Post 2 - National Young Writers’ Month
I love that sometimes my poems gorge on pop culture. I love the bridge it connects to the circles outside of my small world of writers - Leah Umanksy
It was January 2014 and I was four months into my Creative Writing Masters degree, trying to find my way within poetry and figure out what I wanted to say through my poems. The poems I wrote were too bloody opaque and not really about anything. I’ll call them experiments with form and tone, they lacked subject. Then the January 2014 issue of Poetry magazine thudded through the door. Inside the pages were three poems by Leah Umanksy about a TV series I was engrossed in – reading those really broke down the barriers of what was an appropriate subject for a poem. Even if you haven’t seen Game of Thrones, you’ll no doubt have heard of it. Each April it takes over my life for one hour each week where I give myself over to the journey the many characters make through the fictional lands of Westeros. Umanksy’s three poems are below. Click to read them.
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Khaleesi Says
I want to be Stark[like]
There is an assured tone and precise language in all three poems. Each word earns its keep.The line ‘knee-deep in the shuddering world’ is fantastic and I love the interjection of italicised dialogue across the three. Thus began my interest in the relationship between poetry and pop culture. Some people would have you assume poetry is high art and TV series are low art which is a load of crap. In 2014 Umansky released a chapbook of poems inspired by Mad Men’s Don Draper entitled Don Dreams and I Dream. Whenever I find time in my life to watch the first couple of seasons of the show I’ll be ordering it. If you want to see more of Umansky’s work then her website has it all. She also tweets (although it can be a minefield of TV spoilers so tread/tweet carefully.) A detail which I particularly love about Game of Thrones is the varied accents of the characters on screen, especially the northern ones. I love how strong Yorkshire tones are a feature of a flagship HBO production. One of the catchphrases of the last season was spoken by wilding Ygritte to the crow on the wall Jon Snow. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then quite frankly Mr. Shankly...
Spoken as if raised in the heart of West Yorkshire. Time for my poems. Step into the inner workings of my mind. A chunk of this post and the poems below were all typed out furiously as I spent an hour in the NGV Great Hall under Leonard French’s wonderful stained glass ceiling. This hour was all I had after spending the early morning reading the latest poetry submissions to Voiceworks and before leaving to start my shift behind the bar.
‘The Know Nothing’ snow was silently sheeting it down outside as he subdued the crowd of crows with a slam of his fist on a wooden table *** ‘Confess Cersei’ water poured on the ground, slowly splatters on the mud caked floor thirst quickens to quench. *** ‘whaddyaknow?’ snow swirls & you feel its bite now tensely outside the dead appear & raze everything from the ground After these short bursts of writing (in which I clearly reverted back to bloody opaque) I decided the title of my poem could mirror the most recent episode – ‘Hardhome’ and it could focus in on the meeting of two central characters Tyrion Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen. This scene would give my poem a tight focus. This meeting of these two characters who were previously so far apart from one another led me to remember Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Convergence of the Twain”. This poem is about the meeting of the iceberg and the doomed Titanic. Look at the form. Each stanza a ship. Hardy, you’ve done it again. My writing challenge has led me to a place I never would have dreamt of going. Effort below.
Merging of Hardhome
in a low lit chamber they discuss the finer points of execution over a carafe & two goblet’s of hard-won wine
i know the mad king earned his name - there’s little food to soak it up as they compare unhinged fathers why did you travel to the far side of the world to meet someone terrible? she asks but deep down knows a spider spins a webbed wheel & they both loathe the wheel that slaughters & enslaves but as she talks about breaking the wheel he thinks about how his final days were interesting & wine is a wheel without spokes While this is a first draft I have high hopes that it will hopefully evolve and develop into something much more polished.
Pop culture as a vehicle for my poems excites me. With less than four months to go until I hand in my poetry collection I’m thinking about the possibility of musing on The Dude from The Big Lebowski, writing a sonnet sequence on Dewey from Malcolm in the Middle. Pop culture has so much scope for what I can achieve through my work. Even if it acts as initial inspiration before the poem takes on a life of its own.
I hope this post was a weird and wonderful insight into how my mind works, my interest in poetry and how my ideas are formulated and how awful my first drafts are. My next post will be related to my job. I’m writing this in the small hours of Australian Friday morning after landing in Sydney from Melbourne a few hours ago so my commitment to National Young Writers’ Month will not wane. I’ll end this post on a great quote from Umansky where she was asked what she thought the responsibility of the writer was? She replied “to write their truth. I also think there is a responsibility to be a part of the literary community in any way that feels right to you.”