in cardboard,
The infant we couldn’t conceive.

Through summer she scaled shoulders, rubbed noses at the summit,
Pounced on prey in the shag pile, stalked garments scurrying round the wash,
Slept curled in my lap like a leaf.

Autumn took me to work: quick pat and scoop of food. Clomid* gulped with coffee.
Till evening cat-calls roused me from dog-eared schoolbooks
To see white writhe and curl round tabby Tom.

In spring she birthed five kittens beneath our bed (four of them lived)
On an old jumper in a cardboard box stamped ‘Made in Indonesia’
(My pregnancy had just begun to show).

Our son was born to winter gloom, two beasts like cougars circling round his crib.
The catling kept her distance but her mother, having raised her own,
Knew babies were like kittens.

She taught toddlers to stroke (the black splodge on her back for wobbly hands to aim).
Abused, she’d lesson manners with the tip of one sickle claw delicately inserted
To pin sleeve to ground.

Then, in a bigger house, basking in sunlight, love, and central heating,
Tranquil through teenage trampling, my lap reclaimed her own.
‘Our baby sister’ said our youngest son.

Now, a blanket bundle cradled in crook of elbow as my other hand fumbles car keys,
I bring her home to hugs—rare now—as we bury her, curled in that sunny spot,
Teaching grown children how to grieve.

* A drug to induce ovulation.

(24 lines)

Life in the Middle

Shall I sing praise of this Victorian terrace
In central Cambridge—pinnacle of taste?
Bass riffs and barking ring through walls as porous
As paper. Roof slates leak unless replaced.
Feuds over parking. Fronts must be upkept
Strictly in line with conservation laws:
No porches to keep callers from the wet
No plastic keeps tradition’s draught outdoors.
No velux may shine light on history’s black,
But luckily, it seems that round the back
You can tack on extended kitchens and all kinds of tat:
Magnificent, split-level studio flats,
Walk-in penthouses, wet-rooms, or whatever else you lack
To combine all the charm of an authentic period building
With the conveniences of a fully modern lifestyle.
(Just don’t expect a parking bay with that.)

(16 lines)

Total lines: 40

2. Commentary

Life in the Middle started as an exercise in iambic pentameter on a mundane subject. Then I realised I had similar feelings about old buildings and old forms. I’d stumbled on a way of exploring the idea that ‘certain rhythmic patterns are built into our literary heritage’. (Herbert, 2006, p.238)
It’s still a jokey poem, but I hope it also expresses how traditional forms can be limiting, but rejecting constraints has its own risks—and isn’t always possible. Somewhere between strictly maintained traditional façades and unconstrained modern rear extensions is where real life happens.
I was consciously trying to create strict meter and strict rhyme schemes—then strain them beyond breaking point. It’s not an accident that the metre first runs into trouble with the realisation that terrace houses are not really self-contained units—noise leaks through—or that the most formally ‘correct’ section is about planning regulations. My conscious plan was simply to write iambic pentameter with lots of rhyme, but sonnet form must have bubbled up out of my reading memory. The first line is meant to recall Shakespearean sonnets. The whole thing is an (extended) sonnet.
Generations is different. I wrote exercises and drafts about my family cat’s life intertwining with mine, and with my sons’ births and childhoods. Then the cat died. There are a few details from the earlier versions still there, but very changed.
I chose free verse because I wanted to express myself without having to bend around rhymes and rules, but I was thinking about form, especially rhythms. The idea was to have a stanza for every stage of the cat’s life, but to circle round so the first and last stanzas contained both birth and death. I wanted it to be difficult sometimes to work out which lines were about which.
I tried to be aware of the stresses in each line and whether it fitted into any kind of classical shape, but not to have a fixed metre. I wanted the last line of each stanza to be shorter and more formed than the others, for emphasis and to connect with the last lines of other stanzas. Throughout the poem, I’ve tried to use rhythm and rhyme to pick out the landmark lines—the ones I’d like to echo through the whole. There are a few rhymes and slant rhymes to help with that.
I found an odd effect of thinking about rhythm without having a strict metre was that a lot of my rewrites were to make lines less metrical. I slipped into writing in a steady metre sometimes almost as an easier alternative; I needed a conscious effort to break away from the form and find the words I really wanted.
I’ve deliberately chosen two very different poems. I don’t think I’ve even begun to settle into a voice, but I can already see themes that I’m sure I’ll come back to: domesticity, and the way the past persists in the present.
(494 words)

Reference
Herbert, W.N., ‘Part 3: Writing Poetry’, in Creative Writing: a Workbook with Readings, ed. Linda Anderson, Routledge, 2006

It got 81% (my best mark yet--the Fulk story got 78). I'm determined not to be too bothered about the marks either way, because I'm aware how little they really mean. (But I do need to pass so the Unreal University will pay my course fee.)