Don’t go in
they said.
There are stingers
they said
and bull sharks
and, occasionally,
a lost crocodile.
Don’t go in,
they repeated
or you will die.
But, feeling rebellious,
I slipped off my shoes
crossed the gritty sand
and poked my brave brave toes
into the warm water.
Then, emboldened,
I crossed the road
and swam
in the hotel pool.
(Sally Murphy, 2014)
Run rabbit, run.
It’s dinner time
and fox wants you
for his.
(Sally Murphy, 2014)
It’s been a long while since I tried my hand at a fifteen word or less poem, a weekly challenge from children’s poet and author Laurie Purdie Salas. You can see this week’s photo prompt here, and in the comments section see the wonderfully varied responses.
Earlier this week I posted a zeno about my sore back. (If you don’t know what a zeno is, read this post over at Today’s Little Ditty, but the chief characteristics are the syllable count (8,4,2,1,4,2,1,4,2,1 and the way the one syllable lines must all rhyme).
I said at the time that once I’d written one I would probably write more, and I was right. Here’s another.
We have a new pup, Theodore.
He’s a little
Murphpup, who is NOT the dog in the poem.
ball of
fluff.
We all love his
tiny
wuff
but not the way
he chews
stuff.
(Sally Murphy, 2014)
When was the last time you tried your hand at writing a poem? Why not try a zeno, for Michelle’s challenge, or just for yourself?
Still thinking about poems that have really resonated with me and made me come alive.
This is another one where I can remember the first time I heard it.
I was quite young – perhaps five or six – and at the end of year concert for our school, held in the Miner’s Institute in Collie. As with every concert, there were probably songs and dances and skits, but I don’t remember those. I don’t even remember what my own class did. But when my older sister’s class took the stage, I was entranced.
There they were, all those big girls (they were four years older than me!), on a darkened stage, each clutching a torch which, when they turned them on, illuminated their faces – because they were aimed upwards. Oooooh, clever. And then they recited their poem:
Hist!….Hark
The night is very dark,
And we’ve to go a mile or so
Across the Possum Park.
Ooooh. Spooky. The poem proceeded, and I was hooked. This was a poem that had everything. Suspense, humour, word play, and some lovely rhyme and rhythm. As a five year old I didn’t analyse all of that, and of course didn’t remember much more of it except for the opening Hist!….Hark, but I loved it, completely. I even hoped – prayed – that one day I could stand up on that stage like those big girls and recite a poem like that one – actually, I wanted to do THAT ONE.
I loved (and still do) many more C. J. Dennis poems, and even got to memorise another which I loved almo
st as much, The Ant Explorer, but it was Hist! that continued to give that special thrill of a perfect poem every time I saw it or heard it. And when it was produced as a picture book, with amazing illustrations by Peter Gouldthorpe, I had to have it.
You can read the whole poem here.
What poems make you tingle?
I’m sitting in my chair, with a heat pack on my shoulder, ruing the fact that something as simple as send my back into a spasm. But all is not lost! See, not only did I already have a physio appointment for today, meaning the shoulder will get worked on nice and quickly, but the yawn injury also, magically, gave me an idea for a poem.
Ever since I read an interview with J. Patrick Lewis on a blog called Today’s Little Ditty, I’ve been wanting to try my hand at writing a Zeno, a deceptively simple poetic from, the rules of which are also explained in that post.
So, while my heat pack warmed, I picked up my notebook, and when I sat down with the pack on my back, waiting for it to work, I decided it was time to draft that poem. What came out what this:
I put my back out when I yawned
Now I’m feeling
Really
Sore.
I wish I knew
Some way
For
Never yawning
Any
More.
Okay, it’s not the world’s best poem (or, more specifically, Zeno), but it’s a start. And my back is feeling better already. And I suspect that now that I’ve written one. I’ll be writing more.
Have a great day.
A couple of days ago, inspired by this article by Andrew M. Brown I blogged in part about poems which I remember loving – which made me tingle. So I thought I might share a little more about some of those poems, in the hopes they might speak to you, too.
The first of these poems, then, is This is Just to Say, by William Carlos Williams. You can read it here.
This poem was read in my year 8 English class with Mrs Brickwood. I can even picture where I was sitting in the classroom when we read the poem, and can certainly feel the amazement of discovering that a poem could be so simple, without rhyme, without artifice, and yet so very complete. I loved it. I also loved that one of the things we then did was to try to replicate the form by writing our own ‘This is Just to Say’ poems. I think it was my first experience of writing free verse poetry, a love affair which will never end.
Years later, when I worked on my first verse novel, my character Pearl also loved free verse novel, and in a nod to Williams, I had her mention ‘a poem about a plum’. When the book was published, no one asked me if that was a real poem, or mentioned that they’d made the connection – until the book was made into a play by Jigsaw Theatre in Canberra. When I went to see the play, a highlight for me was seeing the poem revealed as a very clever part of the set.
Long after this first of his poems, it occurred to me to read more of Williams’ work, and I loved it, but This is Just to Say will always be my personal favourite, for the way it opened up the world of poetry to me.