The Cerebral Mum

30 poems in 30 days. A simple enough task. It is now Day 22 and I have written only 10 poems for the project. I have never been very good at finishing things. I am a great procrastinator. Take for example my novel and this painful confession:

I began it in 1994.

Even allowing for 3 computer disasters (which left me computerless for roughly 5 of those 13 years), a lost manuscript (recovered after 7 torturous months) and a ritual burning of about 200 pages (somewhere around the turn of the century), it is a fairly unimpressive effort. At the moment I could not even tell you what state it is in. I hadn’t finished word processing the copious notebooks and scrap paper I filled with my insane scrawls during the penultimate computer crash before the last one occurred.

And then I got pregnant.

I worked my butt off during my pregnancy to save as much money as I could before entering the realm of single motherhood and have not touched my novel since. And I won’t. Work will not begin again until Cas and I have moved back into the city and I am no longer in the in-between. My rough estimate is that about 60% of it is written but it will require some major structural editing as I have been writing it disjointedly for years.

When it does get published, we’ll just avoid mentioning the year 1994 to the critics. Marcel Proust I am not.

But back to that original thought I haven’t yet finished. I am 12 poems behind with only 8 days left. Even excusing myself for the days I was hanging over the toilet bowl as though I were in my first trimester, that too is a fairly unimpressive effort. I’m not being hard on myself. It’s just a fact.

So do I try and catch up? Do I give up? Do I let it go and finish each assignment at my leisure?

I would like to finish the 30 poems in the allotted time; because I chose to participate; because it is hard; because leaving everything to the last minute, until it seems everything is about to implode, is no longer a habit that works for me.

I am a mother.

I used to thrive under pressure; write papers which earned High Distinctions on the night before they were due, work 17 hour shifts on two hours sleep and then go back for more, frantically fill page after page until I was dizzy from the pace of it and I could no longer see. It’s not that I don’t have the stamina any more: I never had it. It’s because I don’t have the drug.

Adrenaline.

I was an adrenaline junkie. Life just pushed so hard that there was never a chance to be tired, and if it didn’t push me hard enough, I made it. I ran on my second wind for years and I loved it. Motherhood has its own hormonal highs but it is nothing like that rush of blood to the head. Motherhood is not strenuous. It is neither a sprint or a marathon. Motherhood is a slow shift.

I was about to launch into a long paragraph about how working in hospitality is like being a rock star but that would be another digression. Let’s just say that it is driving, physical work and it has it’s own momentum. It generates energy and you feed off it. You get caned all night then you clean up and hang out, drinking and smoking and seeing who can tell the most scurrilous stories about the guests.

But the slow shifts - the ones where you’ve polished every bottle, restocked every fridge and wiped every surface twice - those shifts are the killers. Your body isn’t pumping sugars to your brain and you have time to think. Usually, I would think about all the other things I could be doing if I wasn’t trapped in that bar or restaurant, standing at attention like a palace guard. I would be annoyed by the lack of customers, and then annoyed when a customer interrupted whatever boondoggly task I’d found to do.

Babies aren’t very demanding. Their needs are simple, they sleep a lot, their movements are limited and they are easily amused. But in that first year we have to stand at attention constantly and all the things that used to get done in large blocks of time have to get done in pieces. We cannot let the house go to wrack and ruin while we play at whatever is more interesting and then tidy it in a frenzy all in one day. We can’t immerse ourselves in a book and read it cover to cover. Babies’ needs are too constant and not constant enough. There is too little to do but you aren’t free to go and do something else.

This manic insomniac who burnt the candle at both ends until she crashed and and then lit the next one with glee needs to find new ways to get things done. There is not enough pressure but there is no valve to release what is there if it builds up. You can’t put babies on hold. You can’t call in sick. You can’t take a mental health day. You can’t just say, Stuff it - I’m going to the beach.

So I will try and get my poems done but in all likelihood some won’t make it within the 30 days. I’m trying to realign the way my energy works with the requirements of my new life (which I love!) but it is a trial and error process and I don’t have the answers yet.

I do know, however, that it hasn’t done me in!

The fourth assignment from 30 Poems in 30 Days . Poetry of place…

Get out of the house and write in a new place. Write about the place you choose to go to. Don’t just rely on what you see. Describe the smells, the tastes and the sounds if you can. Try to give your readers a full picture of the place you choose.

I have discovered
you cannot write
a poem
at the beach

with child in tow
with sand in fist
with weak waves lapping
still cold

with gulls crying
with hand tugged
while watching
first wet feet.

You cannot write
a poem
at the beach
when it is

new and seen
with new eyes
fixated on the sand
the texture

the damp sinking
movement
beneath pink
feet.

Not while you
teach him
to shake and shake
it off

teach him not
to eat it
point to birds
point

to waves
to people
unseen by eyes
fixated.

You have to cheat
and write
when he is home
in bed.

The second assignment from the 30 Poems in 30 Days project. Writing about yourself…

“Write about an event in your life that happened within the past week. Take some time to think about the week and look for event that has some emotional meaning for you, but not so much that it would be painful for you to write about. Sometimes smaller moments have more meaning.”

Each afternoon
the swing the slide
before he sleeps

And in the park
each afternoon
girl not yet two

Her mother’s hair
skin, full lips bright
each afternoon.

We start to speak
smile, move away
obliged and small

He watches girl
we start to speak
my silent boy

I can’t explain
girl crying mine
we start to speak.

I say my name
then she says hers.

We start to speak
each afternoon.

Hmm. I don’t know if I like this one. I said yesterday’s was hard and I thought there was a specific reason but I think the specific reason is that I am a rusty, rusty woman. It feels very forced to me. Consciously limiting what to write, both the content and the form is difficult.

But I know it’s good exercise so I’m still not going to apologise.

Who knows, tomorrow I might like it.

The first assignment from the 30 Poems in 30 Days project.

“Write a poem about your childhood. Explore an actual event that had some emotional significance to you. Avoid using any description of how you felt about the event then or how you feel about it now. Instead, try to make the emotion of the event come through in your descriptions of what happened.”

Drought

every day is summer
violent, unrelenting
barefoot and I am running
black tar, the road is melting
dry heat, the air is shaking
burnt skin and I am flying
down the road, the tar is sticking

every day is summer

passed the pubs, the men are drinking
passed the shops, shopkeepers idling
passed the town, the road is widening
through dry fields, tobacco dying
along dirt tracks, the dust is moting
then the shade, the trees are standing
by the river, water calling
water cool and dark and greening

every day is summer

I slide in and I am smiling
and the days are never ending
until the rain comes, then the flooding

every day is summer

I thought I’d keep my commentary until after the poem. I never read the introduction first. I like to make up my own mind.

All I have to say, really, is that I found this extraordinarily hard. My childhood memories are nebulous so trying to find a subject which I could limit to pure description was a challenge. It’s been a long time and I’m sure this won’t win any prizes but I don’t feel as though I have to apologise for it.

I like it. I like the rhythm and I like that, to me at least, it conveys something about growing up in Australia.

So, that’s one down. 29 to go.

There is a wonderful blog I found called the Writer’s Resource Centre which I haven’t yet even begun to tap the depths of. They’ve just announced a new project called, yes, 30 Poems in 30 Days.

Every day I will discuss a poetry-related concept and give out a poetry assignment along with a recommended poet to read. All of the poets I will recommend are working in the field today. There will be no Coleridge or Whitman to sample here. We will look to the present instead.

This series of posts has two goals. The first is to teach you a little about poetry and give you some things to think about. The second is to give you enough potential material to publish your own book of poetry. Thirty poems are enough to create a small book of poetry. At the end of the thirty days, I will discuss at least three low-cost ways to publish your own book of poetry.

I haven’t written poetry in a long, long time but it was what I first started writing as a child so I’m going to take up the challenge. As I’m currently trying to figure out who the hell I am through writing, it’s seems like serendipity.

The first two assignments have already been listed, so I’ll be playing catch up tonight and you should all expect me to post some pretty horrendous poetry over the next month.

It might be bad, but it will have purpose. You can’t write well if you’re too afraid to write badly.

_{*Participant’s work will be posted in the comments over at the Writer’s Resource Centre, so if you want to see what others are doing, you’ll find it there.}

Tonight I am struggling with what I want to say. It is too complex. So tonight you get to read this poem by Wallace Stevens. Forgive the tristesse. I am sad for someone. But it’s always darkest before dawn.

Another Weeping Woman

Pour the unhappiness out
from your too bitter heart,
Which grieving will not sweeten.

Poison grows in this dark.
It is in the water of tears
Its black blooms rise.

The magnificent cause of being,
The imagination, the one reality
In this imagined world

Leaves you
With him for whom no phantasy moves,
And you are pierced by a death.

^{WALLACE STEVENS}