Last year at the Perth Writers Festival family Day I got a free magnet board and enough letter magnets to spell my name. This year got a sheet of magnet words. Today I finally opened both – and wrote a poem.
birthing a poem
Poems can be like snapshots capturing a single image, or a series of movie frames telling a story. What makes them different from prose is the language, the room left for the reader to bring their own experience.
Poems can strike any time, or that’s how it is with me. Like a flash, an image or phrase shines brighter than those around it. I scrabble to capture the thought, knowing that the technical details and the perfect spelling etc can wait.
‘Iceberg’ is a poem with its genesis in a school project. My son was researching food chains in the Antarctic for a school assignment. The resource books he used also talked about icebergs, using familiar descriptors in ways new to me. I began listing words and phrases, like ‘calving’ which describes the moment an iceberg is born, ‘grandfather blue’ and ‘cheeky growler’. As my son documented food chain hierarchy, I developed this poem about the life cycle of an iceberg.
Iceberg
In a blue Antarctic dawn
an iceberg calves –
shears from a glacier
and is released to the sea
sharp and angular
it hoards ancient weather
layers of ice clothing
a coat for each year volcanoes blew
and black ash fell like snow
deeply it sits
silent peaceful
innocent whale
deadly danger
storms blow
tides swell
nights fall and fade
age blunts the underwater blades
wind softens the face
the iceberg travels on
past old grandfather blues
and cheeky growlers
to finally fall and sleep
on a drift of fragile ice flowers
If you enjoyed seeing sample pages from Frogs: Awesome Amphibians (see my post below), then good news. You can also see sample pages from my other new Ready Ed title, Assembly: Poems to Perform, including a couple of the poems I wrote for the book and teachers’ notes and the introduction.
Enjoy.
Another busy day today – I did over 14 000 steps, mostly while sweeping and mopping my floors!
So I have clean floors, but still managed some work (household chores don’t count as work – they are just a tedious necessity). I added nine new book reviews to Aussiereviews, including three by other reviewers. I also helped Pemberthy to compose a new poem – his first for quite some time – in response to a writing prompt at Elizabeth Bezant’s blog. And I spent a little time with Roberto, who keeps whispering his story to me. Actually, Roberto doesn’t whisper – he is not a quiet character. I am having fun getting to know him.
Am still reading The Melting Pot, though I’m hoping to finish it before bedtime, which isn’t too far away. Goodnight.
Haiku are poems
But haiku should never rhyme
Haiku make you think
