Category Archives: LoSoRhyMo

November verse 3.5: Cento

Posted on 7 Nov 2021 | 2 comments

According to poets.org:

the cento (or collage poem) is a poetic form composed entirely of lines from poems by other poets.

You might think the name has something to do with the Latin for 100, and maybe it does, remotely, but it is actually a Latin word in its own right. According to my trusty Gepp & Haigh Latin dictionary, its first meaning is ‘a piece of patchwork, used for clothing, or as a fireproof curtain or blanket, or as a quilt, etc’.

Here’s a cento made, not from other poems, but from the program description of films I’ve got tickets for in this year’s Sydney Film Festival:

At the movies: a cento
Impressed by Einstein, 
a Swiss businessman and a Russian oligarch
are compelled to
violence, incompetence and oppression.
There are death threats,
more direct and more stridently critical,
a timely reminder of 
the role of individuals in an autocratic state.
An uncommunicative young woman
becomes increasingly desperate as she manoeuvres to keep
slapstick humour and deep emotion
with integrity and grit.
They begin to make sense of
life and death in the nuclear age.

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November verse 3

Posted on 6 Nov 2021 | 1 comment

I did go to the dentist on Friday, but was reduced to writing this between movies at the Sydney Festival. 

November verse 3: Dentist
I used to focus on my breathing,
hoping not to feel the pain.
I’d concentrate on muscles, easing
tightness to relax my brain. 
I used to chant a homemade mantra:
Om madur,I give up Fanta, 
or words to that effect. The drill
and picks would terrify me still.
But these days if I pay attention
closely to what’s going on –
each nerve impulse, each tiny prick, 
each jolt – I find it does the trick:
my mind’s too busy keeping track
to let the panic goons attack.

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November verse 2.5: Homophones

Posted on 4 Nov 2021 | 3 comments

There may be a better word for this kind of poem, and it may be much more widespread than I know about. I’ve met it in Toby Fitch’s poetry, and I’ve read one poem by Jaya Savige (‘Coonoowrin (Crookneck)’ in Southerly: 80!). It’s a lot harder than it looks.

My version of the idea is to take an existing text and rewrite it so that the words sound the same, or can be made to sound the same with a bit of distortion, but have completely different meaning, or even perhaps no meaning at all. Please don’t take the quality of my offering as representing the best the form can offer.

I’ve given the original text for this at the bottom in smaller type. I didn’t want to deprive you of the dubious pleasure of trying to spot the original.

Disingenuous
I forgot, brought showdirts,
I conned eel with hat.
Bit though's loose.
Eye m'nut, gunner.
Cop's legend hit a stray Lear.
Eye m'nut, gunner:
cope Thetan bee,
have a fast stray lens.

I’ve got broad shoulders. I can deal with that. But those slurs, I’m not going to cop sledging of Australia. I’m not going to cop that on behalf of Australians.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison, responding disingenuously to President Macron’s accusation that he lied

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November verse 2

Posted on 3 Nov 2021 | 4 comments

No subject having presented itself to me for today’s stanza, I’ve fallen back on Shakespeare. This stanza uses the rhyme words from his Sonnet 37 (chosen at random), modified to meet the Onegin stanza’s requirements. After reading the Shakespeare, I had to go for a walk around the block before I could begin to find my own much more frivolous thoughts, but here goes, with illustrations.

November verse 2: Post-lockdown hair

You wouldn't say it's as delightful
as my unkempt mane in youth,
but call it straggly straw? Just spiteful.
Mynas like it, that's the truth,
and swooping magpies. And the witty
check-out girl at Supa City
called me Einstein. (We get more
than what we pay for at that store.)
Thanks to Covid I've been given
time to think. I once despised
unbarbered hair. Four months sufficed
to help me understand men who were living
back when they were thou and thee,
balding, crested white, like me.
2021. Photo by Penny Ryan
1971

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November verse 1.5: Erasure

Posted on 2 Nov 2021 | 1 comment

This year I plan to add to my November exercises some excursions into poetic forms like erasure, cento, n+7, homophony (if that’s a good word for what Toby Fitch does), and others as I think of them. My idea is to make something from the day’s newspaper as source text.

I’m kicking off today with an erasure poem. Here’s one description of erasure poetry, from the poets.org website.

Erasure poetry, also known as blackout poetry, is a form of found poetry wherein a poet takes an existing text and erases, blacks out, or otherwise obscures a large portion of the text, creating a wholly new work from what remains.

You can read more about it, with links to ‘seminal’ works, here. Andy Jackson”s ‘borne away by distance’ is a fine example I have encountered recently (online here).

Here’s my offering, from page 1, column 5 of today’s Sydney Morning Herald.

Or, to type it out and give it a title:

Virtue
________++++++_________Glad
____________________secret
______++_________grace
___________duties, 
________+++++__honest
________+++++__dog.

The  _dependent ____mission
 gains
________++++++____trust or
 courage
________+__Wag   Wag .

Make of it what you will. I love it.

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November verse 1

Posted on 1 Nov 2021 | 1 comment

Since 2010, inspired by National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), I’ve had a project of writing fourteen 14-line stanzas each November. Even though my favourite stanza form is an Onegin stanza and not a sonnet, I called this project LoSoRhyMo – Local Sonnet Rhyming Month.

If you want to read past Novembers’ verses you can click on the LoSoRhyMo tag at the bottom of this blog post. Or you could go to my Publications page and buy one of the six little books made up from these and others of my adventures in verse. All but one of these excellent volumes are self-published. The exception, None of Us Alone, is a kind of Best Of published by Ginninderra Press, and I have to thank Tricia Dearborn for her help in selecting the poems for inclusion in it.

Here goes for 2021

November verse 1: The swimming pools have re-opened

So good to be back in the water.
I like to see it lap the Tiles
as I swim laps or when granddaughter
clamps her lips around her smiles
to keep it out. First thing this morning
in the slow lane, I'm relearning
other bodies aren't a threat,
even unmasked, bare and wet.
After bushfires, epicormic
shoots adorn the trunks of gums
like bloomers on their legs and bums.
Post-lockdown, thanks to hypodermic
double vaccination rates,
we put on hope. We tempt our fates.

A note for readers who noticed the Emily Dickinson reference: for no reason I can think of, the actual Emily Dickinson line (with ‘Miles’ instead of ‘Tiles’) often hounds me like a non-musical ear-worm while I’m swimming laps, so I had to include it here, however awkwardly.

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November verse 20: Approximately fourteen ways to start a stanza

Posted on 30 Nov 2020 | 4 comments

I’ve well surpassed my quota of 14 stanzas for this November but, though I’m being called to attend to pressing matters involving the vacuum cleaner, storage shelves and other important things, I’m squeezing in one more to make it a round twenty:

November verse 20: Approximately
fourteen ways to start a stanza
Take a phrase that makes you cranky,
melts your heart, or stirs your mirth,
from politician being wanky
or tweeter somewhere else on earth.
Steal the first words of a novel.
Quote a tiny friend's sweet waffle.
Parody a famous line
from Hamlet or source less divine.
See dead words that serve transactions –
shake them, turn them upside down.
Lay bare your heart and find a noun
or verb that lurks there. Let distractions
be your helpers. Take a thought
and tie it in an eight-word knot.

That’s it for 2020. Normal transmission will resume tomorrow.

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November verses 18 & 19: 29/11

Posted on 29 Nov 2020 | 5 comments 
November verse 18 &19: 29 and 30/11
Using the rhyme words from Vikram Seth's
The Golden Gate, stanza 11.29 and 11.30

As 2020 nears completion,
gurgling swiftly down time's drain,
and leaves behind its vast accretion
of damaged lives, despair, rage, pain,
let's build our souls some insulation,
not give way to desperation,
put our faith in humankind
and the power of the mind.
May politicians' treachery
be no more wrapped in pious sighs
(no way to hide their lyin' eyes),
buffoonery and lechery
in office meet with decent scorn
and find they are no longer borne.

Greenhouse gas accumulation
challenges the world's combined
resourcefulness. The fermentation
of bullshit would leave us resigned
to dying off without compunction,
but we can overcome disjunction.
The clock is nearing 12 at night
but tunnel's end shows flicking light:
I'll join a crowd, not be a stranger,
join hands, write letters, march, and then
do it again, again, again.
It's hard to face how real the danger,
feel climate grief, but then the lust
for life kicks in. In science I trust.

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November verse 17: Homonyms

Posted on 28 Nov 2020 | 3 comments 
November verse 17: Homonyms

A crash and panic in Vienna.
Eyemouth, many fishers died.
Women beaten at a demo.
Perfect storm Lake Erie-side.
King Zog vanquished by Il Duce.
Allied planes shot down in Norway.
Flood, tornado, bombs and fire,
scandals, massacres – all dire,
all sharing in this nomenclature.
Why choose this term to sell us stuff?
Why don't we shout, Enough's enough!
Why take it on as second nature?
What next, merchant brotherhood?
Yes, why not call this Friday good?

When I started writing this, I had the Black Friday bushfires in Victoria in mind. But a quick look at Wikipedia made me realise that Black Fridays are legion. Here’s the link if you want to know more.

Also: if anyone knows the James McAuley poem whose last line is echoed by by my last line here, please tell me its title and where I can find it. [Added later: It wasn’t James McAuley at all, but TS Eliot, the last line of Part 4 of East Coker in Four Quartets: ‘Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.’]

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November verse 16: A walk to the shops

Posted on 27 Nov 2020 | 2 comments

In a creative writing class I took part in years ago, we did an exercise of walking around the block then coming back and writing down everything we saw. It would be impossible to do that in 14 lines for my five minute walk to the shops, but here’s a partial account.

November verse 16: A walk to the shops
Dotty silver snail trails, roses,
skittish skinks and lorikeets,
gardeners, leaf blowers, hoses,
cafe tables on the street,
three crossword collaborators
(quick, not cryptic), Uber waiter,
handless Lady of La Vang,
cloth monkey left to hang,
stroller, skateboard, backward trolley,
taxi revving at the rank,
homeless regular, eyes blank,
child who's spilled a bag of lollies.
In my ears Waleed and Scott
untie existential knots.

Maybe line 7 needs explanation. Here she is, in someone’s beautifully tended front garden:

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