I have been crazy busy. I mean really, really busy. All self inflicted I’m afraid.
Part of what I’ve been doing the last few months has been helping out with the organisation of the Poetry on the Move Festival in Canberra. I volunteered over the weekend as well and did a couple of workshops.
As a prose writer, I have only ever dabbled in poetry. I’m often moved to write it. My ideas and words usually come when I’m driving the car so I can’t capture them. That’s probably my best poetry–the stuff that’s lost to the air as I speak it.
I have written poetry and shared it with my partner, Matthew. He then asks me if I’m feeling okay and was I depressed and so on. I don’t label myself as a poet.
I thought I’d share with you some of what came out of the workshops I did.
The first workshop was with one of the international guests, Moira Egan. She did a workshop on scents. It was really interesting and fun and made me think. First up I should own that I like writing exercises where you respond to some random thing. I may not create something out of it, but some times I do. Moira does synathesia-where you respond to say smells by thinking of a colour, or a pattern and so on. We smelled perfumes and then wrote a colour, a shape, a memory. It was a bit intimidating being in workshops with people who can craft a beautiful, exact poem on the spot. I’m not one of thse.
I did not respond well to my perfume. This is what I wrote.
Collision
The fussy old lady with pink rinse hair
moulded into waves so stiff
they defy the wind.
Rigid handbag thrust in front
like a weapon
–a blunt instrument.
A stench redolent of a 1960s public toilet
with the tough crackle of paper endured
and a hint of urine peeking through.
Breath like atomised musk stick lollies
hovers and then attacks
as faces meet.
The standover tactics
of a hundred room deodorisers,
falls back into baby powder
and disposable nappies
A pink so washed out
its not really there
Just the after sting
of a collision.
Then I took a workshop with another international guest, Oz Hardwick. HIs approach was to give us a prompt, a mirror, and then while we wrote about the mirror he would introduce words and we had to include them. This resulted in our poems going in different directions. This is what I wrote but I’ve edited it a bit. Recall that I’m a speculative fiction writer so you might notice that. It’s quite long, too, as it was a stream of consciousness thing. I was amazed at some of the crafted poems in that session compared to me and my verbal vomit.
Mirrored
A Fractured mirror
a thousand eyes staring
more eyebrows querying
inspecting the hole
with probing gaze
travelling along the rivers of lines to the centre
What punctured this plane?
What thrust through from here to there?
A projectile? A bullet?
A broom handle too casually dropped?
Finger tracking lines leaves a droplet of red
A DNA sample, a piece of me, a trace, traceable
My head exploded, disfigured by shards
I want to see the other side
I see the other me
the other mes
This reality, jagged pieces
is more interesting than this flat world
cold, frigid, shallow
I can see depths there in irises multiplied
and pupils dilated teach
with hints of something else
Soldiers march, guns discharge in utter silence
Mouths of children open in empty screams
No one is listening
We can’t hear
lost in the fractured mirror,
multiplied, amplified, stupefied
One asks if reality is real or imagined
in voices pitched higher
so high one cannot hear
only dogs with pricked up ears
tails down and trembling
A wimper escapes
It’s me, tight lips, body tense.
I’m so far in now
I’m seeing from the other side
In the war of self
reaching for the real and finding dust
Dust and bone
everywhere I step
They crunch and splinter like glass underfoot
People lived in this space
office worker, teacher, student
I see the echo of them at empty desks
taste the sweat of them on my tongue
inhale them as breath
exhale them as death
becoming one with them
as thoughts slow and harden
An image caught
like an animal frozen in headlights
my light
my reflected light
life.
I had a good time, learnt some stuff, listened to poetry readings. I’m not giving up my day job. I think writers should get stimulated with experiences and ideas and form. I’m not giving up my day job for poetry but I like how it can capture a moment, a feeling, a river of thought.
When my mother lay dying some words came to me at 2.00am. They were weird. I’m going to find them and put them here. They ended up being the inspiration for Cold Soldier, my SF romance story and a fragment of this poem is featured in the story.
Cold Soldiers
Bring out the soldiers who lie within their frozen crypts
Do not wake them or disturb them
Their time is done
They gave us this peace,
This life and we are thankful
Let not their sleeping tranquil faces beguile you
They are bringers of death, purveyors of harm
It is time to let them go
Let them burn
Their flesh no more to rise
Let us grasp a future where
they no longer exist
Where we a free.
Donna Maree Hanson, Author, Phd in Creative Writing 