Sue Hardy-Dawson
On Tuesday I spent the morning looking at a fir cone. It’s very hard being a poet, you need vast supplies of tea, cakes and paper all laid out at arm's reach just in case moving disturbs something and you lose your muse. Well that’s what I tell everyone…
Anyway, unfortunately I couldn’t find anything interesting to write about fir cones, although as it turned out I did think it would be funny if they were called fur cones because they were actually like small furry ice creams - maybe an idea for later.
Then all at once I saw a sparrow having a bath in a puddle. It was a very sparkly puddle and the last rays of sunlight reflected the sparrow's silhouette.
Ah! I thought, so beautifully poetic. And so I picked up my special pen and scribbled upside down. It was frantic scribbling with no spelling or punctuation, the best kind for hunting ideas for poems.
Sadly as usual there were a few blots and yes, some had, rather artistically I thought, transferred themselves to my nose. This meant my children were very cross when I picked them up from school (there’s just no pleasing some people). After I’d dried the spilt tea and the cat on the radiator I rushed over excitedly to read through my ideas. There was a picture of a sparrow and a smiley sun. But after all that I discovered I’d written a poem about a snake! The brain is a messy place, well mine is, and so you never know what will pop out.
It may all sound a bit mad but catching ideas before you lose them is difficult. You do have to scribble them down before deciding if they are any good or not. We all have lots of thoughts every day. From things like "I’m thirsty" and "I must clean up" to, well, finding a host of golden daffodils. Things don’t have to be unusual or special to become poems. It’s how the poet sees and writes about them that makes them special.
On Tuesday I spent the morning looking at a fir cone. It’s very hard being a poet, you need vast supplies of tea, cakes and paper all laid out at arm's reach just in case moving disturbs something and you lose your muse. Well that’s what I tell everyone…
Anyway, unfortunately I couldn’t find anything interesting to write about fir cones, although as it turned out I did think it would be funny if they were called fur cones because they were actually like small furry ice creams - maybe an idea for later.
Then all at once I saw a sparrow having a bath in a puddle. It was a very sparkly puddle and the last rays of sunlight reflected the sparrow's silhouette.
Ah! I thought, so beautifully poetic. And so I picked up my special pen and scribbled upside down. It was frantic scribbling with no spelling or punctuation, the best kind for hunting ideas for poems.
Sadly as usual there were a few blots and yes, some had, rather artistically I thought, transferred themselves to my nose. This meant my children were very cross when I picked them up from school (there’s just no pleasing some people). After I’d dried the spilt tea and the cat on the radiator I rushed over excitedly to read through my ideas. There was a picture of a sparrow and a smiley sun. But after all that I discovered I’d written a poem about a snake! The brain is a messy place, well mine is, and so you never know what will pop out.
It may all sound a bit mad but catching ideas before you lose them is difficult. You do have to scribble them down before deciding if they are any good or not. We all have lots of thoughts every day. From things like "I’m thirsty" and "I must clean up" to, well, finding a host of golden daffodils. Things don’t have to be unusual or special to become poems. It’s how the poet sees and writes about them that makes them special.
You could write a poem about different places for drying wet cats, maybe! ;-)he he
ReplyDeleteNow there's a thought, ideas welcome what about a pur dryer
ReplyDeleteNice to know I'm not the only one with such a random thought pattern!
ReplyDeleteRandom is good. That's how you get surprising collisions of words.
ReplyDelete