9780415317856_the_routledge_creative_writing_coursebook

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www.ATIBOOK.irWriting as art 27a blank page, vellum pumice-storiedto chalky lustres which my inks suffuse:saffron and sandarach and dragon’s blood,azure and verdigris. Monsters and every type of beastcurl round the words. Each man here has a past,and each man reason for his faith. I wrongedA woman once and nothing I did after could atoneor throw a light upon the blackness of that deedwhose harm lay in the telling, not the doing.(Copus, IOS, 13 April 2003)This speaker’s past curls round his words just as the dragons do round those he inscribes.In subjects approached with a sense of story, moments in a poem’s present will have apast and future, a shadow cast by one or other of these. Another example, the followingpoem by Susan Burns, successfully demonstrates this type of perception. The versionprinted here is in draft form, yet we can see the poet already working to create habitableworlds using reality effects, voices, images, and most of all a sense of story:‘Farewell on the Town Hall Steps’It’s as good a place as any to end it.A July gone cold, the middle of an overcast nightYou’re walking me home but we won’t reachBrixton Water Lane and we both knowThere won’t be a fight.We sit on the concrete steps, roll a cigarette.I can hear the goods trains at Loughborough junction,Distant sirens and your reasoning, sketching the airWith a thin white cigarette paper. I don’t cry thenAs I have made up my mind,As you are drunk to your bitten fingernails,As you can’t bring the paper to your dry mouth.Itakeit, fumble with tobacco. Your voice thick
www.ATIBOOK.irThe routledge creative writing book 28With tears, your chin on your knees, unfoldingThe usual: how useless a father how reckless a lover;How just one more drink, how I don’t deserve.I half-listen; it’s always that way with you.I concentrate on the upturned collar of your jacketThe truth is always in what’s not being said.Unexpectedly, across the street, an alfresco party,The end of a wedding. A woman in red satin,Confetti still in her hair, laughs at the wide sky.Six stops away from the Victoria line, the hostelIn Copenhagen Street, Chris on the night shift,Miracle worker; rearranges the confiscations,The cans of Special, the pocket knives.As well as the basic narrative of what happened, who said what to whom, where andwhen, this poem is variously overshadowed by other events. What happened echoes whathappened once, what was said—or not said—before. The poet has chosen a momentwhich shapes time—afterwards things will not be as they were. Other events happeningin the present and simultaneously—the party across the street, the night shift—cast theirshade and light on the situation, but it may be that the final stanza misses it, becomes anew scene, not an overshadowing. Drafts are important, especially in workshopsituations. Should this last stanza be omitted? Some might think so, others feel lesscertain, but everyone knows the writer herself will have the last word.No Story?In the extracts below, the Australian poet Les Murray explores an absence of story,giving it a specific setting that might apply more widely. Moments are seen in a type oflife without overshadowing or shape:from ‘Driving Through Sawmill Towns’… You glide on through town,Your mudguards damp with cloud.The houses there wear verandahs out of shyness,All day in calendared kitchens, women listenFor cars on the road,Lost children in the bush,
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9780415317856_the_routledge_creative_writing_coursebook

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