Glimpsesofcolour

Something strange is happening to me. Having spent my entire life having unrequited crushes on one man or another, for the last few years (not sure how long) I have suddenly discovered I’m not in love with anyone. I think this is probably good (and I’m sure my husband appreciates it). But I also haven’t written a single completed poem in that time. Could the two be connected? Do I have to carry a hopeless torch for someone in order to write poetry? (Or is the dearth of poetry from me a gift to the world?)

Actually, I haven’t really written any poetry since I won first prize in the Barnet Open poetry comp four years ago. This could also be connected – now I’ve won a first, I’ve stopped trying. Or it could be that the prose and poetry workshop I went to for a while has completely killed my poetic inspiration (it certainly didn’t help it).

To return to the torch-carrying subject, it does sometimes feel as though I am having an unrequited relationship with God. But not always.

I have been alarmed and amused to see the following on Freecycle:

‘I am in desperate need of a outside rabbit hutch, I believed I brought
two female rabbits but one is actually a boy. So I really need to split them up a quickly as possible.’

Indeed she does. Otherwise they will be breeding like… well, like rabbits.

On a completely different tack (or not?) I have just drafted my first promising poem in three and a half years (in fact since I won the Barnet Open Poetry Competition, which seems to have completely destroyed my poetic ability for an extended period). I’m quite excited by this, as I have never had such a long poem-less period before. I was beginning to think I needed to fall in unrequited love again to inspire poetry. Which sort of brings us back to the rabbits…

There is a poem by.. well, I’m not sure whom but it might be Edwin Morgan or some other practitioner of concrete or avant garde poetry – which simply repeats several times the line ‘I have nothing to say and I am saying it and this is poetry’ (and I have probably violated copyright even by writing that, though I only put it once). Actually it might repeat the line with a different word order each time, I don’t wholly remember.

Anyway, ‘I have nothing to say and I am saying it and this is my blog entry for today’.

I seem to have been living it up the past few days. With absolutely no energy to do so. But what must be done must be done…

On Friday met a fellow poet and she and I went to hear that wonderful man Les Murray do a reading – the John Coffin memorial reading to be precise. Apparently no one knows anything much about John Coffin, but his son the euphoniously named Arthur Coffin (for burying ‘alf a corpse?) endowed a poetry reading and a seminar on Christian ethics in his memory. Actually this reading could have served for both, for there was something profoundly Christian about Les Murray’s observant, loving eye for his country, its people and their idiosyncrasies. One of his best known poems is called The Quality of Sprawl, and he has that quality in abundance: a sort of generosity of gaze. I bought a book and got it signed; thinking of reading a poem a day as part of a spiritual discipline. It might make me more open to God’s gobsmacking world.

There was free wine and nibbles after; I had intended to drink half a glass, bearing in mind my many medications, but by the time I’d had half, I didn’t care any more and so drank the rest. After a meal with friend (who was as knackered as I was) and the Tube back to where my car was, I still felt distinctly squiggly. Made it worse by attempting to use my screen wash, which was empty, and so had to drive home v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y peering through a screen totally smeared with sticky stuff from the trees the car had been parked under. Oh well, my car knows those roads as well as an old horse..

Last night was fiesta time again, as we went to a farewell party for the lovely Canadian couple who have been in our church for a year. Even more shattered than I had been on Friday, I restrained myself to a quarter of glass of Gewurztraminer (because I’d brought it and wanted to know if it was good) and one pina colada, which was delicious. Oh, and two sips of Polish pear liqueur (or was it polish?). After all that restraint on my part, The Grouch drove us home in any case! Games had been threatened at the party but I was very glad they didn’t materialise, at least not by the time we left. I really wasn’t up to games.

Today son has little friend round, so I’ve been able to drag myself out of bed and swap wardrobes for the winter (summer clothes to the spare room, winter ones to the bedroom). I have far, far too many clothes, so why do I never have anything to wear? Still, a reassuring proportion of them are fairtrade or charity shop. My glitzy top that I got for a tenner in a sale was much admired last night. That makes all the effort worth while.