Fun, games and collaborative writing by Sandra Horn

‘Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.’

This quote was recently posted on Facebook and attributed to Albert Einstein, but such attributions tend to be random. I don’t know where it comes from, but I like it – especially now I’m so old in years I can hardly believe it. It chimes with a poem I’ve known for years but now can’t find, which, after a catalogue of sorrowful things, contains the lines ‘still let me live as love and life were one. Still let me turn on Earth a childlike gaze and trust the whispered charities that bring tidings of human comfort. Still let me raise on wintry wrecks an altar to the spring.’ I’m not even sure I’ve got it right, but I think the sentiment is clear, and like the Einstein(?) quote, it invites us to seek joy and trust and wonder. If that’s childlike, I’ll take it. It is much needed in these times.

Being childlike rather than childish informed much of my writing for children and if I let myself think about it, it makes me sad that I’m not so much in that world these days, although I have produced and published poems for children lately, short runs just for friends and family. A lot of fun. . Here’s one:

Yak

If you’re nice to a yak

You can ride on her back

And she’ll give you some yak butter

In a pot.

The ride will be nice,

But take my advice,

Don’t try to eat the butter –

It will make you cough and splutter.

Just say, ‘No thanks, I’d really

rather not.’

 

Delightful illustration by Nick Roberts

In a previous blog I mentioned being part of the inestimable Jo Bell’s poetic licence group and how we had been invited to create poems as games. It was an invitation to play about, be inventive. It was not only fun, it loosened up the creative cogs. There are so many ways to play games with poetry – here’s another one: The Golden Shovel. You take a line from a poem you admire and use each word in it as the end of a line in a new poem. I took a line from Western Landscape by Louis Macneice, which I love: (From) the broken bog with its veins of amber water. However, it was hard not to be clunky if the rule was adhered to precisely, so I just subverted the idea and used the words in amongst mine rather than at the line ends. More of a tin teaspoon than a golden shovel:

Grey Heron

She stalks on legs which seem to be

Half-broken at the knees.

Wary, she skirts the bog,

lifting a long skeletal foot

With finicky care,

spreading its taloned toes

where blue veins pulse,

mere vestiges of bone uphold,

poised, stilled, over amber pools

of quiet water.

 I’ll maybe have another try at a proper one when I’m feeling cleverer, but what are rules if they can't be broken in the name of creativity? Speaking of which, the latest offshoot from the poetic licence has come from poet, stained-glass maker, fabric painter and all-round amazing creator, Bean Sawyer. Her idea was to make a murmuration of words using the Japanese renga form to create a collaborative poem – or, rather, several poems.

The renga begins with a haiku (5-7-5 syllables) which is then given to another poet to continue it with a tanka (7-7 syllables), then another poet adds another haiku, etc.  Decades ago, I had tried writing stories like this, with a group contributing successive paragraphs, but it was never very satisfactory. This time, it was made somewhat more of a challenge because an initial poet had created a circular image of little blue fish, as if round the edge of a plate, so we had to continue writing in ever-decreasing circles – and, of course, by hand, which is beginning to be a novelty nowadays. Several groups of poets were involved, posting on to each other. The results are quite magical and the ever-inventive Bean has now made beautiful maps onto which we will embroider the paths the elements of the poems took. The hope is for an exhibition next year, in Aberystwyth. Watch this space! I’d love to share the one I was involved in, but of course it isn’t my work, it’s our work. That’s a delightfully new idea with some interesting implications for copyright. Hmm.

 The latest missive from Bean contains words like epistolary and ink. I can’t wait for the game to begin!

Meantime, here’s a renga challenge for autumn:

Grass crisp underfoot

Woodsmoke drifting, stubbled fields

Waning summer moon

Anyone fancy adding a tanka and passing it on for the next haiku, etc. ? I wait with bated breath.