Literary challenges, by Elizabeth Kay
Fifteen years ago, on the 20th December, Vera Rich died. Among her many other incarnations she was the founder of Manifold, "the magazine of new poetry" which was started in 1962 and appeared regularly until 1969, when it was suspended owing to her taking a job as Soviet and East European Correspondent for the scientific weekly Nature. It was only in 1998 that it proved possible to relaunch Manifold. It published original poetry and had two quarterly competitions, one written in a particular form, and the other on a particular topic. Many poets loved these challenges, as being given a specific task narrows the mind wonderfully. I’m going to reproduce a few of the ones I had published here, and also some more recent poems which, although unpublished, have received honourable mentions in other magazines – also in response to a particular requirement. What I want to do is to show how an exercise can really stimulate the imagination, which is often preferable to sitting in front of a blank screen and thinking, what shall I write?
To compose something about a loved one’s habit you choose
to ignore
Plus the sound of an airbed deflating
Or the distant growl of the M25
Then the huffing of two hedgehogs mating.
A grunt that trails off to a whistle is next,
Then a silence, a false dawn of hope –
But it never lasts long, and the snuffles resume,
The top of that slippery slope.
But I still love my spouse, despite bedtime woes,
So I’m sorry I said nights were boring
Nothing to do with technique in the sack
Just another crescendo of snoring.
The Grandmother’s
Tale, in the form of a quartina, Manifold Magazine, spring 2000
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You feel as though
you’re being sliced in half;
You start to lose
all sense of touch and self,
‘Cos bits of you go
numb and cold and stiff.
I
tell you, I was really frightened stiff
When you turned out
to be a hungry wolf.
“Don’t force the
latch, just twist and lift it half
Way up…” I damn
well let him in myself.
He was, no doubt,
delighted with himself.
His voice, in retrospect, a little stiff -
I felt a fool; me, hoodwinked by a wolf!
You didn’t show up for an hour and a half.
Was I relieved to
hear you? Oh, not half!
So glad you didn’t
come just by yourself.
To kill him and not me was pretty stiff -
But your dad
triumphed; axed that crafty wolf.
I wriggled free; the
wolf was chopped in half;
I do myself prefer
him as a stiff.
An ode to autumn
It’s getting colder, and the local fox
Has left his calling card upon the grass;
He does a bottom-slide to wipe his arse.
(A vixen likes a
dog that shows his class.)
Will thrushes have a slug-fest? No they won’t.
Do hedgehogs like to eat them? No they don’t.
Our rotting windfalls are now wreathed in mist
Their fermentation adds that boozy twist
The squirrel buries conkers in the lawn,
He’s always at it from the crack of dawn.
Next year will see his forest flourishing –
The forecast is extremely promising!
From rainy autumn straight to rainy spring.
The Gates of Hell, a poem connected to human rights – Manifold Magazine, Spring 1999
“I want you to design the gates of hell,”
He said to me. “A devilish task, I know,
So jazz them up with
flames or asphodel...
And make them strong
- they won’t be just for show.”
His brief was
brief: “Two gates, each ten foot high
And ten foot
wide. The style is up to you;
But something
striking, and I’ll tell you why -
A million souls will
soon be passing through.”
I sketched my plans
in blood, I drew on skin;
No hint of genocide,
or tyranny -
A work of art; black
humour beaten in.
I forged some
curlicues, wrought irony;
A final twist for
those about to die,
A last salute. I wrote:
Arbeit macht frei.
The interior décor of yesteryear
In brilliant orange or a midnight blue
Our kitchen units hailed from MFI,
They fell apart before too long, it’s true,
The damage proved too hard to rectify.
So chipboard and formica had their day,
And woodchip paper, and magnolia paint
And polystyrene tiles had a way
Of falling off the ceiling – no restraint
If cheeseplants hit them when they grew too tall.
With kilim rugs and sheepskins on the floor
And Laura Ashley paper on the wall,
We spent the weekends stripping the front door.
My Kenwood mixer still works very well,
As do the bathroom tiles that won’t come off,
The plastic chandeliers still cast their spell
The seventies are with us yet; don’t scoff.
Cynara scolymus –
a poem about the Globe theatre, Manifold Magazine, Year’s End, 1999
The layers of the onion pale beside the artichoke;
Lack of appreciation
styles you a lachanophobe.
To reach the heart
of anything you need to peel and poke -
No small
consideration when you open up the globe.
Related to the
thistle, it’s a flower-head (but tough)
Its outer petals
case the rest, and hide it like a cloak.
You strip them off -
at first it seems you’ll never strip enough -
The layers of the onion pale beside the artichoke.
It’s worth the
effort, even if your fingers scald or burn;
You need all your
dexterity, the patience of a Job.
But once you reach
the middle - taste the subtlety - you’ll learn!
Lack of appreciation
styles you a lachanophobe.
The game’s afoot,
the play’s the thing, this treasure’s meant for all;
By saying that I
think I’ve sent my subtext up in smoke...
But those who study
worlds in worlds will presently recall
To reach the heart
of anything you need to peel and poke.
Elizabethans
eschewed greens, so artichokes were out -
Lachanophobic - but
you couldn’t find a logophobe.
Wit, metaphor and
repartee was what life was about,
No small
consideration when you open up The Globe.
A new construction o’er our motorway!
From Leatherhead to Wisley, oh, sublime,
The coming and the going made divine.
We set off blithely through torrential rain
But found ourselves at Ripley once again…
What fun familiar roundabouts can be
With no new signposts – back on the A3!
Invoking Hermes, off once more we went,
Our hopes still high, and lo! A gradient!
We’d found the bridge, a glory to behold
The sun came out, and lit the struts with gold,
A curving road so elegant, aglow,
The mighty lorries thund’ring by, below
Such grandeur fairly took our breath away –
Though Google maps can’t find it, sad to say.
Having been to Wisley on the 6th December (see below, at the Christmas Glow), I can
now confidently state that Google maps does know where it is, unlike the
first time we visited.
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