How quickly friend becomes frenetic,
Christmas - crisis, singing - pining,
darling - dialing.
Mary McCallum
Just a fragment, really. But somehow, found like this in my draft pile of poems, it seems to work. Reading it - and seeing all my drafts and all my folders of poems deemed finished - makes me feel sad. I haven't been writing much poetry lately because fiction has taken centre stage. I can't sustain both at the same time. I will need to make some time soon - perhaps a week - or longer - to pull together what I have into something I could call a collection.
Meanwhile, please check out our hub poem this week by a fascinating Australian, chosen by PS Cottier in Canberra. I love these introductions to Australian poets via Tuesday Poem. A whole new world over there... have a lovely week, especially on Thursday - World Poetry Day.
5 comments:
Mary, this is no small fragment! It is brilliant and contains a universe.
L, C xo
PS. I feel sad that I'm not writing much poetry at the moment, either. Lots of other exciting stuff's happening, though, all involving 'life's poetry'. I'm realizing the myriad ways it expresses and that we can trust everything is part of everything else even when it may seem entirely otherwise.
A poem that speaks of the present day. Keats couldn't have written a poem about predictive text. I steer clear of predictive text myself because I find I spend more time correcting its wrong guesses than just composing a normal text.
Don't feel sad, Mary. You're focusing on a task which just happens not to be poetry. Multi-tasking is being proven to be a crock.
Give fiction your all, and come back to poetry when you're ready for it. I enjoyed reading this charged poem
Oh, what a gem, Mary! I particularly love the singing-pining combo. I see a complete poem here, not a fragment in sight :)
Brilliant. Lots in this tight thing. Christmas - crisis. Wow, yes. This captures such sentimental feelings, and also such urgency. And the odd and unpredictable thing about predictive text too... it's a mixture of loads of things all in just a few words. Post-post-modern text poetry.
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