Beware poetry by Sandra Horn
The thing is, I did a daft thing a few weeks ago.
It seemed like a good idea at the time, as these things often do. I had a great splurge on tidying up, editing and then sending out a bunch of stuff: poems, picture book texts and opening chapters of novels.
I felt good for about half a day, then less good, then ghastly as the first rejections came in. You know the drill: It Is All Over. I Am Finished. Perhaps I Was Only Ever a One-trick Pony.
However, rejections were only the start of it. Then came the silence. The waiting. Waiting for deadlines, for the requisite number of weeks/months to go by until 'if you haven't heard from us by...you can assume you won't, ever'.
That's when the Slough of Despond sucks me in, and in order not to sink into the murk entirely, I read more poetry. I read it in bed before I get up. That's the mistake. It fills my head up with whirling words. I can't even have a shower or a pee without the *benison of hot water, tant pis (I can't help it, I tell you!).
* I don't know where this came from; it's not mine. And anyway, it's archaic.
This morning, it started with Emily Dickinson: I started early, took my dog. Who would have guessed that's where Kate Atkinson got her title from? It's a very odd little poem anyway but it got the word-whirling started. Toast-bread-flour-grain. Rain. Is marmalade a metaphor? What for? Does anything rhyme with orange? Florence, if you're drunk enough. Can a porcelain bowl be 'tense as a new-laid egg'? That is mine, but I have no confidence in it. What rhymes with avocado? Bardot (as in Brigitte); sardo (as in pecorino); hard, oh! (as in unripe).
Noctilucent. Bioluminescent. Apogee. Azimuth.
There's an Alice Oswald-invoking spider in the hall. The garden spawns Eilean ni Chiulleanain-invoking midges. Dandelion clocks - oh, Norman Nicholson! And I haven't even had my coffee yet. It's bound to start producing similes. Dark as. Hot as.
The poetry has robbed me of the wee bit sense I had (shamelessly borrowed and adapted)
Perhaps I should have had a cold shower...
the dinosaur gave them each a colourful balloon
It seemed like a good idea at the time, as these things often do. I had a great splurge on tidying up, editing and then sending out a bunch of stuff: poems, picture book texts and opening chapters of novels.
I felt good for about half a day, then less good, then ghastly as the first rejections came in. You know the drill: It Is All Over. I Am Finished. Perhaps I Was Only Ever a One-trick Pony.
However, rejections were only the start of it. Then came the silence. The waiting. Waiting for deadlines, for the requisite number of weeks/months to go by until 'if you haven't heard from us by...you can assume you won't, ever'.
That's when the Slough of Despond sucks me in, and in order not to sink into the murk entirely, I read more poetry. I read it in bed before I get up. That's the mistake. It fills my head up with whirling words. I can't even have a shower or a pee without the *benison of hot water, tant pis (I can't help it, I tell you!).
* I don't know where this came from; it's not mine. And anyway, it's archaic.
This morning, it started with Emily Dickinson: I started early, took my dog. Who would have guessed that's where Kate Atkinson got her title from? It's a very odd little poem anyway but it got the word-whirling started. Toast-bread-flour-grain. Rain. Is marmalade a metaphor? What for? Does anything rhyme with orange? Florence, if you're drunk enough. Can a porcelain bowl be 'tense as a new-laid egg'? That is mine, but I have no confidence in it. What rhymes with avocado? Bardot (as in Brigitte); sardo (as in pecorino); hard, oh! (as in unripe).
Noctilucent. Bioluminescent. Apogee. Azimuth.
There's an Alice Oswald-invoking spider in the hall. The garden spawns Eilean ni Chiulleanain-invoking midges. Dandelion clocks - oh, Norman Nicholson! And I haven't even had my coffee yet. It's bound to start producing similes. Dark as. Hot as.
The poetry has robbed me of the wee bit sense I had (shamelessly borrowed and adapted)
Perhaps I should have had a cold shower...
Comments
Okay. Back to my room and thoughts of Byron as the world's first rapper. (Intellectual/hen-pecked you all)