9780415317856_the_routledge_creative_writing_coursebook

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,