the humble local freak

I thought that, since August, I hadn't written any poetry. Or, at least, not any poetry fit to share with anyone ever, only dark half-dressed scribbles in the way that sometimes your brain disconnects and writing might help put the pieces less painfully together. But I've found at least one poem which, whilst unsmiling, is not unusable so that's something. It is poetry group later this week and the Mayor is coming, so I've tried to hammer something out tonight about home.

A friend of mine picked up a poetry book for me, recently. I tried to read it last night but it is absolutely terrible. I mean really, truly terrible. It clunks. I managed to read about six poems, with my pencil in hand making pained scribbles but I think I'm going to have to admit defeat. William McGonagall, eat your heart out, in the age of self-publishing there are some things far worse than your Tay Bridge out there for public consumption. Reading the book had a dual action for me, in the first I think perhaps I have learned something from it - learned to trust ear over all else, learned that really, truly, I can actually identify BAD poetry on occasion, and heard for perhaps the first time in a long time, the awkwardness of the forced rhythm or forced rhyme. I rhyme a lot, it comes to me that way and I like poems generally that rhyme (I like poems that don't rhyme too, also). They please me in their rhythm, balance and bounce and that always made me somewhat concerned when people far more learned than I would lecture about the dangers of the 'forced rhyme' the 'clunky turn of phrase'. I worried that perhaps I forced my rhymes and didn't realise it.

Now that I have read truly abominable forced rhyme, I feel somewhat comforted that I have not, at least not knowingly, pulled some of the trite tricks employed by that writer.

I hope I don't sound like a poetry snob. I try not to be, in fact I often feel far more of a poetry prole (The Waste Land continues to pass me by, unmoved, but Macavity is far more fun), but I promise you it isn't just me, I read a few verses aloud to share the pain and really, tin ear or no, the clunking was very, very present. Even more embarrasingly the author on his blub had commented that the poems 'were written down as they came to [him], barring a few edits for grammar'. The grammar was DREADFUL. There are wayward apostrophes, typos and whole sentences that simply do even less than scan, they make no sense, indeed, some had their sense altered in order to Make The Words Rhyme.

And that rant over I'm dashing now to watch The Dresden Files.

I haven't been online much lately. This is because we are currently in the middle of a heatwave and my poor awld computer just can't take the strain of being on in this weather. I worry about it. Particularly as I have still yet to work up the nerve to take it to pieces to give it a deep clean that it needs.

Went to poetry group last night, which was excellent and quite refreshing. I read two pieces one which is a little old, Scratch and a new one which is actually a song (I didn't sing it!) called Witch Song. I quite like them. Scratch is quite malevolent, like its title. The Witch song is much more playful, but is ultimately a song in the veins of the Rambler song ("I'm a rambler I'm a gambler I'm a long way from home/and if you don't like me then leave me alone/ I'll eat when I'm hungry, I'll drink when I'm dry/ And if moonshine don't kill me I'll live till I die"). One of the others wrote a little haiku about me which was charming, but mentioned in passing that most of my poems were often sad, or at least a little dark.

When I got home, Mum was watching a programme about mental health and trying through various means to improve one's natural inclinations away from pessimism. Right, I thought, for this month I will ONLY WRITE ABOUT UNCOMPLICATEDLY CHEERFUL TOPCS. More than that, I will find ONE THING PER DAY that makes me happy and think about it hard!

And it can't just be my dinner!


This morning, on the car park, muttering as I tromped the long walk to the office: "Who did that stupid sod think she was, driving round here... with her bloody car... going the wrong way in the one way bit because she's obviously tried to get nearer and then I have to go round TWICE because I can't get round her...rant, rant, rant...Look at these people parking on the bloody pavement because they can't walk like the rest of us stupid mugs who abide by the rules. I'm very disappointed in Car Park E. I felt a sense of camaraderie with us before but now it appears to be full of stupid sods who get in the way. I should write a poem about that..."

I haven't...yet. It seems like impotent furies are the only things that get my passions piqued for poetry.

Last week I went back to the poetry group again. This time we all did an excercise where we each made a word out of scrabble tiles and then had to write a poem containing all (or as many as we could) of the words.

I don't know what happened. I don't know how. But literally the minute the words were listed and the challenge given I was pen-to-paper hammering away, knowing just what rythm I wanted and everything. A couple of lines took a bit of drafting but by gum I was away.

And yet for the whole month before that the only thing I'd written was the poem for C's leaving do, which, yes, I'd sweated over but that was it. Nothing else had come. Or maybe it is more that I never give anything chance to come any more. I'm always doing something else. Start to stare at a blank page? Wikipedia, the OED online (which my library card means I get access to), blogs, facebook where I'm playing scrabble with three people, twitter, youtube, fanfiction fanfiction fanfiction. Another refresh on AO3 and that's it, time has just gone.

So I pulled out my writing magazine today, took it to the park opposite where I work and had my lunch far away from people talking to me or asking questions or me having to be sociable. When I came home I did a bit of fanfiction-reading and then I decided to try and write flash fiction. I am shit at short stories, and truly I didn't have any ideas but then- wham- a bit of quiet and there's something written.

I'm not saying the challenge poem or the story I've just done are good- they very likely are not, but it's the first actual writing for random fun that I've done in ages. That feels good all on its own.