creativity

Happy Mother’s Day (for those of you in the UK)! My finals are seriously impacting on my blogging capacity, and although I had a plan for two novels to look at for Mother’s Day, I didn’t have time. So instead I’m going to share a poem in its entirety with you. It’s a poem my mother introduced me to, and it’s one of our favourites. No matter how many times I read it the last line always makes me cry. It’s by Peter Dixon and in my edition it’s called Rotten Reader, but I notice in lots of editions it’s now called The Colour of My Dreams. Happy Mother’s Day Maman!

I’m a really rotten reader
the worst in all the class,
the sort of rotten reader
that makes you want to laugh.

I’m last in all the readin’ tests,
my score’s not on the page
and when I read to teacher
she gets in such a rage.

She says I cannot form my words
she says I can’t build up
and that I don’t know phonics
and don’t know a c-a-t from k-u-p.

They say that I’m dyxlectic
(that’s a word they’ve just found out)
but when I get some plasticine
I know what that’s about.

I make these scary monsters
I draw these secret lands
and get my hair all sticky
and paint on all me hands.

I make these super models,
I build these smashing towers
that reach up to the ceiling
and take me hours and hours.

I paint these lovely pictures
in thick green drippy paint
that gets all on the carpet
and makes the cleaners faint.

I build great magic forests
weave bushes out of string
and paint pink panderellos
and birds that really sing.

I play my world of real believe
I play it every day
and teachers stand and watch me
but don’t know what to say.

They give me diagnostic tests,
they try out reading schemes,
but none of them will ever know
the colour of my dreams.

Just wonderful. I hope you liked it.

To end, here is a picture from Holi celebrations (this year it was 17 March), an annual explosion of colour which I thought suited the poem:

(Image from: http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=14222 )

Happy New Year! I’ve quoted the lovely Neil Gaiman to start off 2014, and do please check out the full context of the quote here, as I’m sure it will get your year off to a flying start. Here’s to many more mistakes in 2014!

And now, I’d like to entirely ignore New Year. This is a blog post for my brother. His birthday is 1 January, and it’s a crap time to have a birthday. It gets entirely subsumed in Christmas and New Year, and once you’re no longer a child, everyone you know spends your birthday with a monster hangover. Rubbish.

Like Neil Gaiman, my brother is a lovely man, who despite reading very little fiction always reads my blog posts and likes them on Facebook. That’s who we’re dealing with, people. So what to write about? Well, he likes poetry and I think he has a really good feel for it, an innate understanding. So this post will look at two poems that I think he’ll appreciate. This is for you, T. Entirely for you with no thematic link to New Year at all. Happy Birthday, brother of mine.

(Image from: http://hdwallpaperspictures.com/birthday-cake/)

Firstly, The Door by Miroslav Holub (trans. from Czech by Ian Milner). You can hear Joseph Fiennes read the whole poem here. This is a hugely clever poem, disguised in simple language. The poet repeatedly urges the reader to “Go and open the door”, and speculates as to what is on the other side. The first stanza is:

Go and open the door.

Maybe outside there’s

a tree, or a wood,

a garden,

or a magic city.

This is a poem you can read to a child: the idea and language is so simple, they will quickly relate to the opportunity to let their imagination run riot. Yet it works on a variety of levels that adults can appreciate, and can be about the search for inspiration; the courage to take new, unexplored paths in life:

Go and open the door,

If there’s a fog

it will clear.

Go and open the door.

Even if there’s only

the darkness ticking,

even if there’s only

the hollow wind,

even if

nothing

is there,

go and open the door.

The images of “darkness ticking” and “hollow wind” are eerie, and add an unsettling quality to the poem. They bring a sense of form to the formless, effectively creating how the unknown can still be scary. However, this door and what lays beyond is not entirely unknown; I think one of the really clever things about this poem is that the door is a definite article: “the door”, not the indefinite “a door”. It’s a small thing, but by suggesting the door is specific one, Holub delicately reminds us that this door to new ideas and new ways of living is within reach, already identified, carried within ourselves. And if nothing else, the final lines remind us:

At least

there’ll be

a draught.

A lovely, humorously deprecating end to an unpretentious poem that can follow you through life.

Secondly, A Glimpse of Starlings by Brendan Kennelly. You can read the full poem here. This is an astonishing and powerful poem, full of intriguing imagery. It begins:

I expect him any minute now although

He’s dead. I know he has been talking

All night to his own dead…

It’s not clear who “he” is, or if he is really dead, or only living among the dead. Googling this poem tells you it is about the poet’s father, struggling to deal with the loss of his wife. The struggle is beautifully and tenderly evoked through a variety of images:

Sipping a cup of tea, fingering a bit of bread,

Eating a small photograph with his eyes.

The questions bang and rattle in his head

[…]Daylight is as hard to swallow as food

Love is a crumb all of him hungers for.

How gorgeous, and heartbreaking, are those lines? The frequent use of full-stops keeps the pace of the poem low-key and quiet, creating a sense of the poet’s careful approach towards the grieving man. The transfer of images between food and the environment “eating a small photograph”, daylight being “hard to swallow”, skilfully shows how the sustenance of a man’s life has disappeared, affecting everything. The hungering for a crumb of love is a beautiful way of evoking the yearning emptiness of grief that can never be sated.

The image of starlings is created in the last few lines:

…over his shoulder a glimpse of starlings

Suddenly lifted over field, road and river

Like a fist of black dust pitched in the wind.

This is an oblique image so I’ll leave it with you to find your own meaning. I find this poem extremely powerful and the images truly haunting.

To end, here is a video of the astonishing display of a murmuration of starlings: