::mslexia workshops::

Write on the Wild Side #24
a writing workshop with Linda Anderson

THEME: BEING BOLD
WITH POETRY

INTRODUCTION

IT SEEMS fitting to start a piece about boldness in poetry with the great risk-taker, Sylvia Plath. She said that a poem captures a momentary change, something glimpsed between the opening and shutting of a door, which makes a lasting impression. She likened a poem to a Victorian paperweight, one of those clear globes containing a miniature scene. You tip it upside down, then back. Snow falls; everything is changed: fir trees, gables, faces will never be the same again.

Plath’s image of turning something upside down and shaking it to get a transformation, is one that could describe the strategies of several of our contemporary women poets.

Jo Shapcott’s poems (see 'Mad cow' opposite) often give voice to objects or creatures which talk back to their creators or controllers. Roses become female genitalia talking back to the male poet writing about them. A ‘mad cow’ explains with dignity the pleasures of her apparent chaos. As well as being a shocking reversal of the usual image of the wretched BSE-afflicted animal, this is playing with the ‘mad cow’ insult sometimes fired at women by men. Shapcott turns her into a fearless artist prepared to risk looking foolish for the sake of the creative rush.

EXERCISES

'Mad cow' by Jo Shapcott, (Her Book: Poems 1988-1998, Faber and Faber, 2000)

I love the staggers. Suddenly the surface
of the world is ice and I’m a magnificent
skater turning and spinning across whole hard
Pacifics and Atlantics. It’s risky when
you’re good, so of course the legs go before,
behind, and to the side of the body from time
to time, and then there’s that general embarrassing
collapse, but when that happens it’s glorious
because it’s always when you’re travelling
most furiously in your mind

#1
Talkback
Choose a despised, forsaken or taken-for-granted object or animal and give it a surprising speech that will unsettle its usual onlookers. It can be anything: a spider, a fat cell, a hen, stretch marks, a broken toilet, a typewriter, a doll...

Giving voice in a more conventional way can also be a radical strategy. We can take on the voices of historical or fictional characters or give voice to peripheral muted figures. Take a look at the nanny in Louise Gluck’s poem ‘Nurse’s song’ (below).
This poem bears out Plath’s description of a poem as a glimpse of something seen between the opening and shutting of a door. In just 10 lines we get a novel-load: unfaithful wife and neglectful mother; oblivious husband; enraged nanny. There is mystery and suspense too: we can’t tell whether the speaker is protector or predator. Her fury seems to be inflamed by her own lowly status as much as by her employer’s actions. The rage is so overpowering that her final contradictory words to the baby (‘Sleep, sleep’, and ‘Scream’) come across as possibly deranged.

'Nurse’s song' by Louise Gluck (Meadowlands, Carcanet 1988)

As though I’m fooled. That lacy body managed to forget
that I have eyes, ears; dares to spring her boyfriend on the child.
This afternoon she told me, ‘Dress the baby in his crochet
dress,’ and smiled. Just that. Just smiled,
going. She is never here. O innocence, your bassinet
is clogged with gossip, she’s a sinking ship,
your mother. Wouldn’t spoil her breasts.
I hear your deaf-numb papa fussing for his tea. Sleep, sleep,
my angel, nestled with your orange bear.
Scream when her lover pats your hair.

#2
Impersonation
Imagine that someone is talking through you. It’s a person full of strong emotion; of hatred, love, joy, hopefulness, fury or some other powerful feeling. You are the medium and have to simply listen and write down the person’s words. After writing fast, pause to see what you’ve got. Play with the words and images and try to shape them into a poem, or the beginning of a poem.

Plath’s images of the poem as an upturned snow-scene demonstrate the power of metaphors. Both images are not just striking and memorable – they make us think in fresh ways.

Medbh McGuckian is a poet known for her risky metaphorical language. Male readers have sometimes categorised her poetic strategies as provocatively ‘feminine’ because they work by oblique association rather than by logic. But there is a fierce reasoning power at work beneath the apparent ‘irrationality’ of her poems. For example, in ‘The Butterfly Farm’ (see below), McGuckian brings together two unlikely worlds: the butterfly farm and the Japanese tea-house. Both display a surface beauty that is based on a cruel imprisoning system. The butterflies are farmed and killed; their exquisite appearance is wrought from pain (‘The mosaic of their wings is spun from blood.’)The geisha women are exploited because of the ideology that divides men and women. (‘they believe…/ That the front of a leaf is male, the back female.’) Merging the images of butterflies and women highlights the point being made. The reference to the ‘green cocoon of the car-wash’ extends the metaphor to relations between the sexes in our own ‘car-wash’ society.

'The butterfly farm' by Medbh McGuckian (The Flower Master, Gallery Press, 1982)

The film of a butterfly ensures that it is dead:
Its silence like the green cocoon of the car-wash,
Its passion for water to uncloud.

In the Japanese tea house they believe
In making the most of the bright nights:
That the front of a leaf is male, the back female.

There are grass stains on their white stockings;
In artificial sun even the sounds are disposable;
The mosaic of their wings is spun from blood.

Cyanide in the killing jar relaxes the Indian moon moth,
The pearl-bordered beauty, the clouded yellow,
The painted lady, the silver-washed blue.

#3
Seeking metaphor
Take a subject or experience that you feel passionate about but have never been able to communicate fully to anyone. Write about it in terms of concrete images and actions: no straightforward declarations of fact or feeling. (For example, I’ve just written a description of a painting that my sister has in her lounge, but the piece is really about my sister and me.) Read over what you’ve written and identify any strong images and phrases. Develop these further by free-associating rapidly. Make use of any unexpected links between images, which reveal things in a new or startling way, and try to shape these into a poem – then enter it for Mslexia’s poetry competition!