I may not be very good at writing poems, but I can make them into pretty shapes. Well, I can make one poem into a shape, anyway. I haven’t tried any other shapes. Any requests?

This was one of my poems for TMA3. My tutor wasn’t very impressed. She said ‘blah blah blah’. Or something like that.

The results for TMA3 are in.

Oh dear.

Ok, so it was poetry.  And I’ve never really read any poetry, let alone try to write any.  But I liked my poems.  My tutor obviously didn’t, even if she did say they contained ‘energy’, ‘humour’ and a ‘unique perspective’.

My marks are going down and down.  After being delighted with the score for TMA1, ever since, I’ve been disappointed.  Is it because I’ve got worse or because I need to work harder to even maintain a consistent score?  Or is it because I had a different tutor mark the first one who rated my work too highly and has therefore given me a distorted sense of my abilities or because my new tutor marks too harshly and is now destroying my confidence?

I don’t think I write stuff the OU want to read.  I write stuff I want to read.

Even if that means submitting work in the shape of a bagel and writing stories about girls getting killed on the way to their wedding and cats being decapitated.

I don’t want to write endless descriptions and have my work crammed full of metaphors no one’s going to notice unless I mention it in the commentary.

I just want to write trash.

To avoid being disappointed, maybe I should take a clichéd leaf out of Sophie Ellis Bextor’s book and become a pessimist.  I bet she hasn’t even written a book.  And if she did, it’d just get published anyway, what with her being famous and that.

Ok, plan B.  Get famous and get published and forget about stupid tutors and their ‘blah blah blah, you’re crap’ rubbish.

At least I can’t get a worse score for the next one.  Oops,  nearly forgot.

Must. Remain. Pessimistic.

A chill in the air
Leaves turning amber and gold
Autumn approaches

Naughty me, another haiku that isn’t describing a scene in nature.

Pen

Ink runs so freely
Transcribing the written word
Our thoughts are gathered

I’ve just got to the Daily haiku part in the BRB (I know, I know, I’m behind…) and I was looking forward to this bit as then I could see if what I’d been doing up to now was completely shit.  Well, obviously I knew it was completely shit, but I just wanted it confirmed.

A traditional haiku is one that captures a scene in nature or seasonal change arranged in three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables.

We’re told to focus on painting a picture in words but then the BRB loses my respect by saying not to exceed the seventeen syllables but we may make it less.  Less syllables? LESS?  Surely they mean fewer?  Bah.

Oh well, onto the haiku.  With seventeen syllables or fewer.

No. 1

Curiosity
Green eyes gaze out of window
Black fur meets sharp claws

No. 2

Blue skies and green trees
Clouds floating overhead
Fields are full of sheep

No. 3
Rubber burns tarmac
A distant rumble of cars
Rush hour traffic looms

Hmm.  How many syllables in “hour”?  One or two?  I’m thinking two now, which means my haiku is WRONG.

No. 4

A lonely cottage
Tiles fall and crash to the ground
Only brick remains

Would that sound better as “only bricks remain” rather than “only brick remains”?

This focusing on painting a picture in words thing is quite hard, as I’m trying to think in a deeper, more sensory way, rather than just choosing some words and trying to make them fit into 5-7-5.

No. 5
Treetops whispering
Their silent call to nature
Here it is tranquil

I think there’s too many small words in my haiku, e.g. “is”, “to”, “a”.  I need to cut these down.

No. 6

Bookmark scuffed and bent
A reminder of books read
Many more to come

Well, that’s neither a scene in nature nor a seasonal change but hey ho, I don’t think Bashô’s going to rise from his grave and come after me.

No. 7

White clouds suspended
Movement imperceptible
Like high up sheep

Ok, I’m getting into silly terrority now.  And I was doing so well with the nature thing.

No. 8

Black face peeks through fence
Chomping the grass on the ground
Looks up, says “baa”

No. 9

Mother brings the food
Kids are screaming “that’s my plate!”
Father takes a drink

I’m not sure if quotation marks are allowed in haiku.  Probably not.

That’s the end of today’s haiku.

The fire’s glowing red
Feet up with a glass of wine
Friday evening, ah

Still playing with my rhyming dictionary, here’s another.  I don’t know what sort of poem it is.  (And don’t say a crap one.)

Isabella

There was a girl called Isabella
Wanted to be a storyteller
Hoping OU would teach her to write
She stayed up scribbling into the night

I’m not sure how much rhyming poetry we’ll be doing in A215 but I was browsing amazon for rhyming dictionaries and got some recommendations from others on the course, and decided upon the Oxford Rhyming Dictionary
which was delivered today.

Obviously, I couldn’t wait to try it out, here’s the result.

Prawn

There once was a young man called Shaun
Whose girlfriend forced him to eat Quorn
One day he fought back
And fixed a quick snack
Of sandwiches made out of prawn

We cover poetry in A215 and although that’s not until the New Year, The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry has been recommended by various people on the OU A215 forum.

While I was in Cornwall last weekend visiting Emily and Michael, I spied a copy of The Ode Less Travelled on their bookshelves.  “Ooh, I said, do you write poetry?”  I asked Emily.  “No, Michael’s sister gave it to me for Christmas,” she replied.  I said I’d been recommended it and promptly took it off the shelf and gave it a quick flick through.

I didn’t understand a word of it.  Ok, maybe the odd word like “a” and “and” but apart from that, complete gobbledegook.  I very ladylikely said “Bollocks to that then” and put it back on the shelf as promptly as I’d taken it off.

After returning to Kent, I went on the forum and said I’d had a quick flick through it but didn’t understand a word of it.  Someone sensibly pointed out that if I read it from the beginning it would make more sense.  Wise words, I thought, but didn’t want to splash out on it via amazon so logged on to my good old fashioned bricks, mortar and dust library’s website and reserved a copy, which I picked up yesterday.

This time, I started reading it from the beginning.  I hadn’t got very far (in fact only the third page in the Foreword) when Mr Fry says “While it is perfectly possible that you did not learn music at school, or drawing and painting, it is almost certain that you did learn poetry.“

Now, while I don’t consider myself an inverted snob or suffer from any class insecurities, I would like to point out that in my school we most certainly did learn music, and drawing and painting but most certainly did not learn poetry.  At least, from what I can remember.  What school did he go to where he didn’t learn music, and drawing and painting?  Certainly wasn’t an East London comprehensive, anyway.

What, you don’t think he went to an East London comprehensive?  Blimey.