I had sorted out my hearing aids and thought they were in
the bag. It turned out that I had left them in the front room. It’s always a
bad move to forget the hearing aids. I sat as close as possible to the tutor - a
friend of mine who works harder than I do at her poetry, who submits things to
magazines and wins prizes. A teacher, she knew how to talk loudly. The various
writers in the circle of chairs were not so loud. Maybe there’s a thing that
when you read poetry and it’s not something you really do often, and you are not
so confident of what you’ve written that you speak softly. Only the man sitting
opposite me was loud enough for me to hear.
The warming up exercises were 60 second blasts with a
title for a prompt. It was important to write for every second and not lose yourself
in too much thinking.
The Special Occasion
Hitting sixty this
year. I try to tell myself I’m happy to
slide into seniority quietly, but deep down I want a party. I would rather not
have to dress up but…
I really am hitting sixty. My husband talked about
arranging a party. Not him exactly, but one of my sisters. And for the party to
be down in their neck of the woods so they have no excuse not to come.
We thought about flights rather than driving down but
with all the birthday presents we might need the boot of the car to take things
home. I thought about a money only rule for practical reasons but I like
wrapping paper and bows.
The second warm up made use of post its. The small green
stripy one was for listing six everyday objects like cushions and carpets. The
larger orange stripy one was for definitions of the objects, not detailed but
just a phrase or a short sentence. We passed the definitions sheets around the
circle to see if we could match up someone else’s definition to one of our
objects.
My “letter”
matched quite sensibly with someone else’s “means
of communication” and a more creative link with “method of shutting a door”. I have written more than my fair share
of letters which did damage to relationships. Saying it as it is, without an
ounce of grace – I used to be an expert. I have softened over the years.
My favourite connection was my “carpet” fitting perfectly with someone else’s “transport for some people.” It conjured up all sorts of
adventures.
The main part of the workshop was, of course, writing a
poem. If you could imagine someone you know as a book what kind of a book would
they be? Who would be listed in the acknowledgments page? What would be in the
contents page? Would there be footnotes? What kind of cover would there be?
What kind of pages? The font?
I’d like to say that I can’t believe her poem, my tutor
friend’s poem, wasn’t one of the Blue Peter “here’s one I made earlier” things.
But it wasn’t. She had the same title as us, the same list of things to think
about and the same amount of time to write it as the rest of us. This is where
her hard work and submitting things to poetry competitions and winning all came
into being. She had written a wonderful poem about her mother-in-law. It was so
full of rich pictures of this woman – perhaps a little intimidatingly competent.
Here’s mine. No prizes for guessing who it is. The first
couple of lines give the identity away.
A book made in
Glasgow
Not far from
Parkhead
Yearns to be
handled
To be held, to be
read
The faint whiff of
curry
Touches each page
There’s snippets
of history
From birth to old
age
The paper looks
fragile
But really it’s
strong
The stories look
short
But really they’re
long
And that was it. My time in the carpark the other side of
the alley was all used up. I felt like Cinderella leaving the ball early.
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