Poem 9 - Shell

Photo: Sally Douglas

Shell

I have defended these stories for so long.

But now like the shells of long dead snails

they break between my fingertips.

With a whisper of old convolutions

they break under my touch

and are stolen by the wind.

Leaving nothing but a glaze that almost

remembers the ease of gliding.

Sally Douglas



Poem 8 - Find What You Need, What You Lost

Photo: Sally Douglas

Find What You Need, Who You Lost

Face direction of travel

Ring bell for attention

Do not walk under barrier

Check your records

Don’t turn away

Safeguard elderly persons

Hold young children firmly

Hold handrail and stand clear of edges

Put on your normal face

Swipe your bonus card

Hold upright

Pull out safety pin

Squeeze levers

Trust the plastic

Ensure children wear socks

Remove all valuables

Lock your vehicle

Wait for the raggedy man

Don’t blink

Use the help button or go to the operations office

Push door when buzzer sounds

Take extra care when wearing soft soled shoes

Remember the only water in the forest

Shop spring

Pick up a free copy

Help yourself to samples

Download the app

Wear a fez

Answer your phone

Reverse the polarity

Act like you’ve never

done that before

Sally Douglas

This poem is a found poem. My two nieces (aged 9 and 11) and I went hunting for signs with instructions on them and used them for this poem. Then we added a few lines from a different source. Can't tell you what - spoilers!

Thanks to Emily and Hannah for the help, and I hope you like the result.

Poem 7 - An Oulipo Effort

Photo: Sally Douglas

Leftist

You are not open to recreation the deadbeat.
The window-dresser wants to turn
the straitjacket on, but you are loaded
with the day’s dust-up,
so each flywheel dies.
You did not open to recreation the deadbeat,
but you are open anyway,
and on you lifespans
the brew of bonds,
the giggles of households, limps,
the curled hairpiece of woodcutters
and the shorn hairpiece of brags,
powdered bridgeheads and skirmish –
carried here to splay you flautist and helpless

the deadbeat so heavy on your faction.

Sally Douglas

There once was a poem which did not please the poet because it was too slick and inauthentic. So the poet fed it, title and all, into a machine, an N+7 machine. And the poet liked it a lot more after that.

The N+7 (or S+7 in the original French) is one of the methods used by the Oulipo movement. These writers used chance and constraints to trigger ideas. And when it works, the poetry of chance can be so satisfying!


Thanks to Jo Bell for the link to the machine, which saved me doing the job manually.

Poem 6 - Music Lesson

Photo:Sally Douglas

Music Lesson

The child is sitting on a chair

in a hall

in a sea of brown lino

She holds her brown bag

tight to her tight chest

as the clock ticks and ticks and never tocks

and the lodgers walk through the long hall

and up the stairs

and never come down.

She swings her legs tick tick

kick kick

so they stay awake

She swings her legs

one two one two

and one and two and three and four and

major scales crawl

under the door and

up the stairs

and down the stairs

and back under the door

and the small brass clock

under its small glass dome

which she cannot see

because it is

on top of the piano

on the other side of the door

counts on.

Sally Douglas

The poem about time (Poem 4 - Seven Glances at Time) reminded me of some notes I had made a while back about a childhood memory, so I dug them out. This is the poem.

Poem 5 - What News Have I to Tell?

What News Have I to Tell?

Today a jackdaw's fallen down the chimney.

I hear it scuffling and flailing in the soot.

     So is winter nearly gone?

Each year brings them to our rooftop

quarrelling as they drop their twigs

to make their chancy nests.

.

And one will fall. Trapped

in the bricked-up void, chack for a

wretched day or two, then die. Or –

maybe –  tumble flukily into the grate,

to sudden frantic freedom, to the bright

confusion of windows..

And I think of you, your six months in the dark.

Are there birds there? You keep so silent on it all.

    Come home soon.

With all my love to you, my dear Persephone.

Mum xx

Sally Douglas

The prompt for this one came from The Practice of Poetry, by Robin Behn and Chace Twichell (HarperCollins, 1992). The exercise was simply to write a poem in the form of a letter. I started it with a bit of news that I recently posted on my younger daughter's Facebook page, and part way through I realised who the speaker might be. I don't think the reader needs to know anything about Greek mythology to understand the poem, though. That's what makes those archetypal figures so great to use in writing- they're everyone and everywhere. At the last minute, just before posting this, I decided to hold back the classical reference  until the end of the poem so the reader would enter the space without any preconceptions, and the poem is not pinned down. In that way, hopefully, the identities of the characters add a layer rather than be all that the poem is - and the reader has some part in deciding how far this adds meaning.

NaPoWriMo Poem 4 - Seven Glances at Time



Photo: Natasha Douglas

   

Seven Glances at Time 

1.

The tock of the wipers

the long rain sliding

the road

unwinding

2.

A view

A haze

A mist

A cloud

A fog
A wall

3.

Inside a box, coiled tight,

there is all possibility –  

blue with stars.

4.

Sometimes the air is so still that even

the clock

stops breathing.

5.

A breath and a breath and a breath

and a breath and

6.

Years unspooling –

       the clack of cine film

                                             flicker

you flare

             and falter

years ago

7.

The way

minutes pucker the surface.

How, suddenly, my grandmother’s fingers

are holding

this pen.

Sally Douglas

The prompt for this came from Jo Bell, via Twitter (@Jo_Bell). The task was to read Wallace Stevens' poem 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird', and then to look at something else thirteen ways. This was quite a challenge for me because Stevens and his blackbirds seemed to be at my shoulder, whispering all the time! I did write thirteen ways, but decided the whole thing needed cutting back for the sake of the poor reader.  If I were to do this exercise again I'd write about something a lot less abstract, but I had the one initial image-based idea (which ironically was one of the bits I cut) and that dictated the subject without me really having a say in the matter.     

Not the greatest thing I have ever written, but the point of doing this month of writing was to break the block, so up it goes into the world.                                  

NaPoWriMo Poem 3: The Teller

The Teller

This is my story.

I am an owl. I am the baker’s daughter.

I do not cast a shadow in the dark.

This is my story.

I was found in a snail shell.

My nights leave gleaming whispered trails.

This is my story.

I was born among the stones.

My words are strata heavy on themselves.

This is my story.

I saw something in a bleached sheep’s skull

lying in its scatter of bones.

This is my story.

Each hour I wash my mouth with ink,

drink to that furious and empty head.

Sally Douglas

This poem came from Day 2's prompt on the National Poetry Writing Month's website. The prompt was to write a poem that told a lie. I started by writing myself a list of lies and playing around with them, but got nowhere. Then in the middle of the night, the phrase 'this is my story' came to me. Without turning on the light I fumbled for my notebook, and hoping desperately that I was starting on a blank page, I wrote two pages of notes that this morning became this poem. And which of course turned out to not be a lie at all.

Photo: Sally Douglas