What kind of writer? by Sandra Horn

Here we are into a new calendar year, which I hope will bring you health and joy and creativity. The days are getting longer. The equinox has come and gone; here’s how it was and always is:

a fulcrum

a point of rest, a hair’s breadth,

a held breath

Earth turns towards light

and life, by moments

 

 

When I shared this with the writing group, the response was that it would only make sense to someone who had studied physics. I wonder – does it work anyway, whether or not a reader knows about levers? When I first read Four Quartets all those years ago, I was both enchanted and daunted by it. Enchanted because it moved me, spoke to me somehow, and daunted because I knew I wasn’t clever enough or educated enough to understand the allusions. I have gone on to read many other poems I didn’t fully understand but was captivated by – notably some by Eiléann nί Chuilleanáin and Alice Oswald, but now I can just bask in the pleasure the words give me. It’s like music – I have never studied music theory but it doesn’t stop me being transported by listening to works I love. Just going with it, letting it flow over me.

I write like that too; playing with an idea and seeing where it takes me. From time to time, I feel bad because I’ve never studied writing properly and perhaps I should. I look up courses in creative writing, but I can’t get past the language and I can’t believe in what seem like imperatives – POV? Wot dat? Then there’s ‘helpful ideas’ - tell me to set aside time to write each day, keep a writing diary, create a word cloud, etc. and it just presses my panic button:

 

ON BEING INSTRUCTED TO WRITE A WORD CLOUD

Like a real cloud, it contains water

Sswwsh of pressure-hose blasting lily-beetle grubs

Glunk-glunk of gush from butt to watering-can.

It’s no plump cumulus bulging with rain,

More a wispy cirro-stratus full of holes,

Drifting sensations -

stinging arthritic thumbs

caustic sap of spurges

muggy heat.

Some parts cohere by repetition,

gain weight, like raindrops waiting to fall -

the ear-worm of song words, Freedom, Oh free-eedom

Freedom is coming, oh yes, I, Freedom, oh free-dom -

and one from a Montalbano script:

Minchia! He muttered at a burned-out car.

I hope it’s an evil Italian curse, or better still, Sicilian.

I looked it up. It means shit. Good.

 

Re-reading all this, it smacks of a severe want of discipline. No wonder I didn’t exactly hit the big time as a writer… However, poetry is a different story. I do work at it. I take courses and take them seriously. It seems important to get to grips with forms and structures, take notes, listen to advice and get feedback from Those Who Know. I want to progress.  I want whatever ‘being good at it’ means, even though I don’t know what that is. To this end, my latest effort is to sign up for the inestimable Jo Bell’s Poetic Licence course. Her book 52 Poems gave me a great boost and ultimately resulted in a first collection: Passing Places.

 

 

 

Then there was the doldrums of covid, but I began again and had good helpful feedback from the equally inestimable Helena (Nell) Nelson on the first 40 or so. I hope that Poetic Licence will stimulate more. The taster for it was a lesson from a previous course. The topic was FIRE. Here are my two first attempts, 3^rd-or-so drafts of each:

 

SUSSEX CARNIVAL

When longer nights set in

We fight the dark with fire,

Face fear with swagger

Put on fancy clothes,

Parade with flaming torches.

When we’re near to Chapel Green –

the bonfire taller than a house,

broken pallets, prunings, clapped-out chairs -

runners break away

vying to be first

to throw or thrust their torch,

cheering, ‘Yea! Up she goes,’

cleaving the sky with spark and flame,

defying the mirk with hiss and crackle,

‘Dark times may be upon us

but we have the means of light.’

We are the folk of Sussex

And we wunt be druv.

 

WHEN THE CHIMNEY CAUGHT FIRE

In the house there was a roaring noise,

the air was thick and heavy

 with a smell I couldn’t breathe.

We were sent next door.

It was a house of shouts,

things being thrown and smashed,

but quiet just then so we were allowed.

On their television a woman

with cleopatra eyes and a golden dress

was singing while we waited.

Later, we could go home,

not forgetting to say thank you.

The air indoors was sour and wet

but the chimney fire was out.

 

As with Passing Places, we’ll publish it ourselves and just have enough printed for anyone who’d like a copy. In the past, I’ve had poems in anthologies and literary magazines, but this is different. It’s a bit like knitting a scarf for a friend – look, I made this for you with love.