Hi Andy, Wahibe, everyone,
Thanks for your feedback so far, guys, and sorry Wahibe that my poem didn’t
arrive. And thanks for resending my poem, Andy. I have been taking my parents
for ice cream at Guildford during this cooler break in the weather so haven’t
been around, as you predicted!
I’m glad we’ll be reverting to group emails next week. I am finding this system
a little confusing and am not sure if I’ve received everyone’s poems or not
either.
Thanks, Maureen, for the wk 1 recap. It was really useful. I’ll use your system
to get my own contributions in order for next week if you don’t mind. In the
meantime, I will try to respond to 3 other poems tonight & a couple tomorrow if
people are fine w that.
Much care, Tru
Sent from my iPhone
On 27 Jan 2019, at 4:34 pm, Andy Jackson <andyjackson71@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Oh, curious. I have it, though I also can't find the original email.
Since I saw this email, I may as well re-send the poem myself, just in case
Tru is out and about :)
Andy Jackson
http://amongtheregulars.com/
On Sun, Jan 27, 2019, at 4:00 PM, Wahibe Moussa wrote:
Tru, I didn’t get your poem. Would you mind sending it again? And just to be
sure, could you cc wtmoussa@xxxxxxxxx please?
wxx
On 27 Jan 2019, at 2:29 pm, Andy Jackson <andyjackson71@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi all,
First, I have to say, I'm genuinely really really impressed with what
you've all come up with this week. In a sweltering heat-wave, every poem
has at least one stunning element to it, and many are hugely original. You
may decide to re-work, re-edit and polish your poem soon, but it can also
be useful to leave them for a little while, look at them when the workshop
is over. Whatever you decide, I think many, if not all, of these poems will
have ongoing lives.
Oh, and while I think of it, thanks Mary, for persisting through the
mysterious technical glitches. Unless anyone particularly minds, why don't
we revert to direct emails next week? In other words, rather than sending
everything to the poetryseason2 email list, we could just send group emails
- my first email obviously will have everyone's email address in it. As
long as we all use "reply all" and with new emails we send them to
everyone, we'll avoid any of these glitches in future. I think it's worth a
try. Let me know if you're uncomfortable with this, of course.
And, Kirsten, thanks for emailing the other day, and I hope things are
easing up. I'm very happy to give feedback to your week 2 poem whenever it
comes, whenever you like. Though, also, no need to stretch yourself beyond
the possible.
Now, to this week's poems...!
Emilie's "Cocoon" - There's a lot to really love about this poem - the
self-deprecating and intimate voice, the lines which shift from clipped to
expansive, and plenty of unusual music, too (eg "shoes rubble the floor /
clothes weep from drawers"). "Chemicals hurl my body into erratic
thermostat", "I don't woman well", "vacuum from time to time" are all
phrases that are unembarrassed at the sheer reality of being human but also
critique the weird gender expectations our society has. The title is right,
too - cocoon as place of transformation which in the poem becomes a place
of both changing and coming face-to-face with the absence of change.
There's a little bit of repetition - death arrives in stanza 3 and is then
elaborated on in stanza 4. And something about the third stanza feels
underdeveloped, as if the poem is just emerging but hasn't fully found its
feet. The musings on "other places" is interesting, but perhaps should
either be fleshed out a bit more or dropped (maybe shifting the first two
lines of the stanza might help). Just on that, as an experiment, I put all
the lines into left-justified, and it seemed to read better - I'm not sure
the shifting from left to right adds a huge amount to the poem. The other
alternative, I think, would be to have the lines strewn around the room of
the page, if you get what I mean.
Jessi's "Walking down Koornang Road" - like Wahibe, I think there's no
reason to be embarrassed at all. This poem captures the area to me (I know
the road, though I don't think you need to to read the poem), and it also
evokes a really intimate personal history of place, as if all that's being
talked about is only just below the surface. The depiction of the trees is
gorgeous and lyrical, and I also love the opening line. Mr Orlando is
vivid, too - the humming, the sign. The personal aspect of the poem is
really strong, too - the suggestion of casual violence and of stress and of
survival - the "bitten nails ... [and] trails of cells" resonate for me.
It's somewhat mysterious who is being talked about here - who is the "you"
and the "her"? They don't need to be spelled out, but there might need to
be a little more. Perhaps the poem is around six to eight lines longer. The
other aspect I'm unsure about is the refrain of "here is...". I can imagine
it working as a performed poem, but in the first stanza, on the page it
feels a little unnecessary. I wonder about changing the line-breaks to put
some of the "here"s into different places - or, alternatively, even
removing some of them. I do love how the last stanza uses the "here", and
the lines start to speed up and break; stunning; so, it's worth trying to
keep that effect (which probably requires setting up the refrain to some
degree).
Julie's "Thought place" - I really loved the conceit of this poem, the idea
of exploring the place where thinking happens by simply showing objects and
their associations. There are some really striking images here, too - "a
red rose trapped in curved glass" and the opening line are two huge
highlights for me. The couplet form works well, too - along with the double
space between them - this gives me a sense that thought happens in the
spaces between things. I'm wondering about capital letters - does it need
any at all, given there's no punctuation elsewhere in the poem? Also, a few
of the phrases are a little too general or ambiguous, for my aesthetic
anyway (they feel particularly exposed in such a sparsely laid-out piece) -
I wondered about "lazy boomerang", "tin bees", "an important green plant"
and "exquisitely rendered notebooks" - all these I think would be really
potent with a tiny bit more specificity or expansion. It's such a
powerfully suggestive and subtle poem - talking about thought without
spelling the thoughts out - that it seems to me that each image wants to
ring out quite clearly.
Mary's "The shit people leave in books" - Such a rich and original idea for
a poem, and executed with flair. I love the strange mundanity of the "shit"
that's been left behind, but I also love the tangential connections between
these objects and the short poems that follow them in response. There's
wit, estrangement, revealing and real dialogue, and some really striking
shifts of tone and language. I loved "when the Depression was greater /
than it is now", "the same pit / that snakes her head", "he used to carry
the kidneys / on a rose-petaled dish", "feel my body itch / from the
inside". There are only, for me, a few points where the poem feels to
reiterate points that are already there. For example, in the opening, do we
need "by their covers"? The "awful / offal" pun was well-done (pun
intended), but I'm not sure it will bear re-reading (though I can imagine
it as spoken word). Also, I'm wondering if the "again / and again / and
again" is necessary - "you stab me with her name" is such a stunning line
by itself. The other, broader question I have is about how the poem shifts
from third person (her) to first person (I). It seems to pivot in the 2nd
book section, where there's a "she" then a "you". I wonder if the poem
should be consistent. Or are these different people, the she and the I?
Five books is probably the right number - it felt neither too much or too
little (though at the same time, I could imagine this as an expanding
series). Above all, though, a memorable and moving poem, with some
leavening dark humour.
Maureen's "Where I Belong" - This has a really engaging and intriguing
opening stanza, so clear and open, making me wonder what will come next.
The poem stays at its desk, but the world is there, accumulated in scars
and memories - this is really satisfying - it affirms the
interconnectedness of things, and it's deeply human, and somehow very
Australian (we all feel, I think, a belonging and an alienation). As with
other poems - and this isn't surprising, given the short time you all have
to write - there are a few phrases that could be pruned back a little.
"long / journeys and owners who / have left their mark" feels quite general
and almost cliched - maybe the poem wants something more specific and
direct. The last sentence of this stanza is stunning, so perhaps it's just
"the scars of previous owners. I search...". That's just one idea, of
course. Similarly, "transport / me once more" could either be expanding -
where are you taken, what's it like? - or it may not be necessary. I'm also
ambivalent about "adds another level" - the poem gives us this other level,
so you don't quite need to say it. The composers and their depictions are
strong, and they lead in well to the climax of the poem. This ending is
satisfying and a nice closing of the circle, but I wonder if technically it
contradicts itself - not belonging here, yet belonging everywhere. Paradox
is ok in poems, of course, so keeping it is an option, but it did make me
wonder if it could be simplified somehow, so it ends with a punch.
Congratulations, Maureen, you've packed a lot into a small space here.
Rachael's "Horseshoe Bay" - There's a tremendous energy behind (and within)
this poem - it has a really engaging blend of lyrical, ecstatic connection
and philosophical-reflective distance. The rhythms of the lines, as well as
the sentiment and visuals, sweep the reader along. The opening is stunning,
though I wondered if "wordlessly, but to the bone" needed an "and" or a
comma instead of "but" - and I also was a little confused by the
shark-spotter unzipping the blue (thrilling phrase, but it held me up a
little). There's something perhaps that stands out about the tense in the
start of the second stanza ("walked"), but I loved how this stanza
traverses time so swiftly and well, and I also loved "my old new house I'll
never own". The brief pulling out of the poem, then plunging back in, in
the fourth stanza is good, too - these things can seem odd, sometimes, but
this works well, especially given the start of stanza five. "January
straining to turn sand into glass" feels slightly awkward in terms of its
music and its meaning, so I wonder if there's a way to have that flow a
little smoother somehow. Finally, I think the ending is so hard to pull
off. This is really good, but there's something about it that feels somehow
a little too deliberate. Maybe it's the "again and again", I'm not sure.
Feel free to ask me to clarify - it's such a subtle little qualm I have
here - just something to think about perhaps. A beautiful piece.
Tru's "Ink Unearthed" - I found this such a fascinating, searching, lyrical
poem, Tru. Yes, I've seen the film, and it reminds me of it, especially
that scene near the end you're referring to, but I expect readers wouldn't
necessarily need that context. The poem really captures the dislocation of
our non-indigenous (fragmentary) knowledge of constellations, implying a
haunting loss of orientation, which is reinforced with the last two
stanzas, the not-quite-home of literal home. There's a really powerful
shift from deeply lyrical phrases in the second stanza, to the really
stunning and direct depiction of the neighbours. Something about these two
aspects of the poem feel slightly under-connected, as if the poem shifts a
little too abruptly, or could break into two poems. If I had a radical
suggestion, it would be to swap stanzas three and two (there may be other
permutations that you might like better) - this way, the poem weaves the
elements together without spelling their connections out, as if the focus
shifts from sky to house, outside to inside, and back. Also, while I love
"my friend", it's somewhat confusing, in that the poem seems to be both
first-person and second-person. Is this deliberate? I might be missing
something. One final, tiny thing that I wondered was the word "lie" in line
4 - perhaps a more sensuous and active word, like "brush" or "place".
Regardless, a powerful piece here.
Wahibe's "Apokalypsis" - This poem takes me to Patmos, and inside a very
personal story (yet a story with implications for many others, even anybody
living in the West, though especially those with religion in their
background). There's a purity and authenticity to the language, I feel -
it's not trying too hard to be poetic or narrative; it's present in the
place and its reverberations. I loved "they're proud of the world's end
here", the words "kidself" and "fullpump", the direct vernacular of "mate",
the exploration of the value of doubt, and the ending with its blessing of
tears. The only thing I think might need some thought (and experimentation)
is the overall structure. When the poem breaks down, remixes, plays with,
the word "apocalypse", this felt like somewhat of a tangent - it's
thrilling, absolutely, but I wonder if it could be more integrated into the
poem overall - could it be a refrain, which is repeated throughout the
poem, after every paragraph or two? Could it start gently at the beginning,
then become more and more reiterative as it goes, then disappearing at the
end? Or, what might the poem be like without that element (that's another
option). Either way, there's a tension and build-up in the poem that I
think needs to be respected, even amplified. There may be little details to
cut back here and there - eg "the air [was] like a gentle breath [it] held
me" - but it's a really moving and thoughtful work which never overplays
its hand.
Andy Jackson
http://amongtheregulars.com/
Wahibe Moussa.
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<Tru Ink Unearthed.doc>
