Begged, Borrowed, or Stolen

There has been a bit of a stramash concerning plagiarism of poetry lately. It’s nothing new – poets have pilfered from other poets for eternity, and some of the great poets are impenetrably hard to read simply because the obscure referencing is far too deeply-layered for the unenlightened. But when a poet takes another’s poem and, changing just a few words, publishes the thing as if it is their own work, alarm-bells ring in the offices of intellectual property lawyers.

Sometimes we are influenced by other writers, or hear words or phrases that get so under our skin that we re-use them without realising. The 20^th Century composer, Vaughan Williams, used the term ‘cribbing’ to describe the skill of using another’s musical idea. He said that cribbing was permissible as long as you knew that you were doing it. Music and poetry, however, are rather different forms.

One of my Phone Box Tales, which I performed at the 2013 Fringe, was about a man who spied on (or, more accurately, stalked) a poet and, stealing a bunch of dis-carded drafts of her poems got them published. I stole the idea for that story from a friend who happily permitted me – as long as I acknowledged her in the dedication! But the character in my story knew exactly what he was doing.

Other art-forms present issues when they are stolen or appropriated. A friend (now ex-friend) told me last year that her Masters Degree (in Creative Industries) had been jeopardised by someone who had plagiarised stock-photos for their project – a collaboration between students. My hunch is that it was this friend who had done this, since she only graduated recently, nearly a year after the Degree Show. The university must have given her a second chance. But theft is theft.

When I was doing a Creative Writing course with the O.U. I made the mistake of sending in a poetry assignment with one-too-many poems. The tutor, thankfully, discarded the extraneous poem in her marking. However, it meant that I couldn’t submit that poem in a subsequent assignment because it would have been picked up by the system. It seems that students can’t even plagiarise themselves!

I asked my erstwhile friend why people would want to plagiarise: surely artists and creative types strive for authenticity? She mumbled something about laziness, or hope that they wouldn’t be found out. She never uttered anything stronger, or voiced concern for the other students on her course. Her main beef was that the cost of the course would be wasted.

To be a good artist, or an original creator, you have to develop a voice of your own. To do that, you also have to soak up all available influences by reading, viewing, learning, and listening to everything there is. I get irritated by young poets who think they are teaching kids about poetry by presenting their own take on the form (which is in fact performance art, not poetry) having never studied poetry themselves. Simply passing off the great masters as ‘boring’ is arrogant, and ignorant.

Some of my earliest influences, from school-teachers, continue to feed my poetic voice. I latched onto the pop-poets (the Liverpool Sound) when a middle-school teacher enthused about Roger McGough, but I was 19 before Brian Patten impacted on me. We were fed the War Poets, but it was Pat Barker’s trilogy that brought them alive years later. I got the Sylvia Plath confessional stuff, yet it took decades to understand her universality. As for the Romantics: I’ve barely scratched the surface.

All these – and many other – styles affect and influence me, and if I steal or crib or pilfer from any of my favourite (or even, less-favoured) poets and writers, I make my official apology here. Sometimes, however, I write poems that are nonetheless based quite closely on existing pieces. I think this may be called pastiche. That said, at risk of plagiarism, here is my take on a Roger McGough poem.

 

Dining Solo

 

When Roger McGough bought fish & chips for one,

He felt like a priest in the chip-shop cue.

And it’s true: sometimes, when I sit in a café alone

I wish I had someone to share my pot of tea-for-two.

 

I’ve also learned, on the subject of plagiarising oneself, that there is a tricky problem when submitting work to a publication or competition if it has already appeared on a personal blog or other form of social media. To publish = “make public.” However, one is allowed to use a 10% sample. So here is a wee taster of a story that I am currently sending off for publication:

 

(extract from 'Revenge' - a short story)

 

                We did all the things that new lovers do: the furtive glances led to casual coffees; texting became frequent; we’d meet in favourite places. The glances led to kisses; the rapid-fire texts turned suggestive; the places we met became ‘special’ and – finally – we consummated our relationship in a way that no film can. She was, at first, reticent to commit, but I let it pass. On my side, there was a secrecy to which we were both sworn. My position in the University gave her a frisson; me, a vulnerability.

                As summer lingered, I knew time was on my side. If money can’t buy love, it sure as hell can’t buy time. Once, as we sat on newly-mown grass in the Gardens, she suddenly said: ‘I’ve got a secret.’

                ‘Oh?’ I sat up, curious.

                ‘It’s a biggie,’ she added.

                Quietly pleased to be let into her confidence, I said, ‘Go on.’

                ‘I’ve always secretly wanted to have a child. On my own.’

                ‘On your own?’ I pointed out: ‘Impossible!’

                ‘Not so,’ she explained: ‘You can buy the means off the internet.’

                Perplexed, ‘But…’ Touching the fingers of her left hand I said: ‘You’ve got me.’ Her hair dropped over her eyes as she lowered her head.

                ‘I know,’ she replied, a half-smile breaking on her lips as she moved to kiss me: ‘I know.’

                By autumn, it was over. Not a word, explanation or reason. Not a hint of the season which had warmed our bodies was to be seen. I dropped by her flat one evening, but looking through the bare windows saw the room was cold and empty. She was gone.

 

If it doesn’t find a home, and I have whetted your appetite, I guess I’ll let you have the remaining 90% at some point. Unless someone else steals it from me first. Next month, I will conclude the story of the past four blog-posts and tell the truth behind my poetry.

Secrets and Lies

Anyone reading this blog for the first time might want to read the two preceding posts, since this is the continuation of a long tale. This is a story of secrets, lies, deception, and control. In Anglican liturgy there is a sentence that precedes the rite of confession: ‘If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.’ Avoiding theology, I prefer to use ‘wrong’ rather than sin.

A few months ago I saw a short article on manipulators. I wish I’d read it twelve months ago – although I had no idea at that time that I was being duped by an unscrupulous, frighteningly duplicitous person.

This woman, who I have been at pains not to name or identify, had no concept of wrong. She showed no remorse for the wrong-doings in her life, and was equally dismissive of my difficult past. When I opened up to her and shared elements of my personal history, making myself totally vulnerable, she expressed nothing but unflinching support and respect for me. Expressing her thoughts on love, however, apparently scared her. I never imagined that she had an ulterior motive.

How could I do anything other than believe that she was scared of love? Or was reticent to name it? Like the queen in Suzanne Vega’s song, she closed herself up like a fan. She spoke of a ‘bird in her chest.’ Sometimes the feathers fluttered pleasurably; other times, this thing threatened to angrily burst out of her chest. How could I interpret this? In poetry, of course. Since I assumed she had some knowledge of classical music – she claimed to be giving violin lessons, though I never heard her play – much of my poetry was based on song. One was after a beautiful song by Delius:

 

 

Twilight Answers

With a lowly rumble of chords and a spiky tritone

Delius evokes the forest’s misty floor, from where
a herd-boy lifts his horn and, calling through
the enveloping dark, gives ear to the reply.

He senses through the throbbing harmony

the shepherd in a clearing in the dying light;
his horn-call as it penetrates the canopy
calls out to someone, somewhere, hearing,
as the silent sun goes down.

He knows she’s there, can almost hear

the evening breeze like feathers in her hair.
But in the fading light, with drooping semitone
he, lowering his instrument, loiters yet alone.

The composer conjures another throbbing

expectation and although, in the distance,
the shepherd now hears a yearning sobbing
his lips remain unlicked; retaining his stance
he sees the sun going down.

So Delius repeats the now-familiar strophe
as if to tempt, avoid, or coax catastrophe;
the crackle of twigs in the early glistening
gloam assures the shepherd she is listening

but will not, or cannot, or perhaps, chooses

not to answer. He lifts his horn a final time
and as darkness falls the herd-boy refuses
to hear the piano’s final diminishing  sigh
that saw the sun go down.

 

She was, it seemed, creative. I’d seen some of her photography when idly googling her name on the internet. She made films too, apparently. She sent me a short piece which she’d put together, based on a poem. In the film-captions, she credited herself as the writer, dedicated it to me, and put the name of the voice-over – a university colleague. For this reason, I cannot post the film on here. But I can put a link to the film which she’d taken, cropping the ending and passing it off as her own.

 

Morning, Noon, and Night

The cuckoo, according to the rhyme,

allegedly changes its tune over time.
As a chick, it starts out with a semitone;
a tentative chirp in its burrowed home,
then expands to a whole-note interval
to celebrate its fledgling festival.
It’s not long before the minor-third
becomes the adolescent bird,
then, brighter still, comes major next
as the cuckoo attempts to flee the nest.
As the interval grows ever-wider,
the cuckoo finds it increasingly harder
to establish itself with its broken voice,
and nature gives it little choice
but to steal another’s nest (or lover)
and repeat the same tune over and over.

 

During this time, the cuckoo kept on cropping up in my poetry. I had no idea that this woman who I was becoming more and more besotted with was not only too good to be true, but was stealing more than other birds’ nests. It would be a matter of weeks that the cuckoo’s call, with its ominous warning, would be heard, too late. ‘Oh, bird of fear, unpleasing to the married ear,’ as Shakespeare says. Having shared much of the poetry I was writing, my ‘girlfriend’ (not that I was able to call her that) sent me a picture that she had been working on. It was a vulture: sinister and macabre.

If this was the bird that fluttered inside her chest, there really was something strange going on. But, as I said in my previous post, there was also something far more important developing deep inside her. Then, however, at a crucial point in our relationship something shocking happened. Despite being estranged from her family whose religious convictions she did not share, my ‘new-love’ was dealt a strange blow. Her mother, allegedly prone to extreme mental ill-health, took her own life.

Around this time, my parents were due to visit me to hear a poetry reading I was giving at the National Library. I wanted to introduce them to the new person in my life. Unfortunately, she had to travel to England for her mother’s funeral. Seemingly in shock (but coping admirably) she ended up organising everything for the funeral – she even sent me pictures of all the flowers she’d bought.

She had booked a holiday with friends, due to leave the day after the funeral. I’d planned a trip to England too, so this meant a brief separation. First, we had to discuss the tricky issue of her pregnancy. We agreed, given the early stage of our relationship, that we were not ready to have a child in our lives. My fear that this bombshell would seriously undermine what was going on between us was unfounded. She professed her love for me; we made love (if only that was the true term) for hours and then, she departed for the funeral/holiday.

During that holiday, only a few weeks into the pregnancy, she had a miscarriage. I was hundreds of miles away, and could not have felt further from the person (so I thought) I loved. Then a bigger bombshell dropped. After many “wish you were here”-type texts from her holiday destination in the Western Isles, I received the message that no-one in love wants to hear. She wanted to withdraw from our intimate relationship.  

 

The Cuckoo and The Nightingale

 

                And the King…

                harkened to the Nightingale’s sorrowfulness

                ’til all his own was gone.

                                                - Walter De La Mare

 

Handel penned an organ conversation

between two lonely, disparate birds.
The Cuckoo and the Nightingale,
though seldom seen or heard together,
met in a Garden where a King once walked.
Though tentative at first, they talked and talked.

‘Your song is sad,’ the Cuckoo said: ‘Why so?’

The Nightingale recited melodies
relating a thousand sorry stories
of love lost, slighted, or unrequited;
of Knights-at-arms, and shepherds-in-thrall
to merciless, mendacious maidens;
of Cypress trees and a lonely King
with unexplained sadness; and willows weeping.

The Cuckoo was appalled at how

the Nightingale regaled the sadnesses
that filled the early evening air.
While she cuckoo’d her ostinato
Nightingale whistled and trilled,
and repeated his tune in a modulation.
Cuckoo continued her cliché, rejoicing
in all that was unpleasing to her friend.

‘You’re a funny little bird,’ said Cuckoo.

‘All your jargon sings of sorrowfulness
and yet you pepper it with turns and trills
and ornaments.’

                                ‘I beg your pardon,’

requested Nightingale. ‘My song goes on
while yours – little more than a cheap thrill –
is spent by June or – at latest – July.’

‘That may be true, Cuckoo replied,’

since I must fly the nest. I refuse
to waste my song in elaborate catches. I
adapt my interval to fit whatever music matches.
You move in modulation while I cadence;
your sequential passages are smart,
but I provide a satisfying answer
without elaboration of intellect or heart.

The Nightingale noticed a flaw in the argument.

‘I hear that basic tune you pipe without
emotion, simplistic. While you augment
your vocals I remain bel canto.

                                                ‘You fantasize,’

accused Cuckoo, ‘that I am common and stupid.
Though classically trained you’d be wise
to remember the potency of cheap music.’

At this point Nightingale halted his song,

although neither was out of turn. Cuckoo, however,
had seen her chance and focussed her notes on a
trysting couple who met in the Garden.
Nightingale, silent, observed as the courting
occurred and the new lovers kissed.
The Cuckoo transgressed; her melody turned
from melancholic minor third to a perfect fourth.

Nightingale chirruped and warned them

of this cheeky bird’s deceit. But cuckoos
never give a fuck whose hearts are broken,
or who may be tricked by a fleeting melody.
While Nightingale revelled in bitter malady
and analysed every single conversation,
Cuckoo adapted to whatever was wanted
and summed up the simple sexual situation.

But Nightingale, noticing that Cuckoo’s notes

were (like the lovers) already drifting apart,
introduced a tone that some describe as ‘blue.’
Cuckoo, completing the movement, instigated
a musical rendition of “I love you”
(contestable, of course) at which
the conversation of the lovers was through.
However, the birds still had to settle a score.

Said Nightingale: ‘You started with a minor third,

but by the end a major fifth was heard.’

                                                 ‘I know,’

concurred Cuckoo, ‘But don’t imagine I don’t
feel guilty myself. Most of the lovers I court
fall apart and end up unhappy as yours.
All I do is laugh and jest and then
fly off again in search of another nest – 
in fruitless pursuit of love and happiness.’

As Nightingale half-listened she went on:

‘My sorrowfulness is never, ever gone.
While I am stuck in perfidious, invincible spring,
your sorrow (or the lovers’ you console) is done.’
Nightingale noticed Cuckoo had changed her tune.
‘I know,’ said cuckoo, sadly. ‘It’s what I do.’
So Nightingale continued his melancholy song,
while Cuckoo said again: ‘I know. It’s what I do.’

 

To say I was devastated understates the damage she had intended to cause me. Something was seriously wrong. The person I had been in an intimate and ecstatic relationship with for several months had dumped me by text, blocked me from Facebook, and deleted her twitter. It was at this point that the elaborate web of deceit that she had strung me along with began to unravel.

 

Jigsaw

               

I tried to piece together

   the puzzle of our love.

But you’d placed your

  pieces upside down.

 

You claimed we

   didn’t fit together.

Only when you left

   did I begin to see

 

the fuller picture

    and the missing

piece you took

   away with you

 

After she abruptly and cruelly ended our relationship, I began to dig for clues. The question that plagued me was: why did she do this? I wanted to get to the bottom of it – to know the truth. As Hannah Arendt said, ‘there is only one truth, but it is alive, and so has a constantly changing face.’ I was in a desperate state of heart-break and confusion, and at that stage, still concerned for her. After all, she had just lost the child that we had supposedly created. But was this even true?

In my desperation, I went to her flat to deliver a poem in person. I’d printed it out on tiny slips of thin paper, stitched together with a feather. It was originally titled with her surname which, so she told me, meant ‘little bird.’ I’m sure that, whatever her own understanding of truth, she had been as taken in by her own mendacity as I had been deceived. But I had also managed to deceive myself, as I discovered when I knocked at her door.

 

Little Bird

 

Against all probability
and expectations of weather,
I discovered a fancy, a charm:
a tiny, exquisite feather.

I gave it to my loved one
but she wasn’t that impressed.
She said she felt it flutter deep
inside her delicate chest.
 
As it grew against her wishes
with teasing and with tickling
the thing became a little bird
with uncontrollable wings.
 
My love was, first, beguiled
but soon it turned into confusion,
for a single lucky feather
quickly grew into profusion.
 
It would, she knew, develop
from fledgling to fully-grown;
she felt it was far more
than just a feather I had sown.
 
In time the bird grew desperate,
and flapped and pecked and clawed.
It neither sang nor carolled,
nor chirped nor karked nor cawed.
 
It was as if the bird alive
was trapped inside a cage;
with no way of escape it flapped
in frantic, pointless rage.
 
I asked, what type of bird is this:
a pigeon or a dove?
A cuckoo or a nightingale;
a bird of prey or love?
 
She couldn’t say at first but then
declared it was a vulture.
It wasn’t quite what I had wished-
for in this wingéd creature.
 
She feared its wings would open wide
and break out of her frame.
Consoling her with soothing words –
she panicked just the same –
 
I said, this bird is real, I know:
a creature of our making.
Embrace it, place it in your heart:
it is yours for the taking.
 
But if she took, I’ll never know,
for the feather faded away.
The bird, disturbed, disappeared
without word in a single day.
 
It was at the hottest time of the year
that we came together as one.
But, as Icarus was mortal, we also
had flown too close to the sun.
 
The charm I gave my love was
little more than a waxen feather.
And as the sun went down, the bird
melted and slid right out of her.

Against all possibility,
in meaning beyond my verse
I discovered how a blessing
quickly turns into a curse.

 

If you have been following this story in the previous posts on this blog, you will know that I once saw her with a grey-haired man, about whom I knew nothing since she was careful not to reveal his existence to me. I found a link between him and her on Facebook.  She claimed he was one of her ‘best friends in the world.’ Their picture said otherwise. This man answered the door. I then learned that she hadn’t been attending her mother’s funeral two Saturdays before, as she had told me.

This man, a so-called best friend, was my ex-lover’s new husband. Her mother had attended their wedding on the day she was supposedly being laid to rest. As secrets turned to lies, at first I thought there must be some confusion. But when the penny dropped with a loud clang, I told this man exactly what had been going on. Understandably, he asked me to leave. And as I did, I swear I heard the cuckoo’s mocking call.

 

If I could leave this story here, I would.

Love or Death?

Anyone who has been in love (and let’s face it, surely everyone has?) will know how vulnerable one can become. Unlike the snail in the poem posted below, some retain an unbreakable shell to hide in. And anyone who has a relationship with a poet must know that they’ll end up ‘in these lines, from time to time,’ to quote Joni Mitchell. In that same song, ‘A Case of you,’ Joni takes a line from Julius Caesar: ‘I am as constant as the Northern Star.’ Having cited a play about horrific deceit and betrayal, it’s time to continue my tale about the person I thought I had fallen in love with last year.

When I first began to perform my work on the spoken word scene in Edinburgh, I found it nerve-wracking. Despite my experience as a performer, I discovered that reading or reciting one’s own words leaves a person exposed. It’s not the same vulnerability that falling in love brings, where one can risk being exploited with utter devastation – as have I learned to my cost. Edinburgh audiences are warm and supportive, welcoming people no matter where they are from or at as writers.

As I performed more, I became well-known for using props and pictures to accompany my words. I sometimes invited fellow-performers to recite with me. Playing my best hand, I sang in between poems, making my performance memorable to some. For one poem, I got a member of the audience (prior to performing) to flip a fifty pence coin at the end of the poem. This made the audience believe the poem’s end is decided by the toss of a coin. Not the case, but I like the conceit.

 

Decision-Making

 
They tossed a coin.
She had to leave the next day, so,
as if their love was purchased by
a simple ‘heads-or-tails,’ they tossed a coin.

They met by chance,

so why not leave their parting up to Fate.
They tossed a coin before it was too late,
before affairs internal intervened;
decisions better made by flip-of-coin
than flutter-of-heart or flicker-of-brain.
 
Before they feared all hope of love was lost,
before she caught her plane, they tossed –
although she’d bought the ticket with
the same process; heads, return;
(or was it, single?) tails, one-way.
That lucky coin had much to do to earn its pay.

It seemed a flippant way to choose

between a part-time love, long-distance,
or a momentary muse.
They tossed a coin and left to Chance
a future separate or separated;
a fifty-fifty abdication of
decisions doubly complicated:
What if either was to disagree?
Should they try for best-of-three?

They could, of course, ignore Fate’s fickle hand,
and do whatever Love had planned:
Love, that faithless mimic of Fate’s random.
It was Love had thrown them both together, tandem.
And so, they tossed the coin the one time only.
It was that coin that held them both together, lonely.

 

This poem was published in one of the Blind Poetics pamphlets. When I performed it at The Blind Poet last year, I asked an attractive young woman sitting on the sofa next to the stage area if she could do the coin-flip thing. A grey-haired man, old enough to be her father’s older brother, said ‘She won’t be able to.’ I gave him a look that said, I wasn’t asking you, and handed her the coin. I hate to admit that her companion was right. I ended up tossing the coin myself.

The un-named person at the centre of my current tale was, I later learned, that girl on the sofa. We met, by chance, a few months after and began ‘seeing each other,’ to coin a phrase. I subsequently gave her a second chance to flip a coin in exchange for tickets I’d bought to see something together, and she succeeded. It seems the grey-haired man didn’t know her so well after all. It also seemed that fate in fact had a different ending in store, although I didn’t come to know this for some time.

I had no reason to think the newly-forming relationship that I was in was destined for the disaster that occurred. Since I have indicated that she was a manipulative schemer, I’m not sure it was down to fate at all. Were there warning-signs? Oh yes, but when you are newly in love with a person who is a figment of their own imagination, even those romantic composers can be quickly dismissed.

 

Neue Liebe

Mendelssohn began where Schumann left off,

took a newer, or ‘renewed’ love,
and set off on a pacing steed into a night
of moonlit passion and speedy quaver passages.
Did he think he’d found the key
to an eternal mystery that Schumann
attempted to bury at sea?
Old Felix liked the water, true enough,
but couldn’t stop the floods from drowning Love.
His diminished chord on ‘Tod’ proved it was not,
as the Bible claims, as strong as Death.
Maybe he was expecting something truly
novel out of Love, not just a dull repeat.
But this was a man who claimed he could
see Fingal’s Cave from Arthur’s Seat.

 

As I have said, our relationship wasn’t straight-forward. She was a busy person, with her tutoring, studies, and business arrangements (although I’ll never know how genuine these were.) I have to admit I was upset when she didn’t come to see me performing my work, especially since the poems were inspired by her. But I’m not a possessive type. Once, before we were formally introduced to each other, she asked if I was going to a particular poetry event. I had forgotten our first encounter at the Blind Poet, and was surprised to find that she knew I was into spoken word stuff.

I attended the event in question and, naturally, looked out for her. She wasn’t there. It seems that, from the start, she was plotting her connivance. The first part of her plan was to ensure that our social paths never crossed. I guess it was important that I didn’t see that grey-haired man again. Lately, a friend said to me that this story has become the stuff of myth; we can never be sure what happened or did not; what was true or fake. I put her behaviour down to the fact that we wanted different things from our relationship. Yet she made it clear that she wanted me in her life.

 

Mixed Doubles

I tried to explain polytonality

to a student.
It’s two opposing modalities
played at the same time.
He looked confused.
Don’t the differing tonalities jar?
No, said I: it’s about what you feel,
not what you think you hear.
It’s a four foot stop
on the organ,
or that bit in the Bolero, you know,
where the high winds play
the same tune in a different key.
I could tell he’d never seen
that dance made famous
by Torville and Dean.
At the same time? said he.
Yes, said I, consecutively.
The pleasure principle, doubled?
said he, clearly troubled.
So I said, it’s like two lovers
who want different things,
and yet their love still sings.
He looked at me quizzically.
Why?
It simply is,
said I.

 

Of course I’ll never really know what was going on in the mind of this person I was dating, if that’s the right expression. I had no reason to believe that the texts, emails and conversations that we shared were anything other than genuine. I knew that the expression ‘love’ was hard for her, partly due to the difficult up-bringing she had been through. That said, I don’t know how much of what she told me was actually true. Either way, she seemed unable to express those three magic words.

Fickle Daisies

She plucked another petal, then

another when she found it true.
And thinking she’d been fooled,
she plucked another petal. Then
presuming luck – or fate – pretend
to know the answer over-ruled
she plucked another petal; then
another when she found it true.

 

I’m going to end this post with another song, by Genesis. After Gabriel and Hackett left, there were only three. It seems there were at least three people in this person’s life. And I had been lured into a waiting trap that I could never have spotted. For all her reticence to utter the words, ‘I love you,’ this person who shall not be named was quite able to say another three fateful words.

‘I am pregnant.’

A Confession

Last week I went to a poetry-reading by the Scottish Makar, Liz Lochhead. She is a great poet, and a great talker! Every question from the audience was answered with an amusing and informative anecdote. My question was about writing autobiographical poetry. Many novice poets write in first-person, and the ‘I’ of the poem is usually them. I’d heard Liz say before that most of her early poems were like this. It takes bravery and technique to adopt a persona and move from abstract to universal.

Liz Lochhead’s advice to new poets is, ‘Use feelings, but don’t name them – let the descriptions evoke them; be daring and write from someone else’s experience.’ There seems to be a trend in performance poetry to use ‘tell, not show’ technique, the very opposite of what creative writing manuals advise. The use of 2^nd-person narrative verges on condescension. Perhaps it’s meant to “draw the audience in,” but as soon as I hear a line beginning, ‘You see…’ Or even, ‘See…’ I know I’m about to be told some personal platitude. “Confessional” poetry is not a string of rhyming clichés.

I’m also ambivalent about having poetry shouted at me, as if the words are worthless unless voiced fortissimo and at double-speed. As Liz Lochhead also said, ‘It’s the voice of the poem that’s speaking, not the poet.’ I admit (but this is not a confession) that I used a lot of 2^nd-person narrative in my poem-sequence, The Olive Box, because it was the poet addressing his love, Olivia. And that person was a fictitious character, though based on various people from personal history.

A year ago, however, I found myself writing poetry from a far more personal point of view.

This time last year I found myself falling in love with someone I shouldn’t have fallen in love with. I let a young, attractive and, so it turned out, highly manipulative woman burgle my heart. Having been hurt and abused by several women before, I vowed I would never allow this to happen again. But Love has a different agenda – as did this woman (who shall remain nameless.) She too, so she claimed, had never allowed the perils and dangers of partnership to interfere with her busy, single-minded life. And so, one of my poems reflected this by using 2^nd-person narrative.

 

L’Après-midi

You left a window open in the living room.

Didn’t think it dangerous or risky.
Besides, only a small child could gain entry,
and it’s been some time since
adults had unscrupulous kids
climb chimneys, burgle houses,
or pick a pocket or two.
You left a window open in the living room.
You’d double-locked the front door;
all other entrances (or exits) were blocked;
you’d be back soon. You’d only popped
out for a pint of milk or something
equally mundane. All the same,
that open window bothered you.
A person of precaution,
you were not the sort to leave to chance
an open goal for any passing opportunist.
You double-locked your life:
never left your bag unguarded;
covered the keypad when entering your pin;
never gave your password out to anyone.
But then – but then – you left a window open.
And someone – or something – got in.
It was around 3pm in the afternoon,
you returned without any surprises,
and there in your room a creature stirred,
although you couldn’t see or touch it.
You stopped because you heard –
or thought so – no: could sense
a spirit that you couldn’t put your finger on.
Nor taste, nor smell, nor any other instinct
could explain its presence.
Should you leave the window
open for this strange beast to escape?
You paused, since
that would surely be a waste.
Should you close the window?
To fathom this position, newly-poised,
you had to make a choice.
Only then – only then – you heard a voice.
 

If only I had listened to that voice which was perhaps, in retrospect, a voice of warning. That’s what poets do, after all. In my last post I wrote about hangovers; not from alcohol, but the day after a life-changing experience. For a soppy romantic, the day after that first kiss is bound to be a dizzy one. A running theme of many poems I wrote during this period of misplaced ecstasy was about repeating the same mistake. How many times have I woken up to say: never again? One too many, it seems.

 

Days After

There are three types of illness that plague us –

not on this day but the next. That is,
in those initial hours before a certainty
kicks in. I’m talking the dawning reality,
the morning-after when the day before
vomits an empty book on the bathroom floor.
I’ll spell them out, in case you’re not sure.
The stagnant ache of alcohol that, having coursed
its merry way around your veins,
becomes a stuck thud in your brain.
Or the bitter blow of death, that leaves
a void so visceral and deep inside
it cannot be catharticised.
And then there is that sweetest of hangovers:
I’m talking Love – or Lust, if you will –
the feather in the stomach
that flutters up through heart into mouth,
tempting a kiss from her tongue –
assuming there will be another one.
As I say, there are three types of ill –
Love and Death and Alcohol –
and all require a bitter pill… 
Better swallow it soon,
before the honest afternoon
empties into evening and you
repeat the whole damn cycle again.

 

Eating featured heavily in our relationship. She, the un-named, had had a difficult relationship with food. When we met, however, her appetite was healthy. One of our early ‘dates’ was a picnic (and poetry) in Musselburgh. We spent evenings eating salsa with tortilla chips and drinking red wine on Bruntsfield Links. We ate, and kissed, in Princes Street Gardens in the shadow of St Cuthbert’s Church (I asked if she’d been inside. She said ‘no’ but now I know she lied.) Once, we drank tea from a flask by St Antony’s Chapel. But we never made it to the top of Arthur’s seat, as this poem implies.

 

Picnic

We only made it half way up before

you spread your cloth and opened your flask.
Even so, by then the coffee was cold
and the sandwiches, limp, but we laughed.
You didn’t need to tell me that you
loved me, and I didn’t need to ask.
Above us, those who’d gone to the top
of the hill; above them, ravens karked,
while we tumbled into each other,
crowns intact; remained until the dark
convinced us that, despite that black bird’s
ominous threat, we thought our love would last.

 

When I sent that poem to her, she said there were so many layers. It seems there were also many layers to her duplicity. She claimed there were many types of food she had not eaten, due to a highly restrictive up-bringing, which may have been partly true. I took pleasure in sharing my gastronomical passions with her, and didn’t suspect that, in fact, she was far more familiar with forbidden fruit that she made out. I wrote the following poem after the first time we… oh hell, the romantic in me wants to say, ‘made love.’ Sadly, “had sex” would be more accurate.

 

The Second Breakfast

 

I will give my love an apple without e'er a core
I will give my love a house without e'er a door

 

Your naïveté astonished me.

I fed you flavours many think as ordinary,
although my maverick culinary tricks
threw exotic pairings into the mix.
Introducing you to pan-fried gnocchi
with smoked salmon (yes: you eat it raw) –
you devoured it greedily, asked for more.
And beetroot with ricotta – not a
combination many would think of –
turned the cheese, and our fingers, pink.

You nibbled nervously at mussels,

dragging them tentatively from their shell,
stretching their sinews, holding your nose
against the stench of the sea
(which I’d disguised with fennel, cumin,
citruses: heaping random botanicals in
as if I were distilling an artisan gin.)
Against the grain we drank red wine,
and tins of Guinness for pudding.
Bloated but engorged, our mouths
met… and hungered yet for more.
 
Next day we continued our tantric banquet,
still wet with passion or hunger or both.
There was no need to whet your appetite,
but you rejected the fruit I’d prepared
(was it Galia, Canteloupe or Honeydew?)
and confessed you’d never eaten a pear.
I said: you eat it like an apple without any core.
Its ripeness dribbled down your chin as you sank in.
 
Later, keen to complete your repertoire
of cuisine that was (to you) nouveaux,
you found another pear: an avocado.
I made a simple mustard vinaigrette,
but you took my hand and, smiling, replied,
I’d rather have it, you know, undressed.
I feared, as I cut around its cold stone
heart and held apart the separated halves,
this would conclude our feast.
But no: the soft exotic flesh became
for us a secondary break of fast.

 

There was nothing, at this stage, to make me think that I had been duped by her. My only regret was that we didn’t spend more time together. She was a busy person, with a rich mixture of studying, tutoring, and socialising. She claimed she had, in her spare time, a business to run, and was doing a high-level ballet exam – although I now doubt that either of these were true. They were merely ‘holding devices.’ When not with me, we retained strong communication through email and text. Once, I texted her a list of adjectives, which I later turned into a poem. Oh, poor deluded fool.

 

You Are

 

Funny like that bone that when hit judders

Adorable as a juggernaut when it shudders
Crazy like a pavement covered with cobbles
Wild as an elephant with the collywobbles
Sensitive as a finely ground lens
Talented like a show that never ends
Sexy – or should I call it sensuous
Ridiculous – your laughter is hilarious
Serious as a classical music station
Beautiful beyond temptation
Spirited like an alcoholic liquor
Soft (and strong) as tissue yet far thicker
Exquisite like every taste upon your skin
Tough as a creature that cannot sink nor swim
Melting as the sea that swallows me in
Vulnerable as the little bird within
More than this and wanting less
You are much more than this
Yet so much less
You are
By far

 

This list-poem, although as defrauded as she was fake, reminded me of several songs in which the same harmonic pattern returns in a cycle. For the next poem I included classical songs (from Purcell to Faure) popular classics (‘All The Things You Are’, and ‘Laura’) and pop-song references because, it seemed, this person was equally familiar with a wide range of music. I’m not sure this was true: her claim that she was giving violin-lessons to youngsters charging 60 quid a pop was way off the mark.

 

Repeat ad lib ’til fade

 

                for…

 

In music, they call it the circle

of fifths, where one chord drops
onto another, related, then onto
the next; an endless cycle repeated
as if in perpetuum mobile
until you return to the home key,
the ‘tonic’ – back to the beginning.

It is a familiar progression

of well-tempered, equal temperament,
from Pachelbel’s Canon to Dido’s Lament;
it rises up through increased sharps
to a Total Eclipse of the Heart,
then flats decrease, like deflated ego:
I Will Survive completes the cycle.

There are, naturally, complications
as relative keys progress sequential:
we think of music’s relationships –
whether major, or minor – consequential
and hear in the Just the Way You Are,
Aprés un Rêve, or even, Laura,
the same chords over and over.

 

I’ll say it again: I had no idea I was in the same situation of falling for someone who wasn’t what they seemed. I constantly edited and re-drafted the poetry I wrote at the time, trying different voices, tenses, and narratives. The next poem I decided to leave in first-person, since I felt it carried a universal message of embryonic love; that tricky stage of commitment-versus-reticence. But here’s a confession: the ‘I’ is all about me. As I said last month, you can put your sorrows into a story. Poems, on the other hand, can’t help but be personal.

 

In Her Shell

I picked up a snail from the path.

Daft, I know, but as it squeezed
itself deeper into its shell, I held it,
observing its underneath, thinking
it would show a fleshy, softly beating
reality of what pulsated in its heart.
But no. After a time I thought, oh well,
perhaps it wasn’t meant to be.
I replaced it, knowing my fantasy
was more about what I saw in the shell
than the knowledge of that vulnerability
which prevented her (I assumed a gender)
from sharing her home, her life, her love.
Was I cruel, or naïve, to up-end her?

 

I’ll end with that question.

 

It seemed there was much more to this story than met my eye.