The Attics of the Dead

I've got stalled on this year's NaPoWriMo, I think because I'm still really tired following Rosemary's book launch on Thursday.  So I've dug up this old one from last year's poetry writing month.

This is an attempt to capture the mood and strangeness of a real recurring dream I used to have.  Where I'd be wandering the attics of some building which in real life didn't have any, and there would be and shelves and shelves of interesting boxes.  Not that in the dream I every got to open any of the boxes...

There's a reference to my Granddad in this, and that is how come this poem is "of the dead".  His and Nana's house was a common location for the dream, although not the only place it could be set.

All my grandparents are dead now.  You can never go back, can you...

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The attics of the dead


I no longer dream the attics of the dead
but I recall the qualities of dust
and light and wooden shelving where I pass
my unshod sleep feet silent on the boards.
There are always more: more boards, more boxes,

suitcases, cabinets and old wardrobes...
more attics.  Up some turning stair, or through
a low door: a further shelfscape; hatches
in the ceiling through which unpainted ladders
climb higher still to attics which by rights

should be much smaller than the floor below.
They're not, of course, there's always more and I
will wander rarely distracted by a beam
of skylight cutting through or a corridor
window through which I peer to see forever

roofs and tiles and access ways and never
a hint of any world below.  Through windows
sometimes I will glimpse another distant pane
of glass though which, enticing,  I'll see the backs
of other shelves all filled with such exciting

packages, but which I know I'll never reach.
There isn't any lesson for this place to teach,
I am not lost, or trapped; I'm just aware
that granddad knows of every item there,
but still, somehow, my exploration
does not posses an end.

Tea time

Tea time, earlier today...

I was just reminded of this, because it is another poem from Memento...

Minnie and Violet are real great aunts...

Which is to say they were real once but sadly are not any more, because they did indeed die in childhood.  As they were the only two of a round dozen siblings not to make it into ripe old years, I had no shortage of great aunts and uncles to choose from when I was younger.

Historical note for overseas readers.  The "Pru" or Prudential is an insurance company and before the age of electronic banking, "The Man from the Pru" would come around collecting the premiums.

I have heard it said that 90% of poetry is about time, memory or love.

Two out of three ain't bad...

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Tea time


Minnie and Violet address the camera directly;
they cannot say we who are about to die...
because they did not know. My mother speaks instead
from nineteen seventy-two, where
counting coinage for the Man from the Pru,
she pauses to explain: these would be your great aunts,
if not for Polio––

            as her mother once explained to her.
Today I stir the stranger's tea and offer biscuits.
He has to rush. I brush crumbs from the photograph.
Minnie is thinking about the existence problem: she exists
for the photographer, but can only guess at future eyes.
Grandma and she existed, once, for each other
but mother and I, spying on the moment
through the monochrome window, can only imagine.

Violet is thinking about the photographer's wig.

Now plugging: Memento

Memento

This book was kindly produced by J.S.MacLean as a memento of the times that a big crowd of poets had on the now defunct CriticalPoet.com.

Three of my poems are in there, as are contributions by another 37 accomplished poets.  One of the three I provided was Coming Round which is featured on this very blog.

On-line poetry forums are a very useful resource, when they are good, for the beginning or developing poet.  I see them as occupying roughly the same position of the literary salon of former centuries.  On them you can both get feedback on your own work but, more important, you can practise critiquing the work of others.  This is vital as the ability to understand the strengths and weaknesses of a poem underpins the ability to self-critique, and thus self-edit.

To put it another way, until you've learnt to understand why somebody else's poem doesn't work, you haven't a hope of knowing whether yours does...  and also seeing other people praise the very feature you just condemned, that teaches you something of how different readers can come to the same text in very different ways.

A good forum is also a source of companionship, writing prompts and exercises.

So the demise of a good one is a sad occasion, but also a chance to look back at the good times and realise how far you've come.

Coming round

Cartoon characters should
drink responsibly...

Not much to explain here, one I wrote from a prompt on a poetry forum in 2012.


Today I would avoid the coincidence of strophe breaks and full-stops in the first two verses, but otherwise still reasonably pleased with a sweet and simple piece.


(Note added later: this was also featured in a collection celebrating poets from the, now defunct, Critical Poet online forum.)

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Coming round

Maybe I can say it in a different way: it's more
the angle of the orange street light that draws
a shadow between us as we sit with cheap wine
in the spare room and the evening and the dark.

It's more that the presents you brought me
were typical of your kooky creativity; while
the presents I bought you were expensive
and you, often, were thinking of someone else.

And on that day in June when it rained
tiny plashes in the dust and you said the
smell of dust and rain made you horny and sad,
I said it's more your sadness makes it rain

and then you laughed, but it didn't stop raining.
It was more my idea to drift away, not to fight,
but more your idea to keep my books
and CDs in your spare room—on shelves

I erected long ago in another country—so when
I want something I have to come by
with the bottle of supermarket Chianti, and sit
with you, the dark, the dust; now it's raining.