While April, as NaPoWriMo or GloPoWriMo, is the poetry writing month, May is often called the poetry revision month. All those drafts in the drawer need more work! But the prompt for today looks at revision slant. I shall quote the prompt from Day 18 of NaPoWriMo as it best explains.
My own critieria for today was that the poem be short as I am a bit time famished. I grabbed Bloodaxe’s anthology Staying Alive and kept flipping until a really short poem appeared. A micro-poem was really what my schedule wanted. And then I lit on a Michael Longley.
My version:
At Legnashinna
Easter 1998 2018
Aconite putting on a brave face
Bright in the uncertain climate
Show me that crop of primrose in moss
To forget the threat of upland snow
Copyright © 2018 Bee Smith
I would not normally comment on process but this small poem could do with a bit of context that makes the micro more macro. If you are not familiar with more recent Irish history the Easter 1998 might seem unimportant. But Irish poems that have dates often point to political landmarks. Easter 1998 will forever mean the Good Friday Agreement. This is Longley’s Good Friday Agreement poem, which I later found had been published the following day in The Irish Times.
The recent 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement has been overshadowed by the uncertainty of what havoc Brexit may wreck on the lives on those of us who live in the porous border counties with Northern Ireland. There is no international border frontier since the Good Friday Agreement, no check points or Customs Posts.
Longley titles his poem At Poll Salach. I am not an Irish scholar, but Google informs me that a poll translates as a pool, hole or tidal stream. Given my own border location this suggested to me Shannon Pot. My title uses the Irish townland name for Shannon Pot, albeit in its more Hiberno-English rendering rather than as Gaelige.
Lovely as always Bee, How you do it, I don’t know ❤
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It is all in practice. I look back at what I wrote years back and cringe. You gotta write through the shitty first drafts and just keep going.
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Hear! Hear! (in regard to plodding ahead through thorns toward the distant stars)
I know that Staying Alive anthology. It has soothed many a wounded moments…
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All three of those Bloodaxe anthologies are standbys. Need to re-buy Being Human because I lent it and it has not homed. But I do not regret releasing poetry into the wild and it not doing the homing pigeon.
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Didn’t know there were two others… Will get my hands on them, pronto. Thanks for the tip!
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BeingAlive and Being Human are the other two…just as stellar.
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