Poets' Blog

That was a long gap, but here I am again, having submitted my poem with a glossary and comment to accompany it. After the furious writing and rewriting which followed that Sat when the baited line quivered, and the fish was hooked, I did what I always do with a new poem – let it sit, ignored, until it called me back.

Very often, in the interim, a poem changes from wonderful into dross. Never have I known one to change the other way. At the very least, on reading after a time-lapse, rough bits are revealed – where the rhythm doesn’t quite come off, or words don’t actually say what I thought they meant. Waiting means doing other things. An urgent request came in to shorten the running time for The Lasses, O – my story and song play which reveals the life of Robert Burns through stories of five women who knew him.

With rehearsals imminent, cutting the script was challenging. I woke, worked, ate, worked, slept, worked – till it was done. Then I looked at the poem again – something wasn’t right. The rhythm staggered in one stanza but what else, grammar, punctuation, meaning? A couple of trusted friends read it. Their comments were useful, but didn’t address my disquiet. I decided to send it in. That can be a spur to completing a poem, caused by embarrassment when the flaw suddenly reveals itself as soon as the email departs.

No revelation happened. I turned my attention to the copy-edit for my new novel which is due out at the beginning of July. It’s a painstaking word choice, grammar and punctuation check. By now, I’m tired to my bones, wanting language to stop running around in my brain, to do some gardening. I would happily have dusted or hoovered. But there was no time, everything was late.

Copy-edit delivered, and without a pause, more problems arise at the play rehearsals – mainly the loss of the director for health reasons. By last Wed, I flopped, slept for twelve hours, woke and began writing the comment for the poem. The editor had already been enormously patient and kind, and I had promised final delivery for Fri.

While writing the comment, I re-read the poem and saw immediately what bothered me, two words standing side-by-side to form a cliche, and how it should be fixed. Next day, Fri as promised, I reworked the comment, tidying it up, did the glossary, and re-read the poem several times. Full-stop or comma? Hmm. I left the full-stop. Maybe at proof stage, it might want to be a comma. We’ll see. I sent it in.

Sat, with second son supervising my two grandsons at friends parties, and actor son in London rehearsing a play, the remaining four congregate for lunch to celebrate the youngest’s birthday, which is actually on Wed. We meet his lovely girlfriend for the first time, and I catch up with pregnant daughter-in-law who’ll soon produce my third grandchild. At family gatherings, I’m always outnumbered by blokes, my own fault, and love it when any of their women can join us.

The restaurant is a favourite, local, and employs two of my nephews, niece-in-law and great-niece, all of whom came to chat during breaks. Last night, I filed emails. Today, in gorgeous sunshine, I cleared dead winter debris from the raised flower beds which front my house. I fed the goldfish, who jumped around in the pond as if spring had sprung, looking none the worse for winter.

And, now, having drafted a proposal for the next novel, here I am. Is the poem any good? I hope so, at least to some who will read it. Is it actually finished? Same goes. I can’t, of course, reproduce it here. But maybe I can tell you this much, it’s about the credit crunch. Yip, you’re thinking just the same as me. What?

In Scots Wha Hae, the Burns poem I chose, the Battle of Bannockburn is the immediate threat. It’s an episode in the struggle to survive as an independent nation. Currently, our immediate problem is the collapse of credit, and the need is for economic survival. It was exactly the subject I intended to avoid writing about.