Tuesday Poem

Piecework

Why did the day break before it began?
The dream still fermenting, the sudden rain?
Then you, muttering behind the door
you jerked shut.

I walked around the man-made lake.
A cormorant dived, making the water dance.
I was not lonely as I pieced the day back;
         this corner of sky
         a piece of green bench
         that edge of dark wing.

Catherine Bateson, 14/04/2015

This poem was, partly, inspired by the first class of How Writers Write Poetry which is a Canvas MOOC from the International Writing Programme from the University of  Iowa. Robert Hass is one of the first group of poets to talk about 'Notebooking, Sketching, Drafting' which is Session One of the course. I had heard him before as I enrolled in this MOOC last year, as well. This year they seem to have added some poets and I so enjoyed it last year, I didn't mind hearing the sessions again. Hass suggests beginning a (two-line) poem with a question and then answering it. I'd been fussing around with this poem all afternoon, trying to make it work and going off on tangents. Finally, after watching the video, it came together.

I like questions. I try to use them in my everyday communications, too. They open up possibilities.

As does the featured Tuesday poem. This week it is Leilani Tamu with a powerful, plainsong poem, 'Aotearoa Runaway'. You can read an article  by Tamu here - and it is interesting to read this alongside the poem, not only because it talks about incidents in the poem but because it displays another side of Tamu's writing. 'Aotearoa Runaway' has been curated by Tulia Thompson, and she provides a  perceptive commentary. Please read it.

Tuesday Poem - Thomas Hardy continued

Proud Songsters

The thrushes sing as the sun is going,
And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,
And as it gets dark loud nightinglates
        In bushes
Pipe, as they can when April wears,
   As if all Time where theirs.

These are brand-new birds of twelve months' growing,
Which a year ago, or less than twain,
No finches were, nor nightingales,
          Nor thrushes,
But only particles of grain,
   And earth, and air, and rain.

Thomas Hardy, The Complete Poems, Macmillan, 1976, p. 835-36

I love watching birds and the only thing I regret about changing my office from it's old room is that no birds yet use the bird bath. In my old office, I could look out the window and see different birds throughout the day - magpies, currawongs, little wrens and honey-eaters and the occasional rosella. Despite The Accountant putting together a decent bird bath on the other side of the house - and despite sightings from my window of a very attractive larger honey-eater and rosella, not to mention little wrens, they have yet to bathe. But what I love about this Hardy poem is those last two wonderful lines.

After contemplating the long and prolific career of Hardy, hop over to the Tuesday Poem blog and sample this week's featured poem. Tuesday poems are freshly baked each Tuesday and you can read a delicious selection by clicking on the blog roll. Bon appétit!

Tuesday Poem - a list poem...

The following poem was written from an exercise I set sometimes when I visit schools as a poet-in-residence. We've just had Children's Book Week here, in Australia, so it seemed appropriate. 

Ten Things to Do When You're Lonely

Draw a map of your heart, colouring each street light violet.

Write a love song to your future.

SMS knock knock jokes to everyone in your phone book.

Stand in the butterfly house of the zoo

and wait.

Invent a cocktail, drink it, then sing your favourite songs

loudly out of tune. 

Watch Buffy repeats and eat fairy bread
Learn how to say you're a groovy boy
in fifteen different languages

Design a break-his-heart party dress.
Send this poem as a chain email to all your friends
asking for a $5.00 reading fee

to be urgently deposited into your bank account.

With all your new money going shopping
for rainbow tights, a mood ring
and the perfect Sunday.

It's Tuesday - time to head over to the Tuesday Poem Blog where there is an absolute cracker of a poem, 'candle' by Hinemoana Baker, curated this week by Mary McCallum. It's a fabulous poem so, please, take the time to go and read it. And, of course, don't forget to scroll down the blogroll for other poems that might take your fancy on this blustery Tuesday. 

What's your favourite poetry exercise? 

Tuesday Poem - 'Greensleeves'

I'm watching 'The Tudors' - sort of like Game of Thrones without dragons, wolves or eunuchs (well, certainly no actual dragons...). Hence this posting! I've always loved this folk song and particularly so when I discovered that it was attributed to Henry VIII. As a youngster, I became fascinated by the Tudors after reading Jean Plaidy's account of Elizabeth - and I've only just realised this very minute (thank you Wiki)  that Plaidy was the pseudonym  of Eleanor Hibbert who also wrote as Victoria Holt and Phillipa Carr - my goodness, what a prolific output! I believe the attribution to Henry VIII has been discredited but I still associate 'Greensleeves' with Henry and the doomed Anne Boleyn.

Greensleeves

Alas, my love, you do me wrong,
To cast me off discourteously.
For I have loved you well and long,
Delighting in your company.

Chorus:
Greensleeves was all my joy
Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves was my heart of gold,
And who but my lady greensleeves.

Your vows you've broken, like my heart,
Oh, why did you so enrapture me?
Now I remain in a world apart
But my heart remains in captivity.

chorus

I have been ready at your hand,
To grant whatever you would crave,
I have both wagered life and land,
Your love and good-will for to have.

chorus

If you intend thus to disdain,
It does the more enrapture me,
And even so, I still remain
A lover in captivity.

chorus

My men were clothed all in green,
And they did ever wait on thee;
All this was gallant to be seen,
And yet thou wouldst not love me.

chorus

Thou couldst desire no earthly thing,
but still thou hadst it readily.
Thy music still to play and sing;
And yet thou wouldst not love me.

chorus

Well, I will pray to God on high,
that thou my constancy mayst see,
And that yet once before I die,
Thou wilt vouchsafe to love me.

chorus

Ah, Greensleeves, now farewell, adieu,
To God I pray to prosper thee,
For I am still thy lover true,
Come once again and love me.

When you've done a little pavane here - trip the light fantastic over here where Tim Jones is this week's editor, bringing a poem, 'A whimper after the bang',  by Melbourne-based poet, Emily Manger.  If you'd like to hear more of Manger's work, click here.

Tuesday Poem - Multiple Choice Love Poem

Multiple Choice Love Poem

(with 1024 Possibilities)

Today was full of

a)   low lying clouds

b)   jazz tunes played by silver saxophones

c)    desperate rain

d)   sailing ships in full rig

and my heart returns to you,

a)   flying kites on 90 mile beach

b)   painting my toenails purple

c)    slicing the ends off my sentences

d)   walking through the clouds

to tell me

a)   the train timetable in Spanish.

b)   how to make sushi.

c)    how each glitter means yes.

d)   to tango with the tea towels.

How could I refuse your invitation

a)   to walk my fingers with yours on that map of Paris

b)   to fold origami tigers at midnight

c)    to eat decadence from a sundae glass

d)   to write manifestoes from last year’s birthday cards

when you are to me

a)   the equation I never understood?

b)   a year of summer haiku?

c)    a shot of vodka in the spinning dark?

d)   a moody picnic complete with rain?

Today was full of

a)   urgent travel plans to other hearts

b)   flamenco dancers stripping in the mall

c)    jigsaws with missing pieces

d)   French horns blaring out of breath

and missing you. 

© Catherine Bateson

It's Tuesday with plenty of poems to read. Check the Tuesday Poem hub for an excerpt from Kristi Whalen's prose poem, 'Brave Like' curated this week by Saradha Koirala. From the hub you can access other poems. That's right folks - no Tuesday Poems are cut despite Tony Abbott's best efforts to undermine culture, education and the health of this nation. When he was first elected I thought, what an embarrassment he will be. I was wrong. He is so much worse that merely being an embarrassment. So much worse.

Tuesday Poem

All Our Seasons

At the kitchen table I made paper dolls

extravagantly dressed, cotton wool fur edging

their green crepe skating dresses –

ice waltzes in a landscape so far from the mango tree -

my ship’s lookout – and the couch grass

of our backyard. A fragile succession of Charlottes

and Beths danced through winter seasons and on

to summer, water-colour stained empire frocks,

all out of historical whack,

until I packed them up for the colonies,

quoits and romance on the deck

of the sixties laminex, and at the other end,

the tea, the buttered white bread.

There are four cloth doll heads

smiling in a bowl at the flea market.

I touch each in turn, buy velvet ribbon,

a powder compact,

gilt slightly rubbed,

and some silky stuff that once

I’d have plaited and twisted into a knot

for Charlotte’s coming out.

Hey, queen of the kitchen kingdom

in your summer palace

waltz with me – 
your lead.

I never left you behind

we are always the same story

all our fragile seasons.

Catherine Bateson, 2013.

Check out the Tuesday Poem at the Tuesday Poem hub - this week, guest edited by me! It's a poem by award-winning Australian poet, Jill Jones. It's a powerful poem and I admire the way it skirts narrative, something I find trouble doing, clearly. I was going to offer a handmade haiku lino-print card  all the way from Paris to the first person who commented on both this blog and the Tuesday Poem blog - who knows I still might.