Read Colquhoun and Bird they said.
Being the girly swot
I was called
I did.
Downtime moments
smiling to myself.
Not just the gins.
The joy of discovery.
It was homework, so maybe not discovery.
Lonely-Planet-sightseeing then.
Even though I quite like Monica.
Perhaps this can be forgiven,
overlooked, excused
on account of my own
underlying insecurities.
That girl at Whitcoulls,
you know we had an affair?
Bet she didn’t try those recipes out for you.
You didn’t even know her name.
And being Monica, an uptight
girly swot I was called
I read on
trying to learn something
Mr Kennedy said can’t be taught.
I had to google it but
I appreciate artisanship
as a lovely choriamb indeed
and I’ll entitle a poem
Injustice in the Toilet
if I want to.
Fuck bad incongruity.
Maybe I’m not
cut out to be
a poet.
So I buy a couple
of minarets online.
And book a cruise
to Dubrovnik.
Enjoyed the poem and the discussion thereon. Thanks, guys, as I had no idea who Bird and Colquhoun are, or ‘Monica’, so thanks for the elucidation here. Grazie a te, Marco!
i like Monica too – the Bird poem, but Bird’s poem would have been better w/out the last 2 lines. she has great moments but gets on my nerves sometimes – her cynicism. ‘injustice in the toilet’ is a promising title. yours? i like your poem
Injustice in the toilet is a reference to Erik Kennedy’s poem ‘You can’t teach creative writing’. He uses it as a ‘do not do this’ example. But I like it.
so much for the trendy dictum: there are no rules in modern poetry. I sort of agree you can’t teach Creative, but if that were wholly true, it wouldn’t be taught at university. are you at Auckland uni?
University days long gone. I love the Kennedy poem. I just disagree with his example of bad incongruity, I guess. On reflection, his poem taught me something about creative writing, so he proved himself wrong. A very clever poem.
Always like poems about poetry. fyi, emjay; in some poems I see you as male, others, female?
Interesting. I quite like that, I think. cis he/him as far as I’m aware.