Tag Archives: villanelle

Carrot Soup, Curry and Cushions

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The day is nearly over and I have completed the first draft of the new villanelle I discussed a couple of days ago.  It’s still a bit rough around the edges but it now has all the lines and all the rhymes it needs. The lines are nearly ll the right length, and the rhymes nearly all work, so it’s coming closer to being ready and looks quite like a poem.

I spoke to a bird watcher I know a few days ago and told him about the kites we saw on our drive through Northamptonshire. He was unimpressed. He’s only been doing it for around a year and he has never known the kite as a rare bird. What is a thing of wonder to me is a commonplace event to him. It’s strange what a difference twenty years can make.

After a lazy day, we had sweet potato and chickpea curry, which was quite tasty. It tasted all the better for being the culmination of a plan, and was quite an easy meal – just needing warming up to be ready. I am at work tomorrow and have just made sandwiches using the mackerel paste I made on Thursday. Tomorrow Julia will have the rest of the carrot and parsnip soup for lunch. Not sure about tea, but e will then have the leftover curry. We won’t have it for tea, I expect, because Julia has a fixation about not having the same thing twice in a row. Women, in my experience, are like that.

As a child I once expressed an opinion that I wished I could eat nothing but cheese and pickle sandwiches for the rest of my life. My mother said i would soon tire of them if that was all I had. I wasn’t convinced. Sixty years later I am still happy to have them every lunchtime, but my digestion does require me to take a break every few weeks, at which point I try something else for a while. We’ve just had a couple of weeks of tuna mayonnaise, corned beef and now mackerel paste, but I still find it hard to beat cheese and pickle.

I honestly believe that is one of the main differences between women and men. They like cushions, children and variety in their menus, wheres I could happily live without all that frippery.

And just like my food, I have little difficulty in reworking old titles and photos.

D H Lawrence Wonders What’s For His Tea – A Poem

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Here’s the poem I had published in Obsessed with Pipework back in February. It is published in paper form rather than on the internet, which means I can’t link to it at the time of publication. I’m not sure what the precise etiquette is with quoting it after that, but it seems reasonable to do it once the next issue is out. That arrived this week, so it seems as good a time as any.

It’s meant to be tongue in cheek, but I’m worried that published alongside more serious poetry it might look like I’m being serious. This is not a poem about the dietary requirements of a well-known Nottinghamshire writer, it’s a poem showing that even serious literary heavyweights get hungry, and that they just dawdle about waiting to be served. D. H. Lawrence does not strike me as the sort of man who would make his own tea. I know he was considered advanced for his time but I’m not sure that this extended to housework.

I should read up on him, and as Julia’s uncle wrote a couple of biographies of Lawrence, which we have in the house, I have no excuse.

It has the rhyme scheme of a villanelle, but I couldn’t get the lines to the correct length without adding words to pad them out, so I gave up. It’s probably best described as “modelled on a villanelle” but ” a poor attempt at a villanelle” would also be fair. For a good villanelle, try here, or here.

In the end, as has been said by many people, you don’t finish a poem, you just abandon it. After hacking away at this one for nearly three years, I decided it was time to set it free.

D H Lawrence Wonders What’s For His Tea

The kettle sits on the hearth and sings
and Eastwood seems so far away.
He writes of snakes and other phallic things
and wonders what teatime will bring,
coughing gently at the close of day.
The kettle sits on the hearth and sings.
Dusk closes in on phoenix wings,
with thoughts of mothers and mortality.
He writes of snakes and other phallic things,
thinks of muffins, jam and apron strings,
and crumpets laid out on a tray.
The kettle sits on the hearth and sings
as he stretches out his stiffening limbs.
Could life have gone another way?
He writes of snakes and other phallic things,
ponders the fates of men and kings
and wonders where life went astray.
The kettle sits on the hearth and sings:
he writes of snakes, and other phallic things.