Revision

Ok. First poem has been revised.

8 times.

Still mostly crap, though knowing very little about poetry I can only surmise that it is crap. I could of course be so naturally talented that it is a masterpiece and I don't know it. [Watch out for that pig overhead.]

I was wondering whether to get rid of the line I had about the destruction of the Twin Towers. At first I liked it, then I started worrying that someone intellectual might think it's a reference to Tolkien rather than some crude attempt at political comment...and then I thought the whole poem might give someone an insight into the insane mind of a home educating mother. I think everyone else has written nice poems about leaves and butterflies and flowers: I've written about loss of innocence of our children and the futility of war (and not in a 'tum-ti-tum' sort of way, but in a 'New Fast Automatic Daffodil'* sort of way). Oh joy.

Homework for this week has been abandoned after the initial draft, and been substituted with displacement activity reading a book entitled 'How to write a Poem'.

I have read said poetry book - well I've speed-read it for the vaguely interesting bits (thankfully it is a short book with not many interesting bits). I still don't know how to write a poem. I'm the sort of person who likes poems written in the shape of a dog or a tennis ball. And funny poems about farts. I wonder if I am on the wrong course.

But this is still not getting my homework done. There is some progress: I have decided that a suitcase isn't really appropriate as a protagonist. Which leaves me with a senile woman instead. So I now have a story about a senile woman and a suitcase. I suppose I could make it a time-travelling suitcase, but I get the impression that a) children's stories and b) science fiction are not considered to be appropriate genres for writers doing this course. Story is to be ready for tomorrow evening. Why am I blogging instead?

have been listening to Stephen Fry's 'An Ode Less Travelled' . Have been listening to the chapter about iambs and metre and troichers or bizits or whatever they are, and going around all day with 'ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum' in my head (an iambic pentameter apparently). 'I came to ask if you would come to tea' (that's the clean version). I hope this education is worth it and doesn't just turn me into some word-wanky pratt.

* google it. I'm sure there was a fab poem made of a combination of wordsworth and a car advert, possibly written by one of the Liverpool Beat Poets, but then I could be making that up. Wasn't there a group called the New Fast Automatic Daffodils? Or did I make that up too?