Sonnet-dodger no more….

So I had my first proper holiday in over 12 years and saw some eye watering sights in Bangkok,  the beach to die for in Melbourne (St Kilda – like Brighton but x100…with whicker chairs that dangle outside beachside bars and veggie cafes with double bed futons to lie on with views of the sea and cute kitesurfers…..heaven!) and Singapore – where I met up with a brilliant writer from the Litup festival – Chris Mooney Singh.

I scoffed a bowl of  ‘Green thunder tea’  (with a  list of supposed health benefits from healthy heart/better eyesight/potential aphrodisiac if I remember correctly…) with basil omelettes and spicy tofu in the foodcourt near the Singapore Writers’ Centre that he runs – highly recommend both if you’re heading that way:) f I could actually get any photos to load on here – I’d bore you with them – but I still can’t make them work, so luckily you’re spared!

I did some WBA writing on the planes and have been editing them and had a session with top mentor Jo Bell this week…and am pleased to announce I’m no longer a ‘Sonnet Dodger’!  Jo’s rightly been encouraging me to try writing to a strict form for a while – and I’d found it blooddrawingly torturous….it was like being made to put on clothes several sizes too small and keep them done up for hours on end and it felt restrictive and frustrating and everything I wrote was rubbish! BUT – finally I have one – and will publish the first version here although Jo’s highlighted a couple of lines to work on….and as usual she manages to hone in on the lines I knew weren’t quite ‘there’, but had lost the will to live while trying to edit them prior to our session:)

I have to admit there was a feeling of satisfaction when finished – and a sense that I may have actually written my first ‘proper’ poem, never having ’studied’ poetry at college or anything, and having emerged from the spoken word side of things. I know at heart I’ll probably always be a shambolic freeverser, skanking my way along without rules, but I also have a sneaky feeling I may write another sonnet again soon…. and when I perform this one, I’ll find out if there’s a neatness in the live version that’s addictive too ‘Course now nearly every poem I read seems to be a sonnet – like Clare Pollard’s Pessimism for Beginners collection I’ve just put down – loads of proper sonnets in there:) I’m also aware of how small a sonnet looks on the page, compared to the hours and days of sweating over so many different versions of it – not much to show for it is there?!

Do you write to rules or have favourite structures? An affair with a villanelle or a liason with a Pantoon or something to confess here? I’d love to know how you use form or not and why? Are you like Steven Fry, someone who loathes us meandering freestylers?

I saw Jo Bell’s show ‘Fourpenny Circus’ on Thursday, which brilliantly demonstrated something she’s passionate about – that spoken word poetry shouldn’t be lazy and must still be ruthlessly edited and each piece finely crafted. You may have seen her doing a show alongside another MPOY – Tony Walsh this week – I hear the gig rocked:)

OK – well, here’s the sonnet….and there will be a couple more pieces posted this week – I need to get someone’s permission on one very personal one about her cancer battle and how WBA football has helped her through treatment….but hopefully I’ll get the OK on it this week, then here it shall be…..

‘THE GOALKEEPER’S SONNET.’

FOR DEAN KIELEY AND SCOTT CARSON.

Invisible to thirty thousand eyes,

I dragonfly between the turf and net.

The ninja way is mine to utilise.

My arms carve air in sushi rolls and yet

the ball is sly, elusive to my touch.

Sometimes it finds brief glory in a goal –

and then they see me; blame me; hurling such

abuse they curse my very mortal soul.

But when I read the striker’s bare intent…

predict the angle and abort his aim,

the crowd’s applause is brief although well meant.

Goalkeepers aren’t the star of any game.

So mountain-high I rise, leap and crash land.

I know the game’s controlled by my gloved hand.

By the way, I’ll be working on the ‘mine to utilise’ and ‘very mortal soul’ bits that Jo highlighted, that I knew weren’t quite right! But hey, this is a work in progress kinda site – so forgive the dodgy lines:)

Now I’d better check the scores……..we lost already this week, oh well…