Poem number 2

And now for something completely different. I think we could do with a bit of a cheering up after that last post, don't you? It is Friday after all, so time for another poem.

This one's a Petrarchan sonnet (iambic pentameter with an abba cde rhymescheme) this time. At the moment I can't get ten syllables into the second last line, so I am cheating a bit  - any scansion experts feel free to leave me suggestions.

The basis of this poem is that I did my first degree at King's in London, a BA in English Language and Literature. This means I am a massive clunking pedant when it comes to wrongly-placed apostrophes and the like - few things can make me more enraged*. However, I am also a natural inhabitant of the internet, where new forms of speech, for example leetspeak, abound - and which I find hugely exciting. It's the pyscholinguistic part of my brain fighting with the sociolinguistic part. I fear there will be no survivors.

In the meantime, I wrote this to poke a bit of fun at my own pedantry:


Literature and Language

Exercise your brain, they say! And stave off
all time’s ravages, senility will
retract his ragged claws, and better still
you’ll tell the young ones they can all sod off
back to ploughing language’s threadbare trough
with txting, LOL!'s, and grammar errors shrill;
I mean, it’s quite enough to make one ill
but choose instead to look askance and scoff,
because, as you know best, the rules apply
from here to kingdom come, although I doubt
you still address your friends as thee or speak
as if upon the BBC, or cry
foul each apostropheric flout;
the stickler’s house of cards begins to creak.



*now we all know that this is a lie, as in fact most things have the capacity to enrage me in one way or another.

Tiddly Po(e)m

So, apart from my more, hem hem, political rantings, the purpose of this blog is hopefully twofold - I used to write a fair bit of poetry and indeed have a long-abandoned blog dedicated (haw) to this lofty aim. That blog is now defunct, but I feel a bit sorry for the poems, adrift in the ether of the internet. I thought they at least deserve a better home, so now and again I'll be posting them here - and who knows, maybe this will encourage me to start writing again?

A couple of years ago I was trying to tentatively flex my poetic muscles by seeing if I could successfully compose in various established styles, as up until then all I had really written was free verse. This was actually really good fun (#nerd), and this is one of those poems.

I was trying to mimic a kind of eighteenth century sensibility both in tone and form, although the sonnet form itself is older - it's Shakesperean sonnet form, with an iambic pentameter rhymescheme of abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

I wrote it for my aunt, after we knew her cancer had come back, terminally. I never had the heart to give it to her at the time and I think I might have been right about that - it seems now to be to be too didactic. The living should probably not try to tell the dying what to think.

In any case, I thought it apt to publish today. It's my birthday, and I wish she was here to celebrate with me. On that note, I hope you enjoy.


In Language’s Infinity

In language’s infinity I saw
our own immortality, for what thing
could ever dispossess us of that law,
now I can see the threads to which we cling
dissolve as stones abraded by the rain
no longer disclose the names they cited,
whatever their incumbents’ sober pain.
Careful words are by erosion sited
just in advance of meaning’s careless drift;
our luck is to catch sight of some small part
in the brief gleaming of the motes’ slow shift;
and hope this lets enough into the heart
         to crack apart the vain eternal plea
         and grasp the brief and glorious finity.