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January 31st, 2009I’ve written a poem. Thought you should be first to know. It’s there, on the page. Like a fish caught for the table needs prepared and cooked, it needs editing and polished. But it is there, a whole thing which can now be worked on. It’s not the poem I was trying to make, which was a poor thing anyway, but quite different. It might even be the poem I was trying not to write, but there it is.
So how did this happen? Since my last post, I worked on an idea, and despaired of it. Yesterday, the deadline arrived. With great shame, I confessed my failure to meet it. The contract could have been cancelled. Instead, with generosity and kindness, I was offered extra time. Truthfully, I can’t say I believed a worthwhile poem would come. I agree with Wendy Cope. Yesterday, contemplating the post of Poet Laureate, she explained poems worth having don’t come when asked. But I hoped I could, from long practise with language, at least hammer out something passable.
Last night, with the pressure off, I couldn’t look at the piece I worked on. Instead, I slept. This morning, the son who lives with me, and has severe health problems, was having a bad day. Eventually, with help, effort and courage, he got off out to where he was expected. I put the need to write out of my head, arranged transport to my grandson’s fourth birthday party tomorrow, read the news, and walked round to the village shop to post a card to my son in London. It was cold, a bright day. On the way, the first line of a poem popped into my head. The fish had taken the hook.
I walked back, sat down and wrote, easing out the words, listening for the sound of it, not thinking much about meaning or sense, just to get it.
Who knows if it’s any good, that’s for readers to decide. It’s a poem. If it speaks to no one then it doesn’t work. If it speaks to someone, it does. Good poems speak to many people, the best to almost everyone.
Possibly, just possibly, I’m not done yet. My original idea, of something humorous and downbeat as a contrast to Scots Wha Hae, might rapidly manifest as a second [third?] catch. If it does, fine. If not, equally fine. I have a poem.