The poem below is the result of an exercise rather boldly called 'coupling' in poetry workshopping circles!I have taken a poem, which is one of my favourites written by my Rockhopper poetry performance colleague Mel Perry, and I have used it to create a new piece of work.
Mel's poem 'I am made of stone', which appears in her collection Rum Dark Nights, always makes the hairs on my neck stand to attention when I read it, especially so when I read it aloud.
When The Poetry School suggested 'coupling' as an exercise as part of this year's Write a Poem a Day for a Month project, #NaPoWriMo, I chose 'I am Made of Stone' as my starting point.
You take a favourite piece of work -- poetry or prose -- and intertwine it with new lines of your own to make a new poem.
More info about this technique can be found in
the links below.
Here's the result of that first experiment:
I am
made of stone/I am water
A
coupling after ‘I am made of stone’, by Mel Perry (from Rum
Dark Nights)
I am made of stone.
I am water.
Blue dolerite with feldspar
aquamarine with hammered pewter
shards from Pembrokeshire
hills,
rushing from Plynlimon
indigo slate from Conwy
quarries,
streaming shingle in Cilgerran
gorge
black anthracite, hand-hewn.
coursing over granite in Cwm
Gwesyn
I am made of stone.
I am water.
Burren limestone, its grikes
holding drops of rain
harbouring jewel plants,
magnified in pools
letting water seep, cry
weeping from
the inner core
tears through fissures
squeezing through
fractures
that drip, drip, stalactiting
forming bead by
bead
down, catching minerals
in moisture of air
like letters, that flavour
fluid carvings
words on the page
reflected on
rock
colour poems in the dark.
I am water.
I am made of stone.
flowing, fluent
Not to be rolled, not cold
not to be
impeded
part of the Fennoscandian
shield
perpetual, unbroken
crystalline, metamorphosed.
©Mel Perry and Jackie Biggs 2018
Links…
Rum Dark
Nights, by Mel
Perry, is published by Three Throated Press:
http://www.iconau.com/three-throated-press
The original prompt for this
piece of work came from the Poetry School’s 2018 #NaPoWriMo prompts: https://poetryschool.com/
... which referenced this helpful
article: http://mccarthywoolf.com/projects/mslexia-interview/
One of my earlier blogs about
The Rockhoppers: http://jackie-news.blogspot.com/2016/10/bird-calls-feathers-and-extreme-flights.html
Photos: ©JackieBiggs2018
