Admin Post: The Poetry Page: On The Bummel with Mrs. Hudson

[scfrankles]

Welcome back, everyone, and thank you for accompanying me on another jaunt!

Now careful readers may remember that the last time you joined me I was locked in the broom cupboard with some of my fellow poets. Thankfully we have not been in there since May. Mr. Holmes and the doctor did indeed return from Birmingham and let us out.

However, after this experience, I decided to take a little time away from Baker Street and go on a lecture tour of the British Isles for a few months. My lecture being titled: ‘How to Run a House and keep it Clean in the face of dealing with a Man who likes to keep Chemicals and Criminal Relics in the Butter Dish’. Or more pithily: ‘A Consulting Detective, and Dishing the Dirt’.

I received a surprising amount of interest.

And now I have returned home, that interest has not faded! That is why I have invited you all here today to the offices of that well-known magazine The Girl's Own Paper. I am going to be asked a few questions about my life and work, and my answers will be shaped into an article!

While I speak to the editor Mr. Peters, perhaps you would like to look through past issues of the magazine and see if anything inspires you for your poetry. You can find the issues in this office here.


As added inspiration, here is a quotation from Dr. Watson’s story ‘The Six Napoleons,’ quoting that famous newspaper man, Mr. Horace Harker:



“It's an extraordinary thing,” said he, “that all my life I have been collecting other people's news, and now that a real piece of news has come my own way I am so confused and bothered that I can't put two words together. If I had come in here as a journalist I should have interviewed myself and had two columns in every evening paper. As it is I am giving away valuable copy by telling my story over and over to a string of different people, and I can make no use of it myself.”



And let me also list the usual suggestions for poetry forms:


221B verselet, abecedarian poetry, acrostic poetry, alexandrine, ballad, barzelletta, beeswing, blackout poetry, blitz poem, blues stanza, bref double, Burns stanza, call and response, chastushka, cherita, cinquain, circular poetry, clerihew, clogyrnach, colour poems, compound word verse, concrete poetry, Cornish verse, curtal sonnet, débat, décima, descort, diamante, doggerel, double dactyl, echo verse, ekphrasis, elegiac couplet, elegiac stanza, elfje, englyn, enuig, epigram, epistle, epitaph, epulaeryu, Etheree, fable, Fib, florette, found poetry, free verse, ghazal, haiku, hay(na)ku, In Memoriam stanza, Italian sonnet, jueju, kennings poem, lanturne, lies, limerick, line messaging, list poem, lyric poetry, mathnawī, micropoetry, mini-monoverse, musette, nonsense verse, palindrome poetry, pantoum, Parallelismus Membrorum, poem cycle, puente, quatern, quintilla, renga, rhyming alliterisen, riddle, rimas dissolutas, rime couée, rispetto, Schüttelreim, sedoka, septet, sestina, shadorma, sonnet, stream of consciousness, tanka, tercet, terza rima, tongue twister poetry, triangular triplet, tricube, trine, triolet, Tyburn, villanelle, xenolith


But for now I will bid you a temporary farewell. I am off to be interviewed!

Comments

[smallhobbit]

A respectable lady should know the way
To clear up after a man almost every day
Her role in this life is to make man's world much better
To fetch, and to carry, whether parcel or letter
But sisters the time's come to stand up for our class
I'm off with a brick to break me some glass.

[scfrankles]

Stirring words, madam. Stirring words ^___^

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Rabble-rousing! May you make your point (and not have to swept up the consequences).

[smallhobbit]

Thank you.

I'm giving a man the brush
And telling him not to make a fuss!

Letter: Hiatus angst, POV Watson, borrowed from Elizabeth Bishop's "Letter to N.Y."

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

In your next letter, I wish you’d say
where you are and what you’re doing
how is the weather and whether
the good is any good pursuing:

treating coughs in the muddle of the day,
breathing as if it mattered much
when the days drone on and on despite
the drying out, the fading light, and such

and the streets are so broken, rife,
splitting apart in deep, sharp cracks
and upheaval’s just a faraway sound,
a warning drum heard after the attacks.

and an old man looks back from the glass
when catching sight of grey in your brow
and bootlaces are tied and untied,
and clocks tick, but you don’t know how,

and swapping out the dim of a workroom
for the gloom of home, the sooty street,
and the unconcerned glances of strangers,
the careless pity of those you don’t meet.

I don’t meet many, I’m afraid.
And dare you think my request most bizarre,
to post this letter, I need to know,
not what you’re doing, but just where you are.

Re: Letter: Hiatus angst, POV Watson, borrowed from Elizabeth Bishop's "Letter to N.Y."

[smallhobbit]

This is lovely, very poignant.

Re: Letter: Hiatus angst, POV Watson, borrowed from Elizabeth Bishop's "Letter to N.Y."

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Thank you very much!

Re: Letter: Hiatus angst, POV Watson, borrowed from Elizabeth Bishop's "Letter to N.Y."

[scfrankles]

Oh, so beautiful ^^" I particularly like and an old man looks back from the glass/ when catching sight of grey in your brow/ and bootlaces are tied and untied,/ and clocks tick, but you don’t know how. And within that verse, I really like the line: and bootlaces are tied and untied. It's a great detail to focus in on.

And that final line really hits home hard ^^"

Re: Letter: Hiatus angst, POV Watson, borrowed from Elizabeth Bishop's "Letter to N.Y."

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Thank you very much! I'm glad you like it. Yes, I wanted some small moments of Watson's life alone.

I am sorry it's taken me so long to get this done. I have 2 other epistle poems I want to imitate.

Dear Mama [POV Wiggins, Epistolary Poem inspired by Langston Hughes "Dear Mama"]

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Dear Mama

I met a man today who’s going to change my life.
He caught me at that trick, you know, the one I do
to put a crust inside me, cut the hunger knife.
He said, “When you’ve tired of tricks, I’ve a job for you.”

It weren’t a thing: to follow a fellow, and see
just where he goes ‘n’ where he don’t, an easy gig.
The coin he dropped was hard enough for me
when bit and I knew I was onto something big.

I gave report that night, every move that mark’d made,
and when I’d done my tale, I looked ‘im in the eye.
“’Twas you, dressed up,” I said. “Now, Mister, am I paid?”
He dropped more coins upon my palm and gave a cry.

“Young Master Wiggins, you’re the general I seek!
Forgive the trick I played today. It was mere test.
There’s a true job waiting, and more at end of week.
Recruit some troops but choose only your trusted best.”

And so it was, and so it is. Your boy, once lost
is found once more. I know that your sweet face looks down
and smiles with pride. And no matter the cost
there’ll be a flower Sundays on your patch of ground.

The man, name of Holmes, calls me ‘whip smart’ like you did.
He teaches me, and I teach him, and we get on.
And you don’t need to fret no more about your kid.
I just wish you weren’t, well, you know, quite so gone.

Respectably,

Billy

Re: Dear Mama [POV Wiggins, Epistolary Poem inspired by Langston Hughes "Dear Mama"]

[smallhobbit]

That's lovely. A great look at Wiggins, happy his mother will be proud of him, but missing her still.

Re: Dear Mama [POV Wiggins, Epistolary Poem inspired by Langston Hughes "Dear Mama"]

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Thank you! Yes, his story has a happy ending but he wouldn't be in his position in the first place if he had a good parent around to take care of him. But it's good he's found another person who believes in him.

Re: Dear Mama [POV Wiggins, Epistolary Poem inspired by Langston Hughes "Dear Mama"]

[scfrankles]

And so it was, and so it is. Your boy, once lost/is found once more. It's that line and the very last verse that get me right in the feels - to see just how important Holmes is in Wiggins' life. Not just an employer and source of money, but a kind of parental figure too. The parallels between Wiggins' late mother and Holmes are so poignant.

Re: Dear Mama [POV Wiggins, Epistolary Poem inspired by Langston Hughes "Dear Mama"]

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Thank you! Yes, I like to think Holmes saw in Wiggins some of what Wiggins' own mother would have seen in him, intelligence, resourcefulness, leadership, etc. And, yes, the trust that Holmes puts in him buoys him more than in terms of the money which makes Wiggins' life easier.

The original is very poignant so I wanted that same feel to it.

So my last attempt at epistle poems will be Pope-ish, I hope.