Day 3 - the super quick draft

I've had very little time today, and have literally sat down and boshed this out while dinner is cooking. From start to finish the draft took 20 minutes.

I tried a brief response to an image (I usually love using images as prompts) but was getting nowhere, so I returned to another old favourite - line replacement. For this technique of poem generation, randomly select a poem from a book, copy out every other line, fill in the blanks with your own words (it has to make a new poem that's half yours, half the original poem). Then write out the lines you wrote and fill in the blanks again. Voila, you end up with all your own work.

Today I used Denise Riley's poem 'Knowing in the Real World'.
This was my result.

My yells rebound, puddle

at the feet of strangers

the echo simpers towards me

unable to contain that moment

between wavelength & velocity

each vibration sizzling against my skin

like sunburn. I am scorched

tears evaporate

I seal my lips, huddle

beneath my imaginary silence

wrap myself

in invisible conversations

We always underestimate

the way they speak, whispers

cut skin, and this blood shadow

shouts beyond the dark.

Second shitty first draft :)

I have this printed out, ready to tweak n edit, but decided to be truthful and post the real first scribbled draft. It amazes me sometimes how these seemingly random collection of words end up being shaped into something completely unrecognisable, its like a treasure hunt where you get clues and have to dig for the real words underneath it all.

This disjointed hand free falls

curves past tattered faces

that tangle and writhe

we tried to hold on

but they plummet

we can never keep

cracked knuckles immobile

shudders spasm them open

Impact will not shatter us

only tears and voices

make us crumble

it’s the moment before we fall

that splits us

we hope these frantic gestures

give us something to hold

unrealising

that what we cling to

is what crashes  us down.

In celebration of shitty first drafts! Day 1 :)

The wedding is all done and dusted, I'm officially a 'Mrs' now for the first time in my life. I've spent the last few months doing the headless chicken wedding planning dance, and now that's over, I need to get on with the rest of my life.

A big part of that needs to be my writing. I have a dissertation to complete over the next few months, so need to get back on track with my writing. The slight problem I have is that, in my poetry, I've been following a similar theme for the last couple of years and that seems to have come to a natural end. So I need to find out where it's going now.

Having done bugger all over the last couple of months, I need something to kickstart myself and have decided to attempt the poem a day for a month challenge. I tried this quite a few years ago and it worked really well. Most of what I churned out was crap, but some of it wasn't, and it helped a lot with the writing discipline. Although, having just spent over 2 hours battling with my internal critic, and trying to breath life into something, I'm going to rename it to the 'Shitty first draft a day' - just to remind myself that it really doesn't matter whether it's any good, it's the doing not the end result that's important.

Everyone writes truly awful first drafts at least some of the time, for most people it's most or all of the time. And it's far to easy to listen to our critic shouting at us that we're no good, that it's pointless, that we may as well give up now.

So, all hail the shitty first draft! Here's mine for today :)

Cloud shadows

bombard skin

threaten to scour away

the weight of her world

she pins each toe, ankle, knee

stops herself running

pierces thighs & hips

stomach to still his butterflies

pulls skin taut over ribs, breasts

limits her inhalation

punctures throat, stops

that scream

pins eyelids, lips closed

fingernails first left

then right self-

mutilating

only thumb and forefinger

untethered

weightless

beckoning.