We are nearly at the end of April and NaPoWriMo. April 30th is also Poetry Day Ireland. Yesterday brought sad news of the death of Irish poet Eavan Boland, a recent editor of the Poetry Ireland Review, at age 75. I once heard her on a BBC Radio 4 broadcast years ago recount her query to women poetry workshop participants. She asked if they would go back to their homes and tell people they were poets. One woman balefully responded, “Why no! They would think I was the kind of woman who never washed her curtains!” Shocking! Which became an example for me. I write poetry. I rarely wash my curtains. I only dust because I have allergies. Today’s prompt is sourced in another woman poet who greatly influenced my life, if not my poetry style. That was Emily Dickinson, who I first encountered in a child’s biography in the Berwick Public Library. I bought a thin volume of her poems from my weekly allowance instead of expanding my Nancy Drew collection.
The NaPoWriMo Day 28 prompt includes an excerpt by Emily Dickinson’s niece, describing the poet’s room, a prompt devised by the Emily Dickinson Museum. “Martha Dickinson Bianchi’s description of her aunt’s cozy room, scented with hyacinths and a crackling stove, warmly recalls the setting decades later. Describe a bedroom from your past in a series of descriptive paragraphs or a poem. It could be your childhood room, your grandmother’s room, a college dormitory or another significant space from your life.“
I scrolled back to my bedroom when I was eleven and first encountered Emily Dickinson.
A Room of One’s Own is always, in memory, golden. See my bedspread? It matches the finish of the glass fronted bookcase, marketed as the 1960s version of ‘Antique Gold.’ It’s full of volumes by Alcott, Emily Dickinson, and hand me down vintage Nancy Drews. I liked things to be mellow and old, too nervous a child for psychedelic acid yellow and rock n roll. This was my place to retreat inside pale green walls of a castle built of books. I could dream of a life where one day I would see a moor and sail out overseas to the origin lands of my foreign doll collection, all neatly arrayed on their peg board display – the Dutch girl and Indonesian man, the Greek boy, the kimonoed geisha brought home from the New York World’s Fair. None of that would have done for Emily. But it was much, much better for me. Copyright © Bee Smith, 2020. All rights reserved.
I guess you’d encounter Virginia Woolf a little later than 11 years old… 😉
Love it!
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I read the book ten years later. But it does celebrate something which I do find crucial for my well-being. And writing.
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Sigh… how perfectly lovely.
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Oh such a lovely word picture! I am inspired to make a little writing about a certain room of my own from my past. . . Thank you for this inspiration! And the sweet and oh so welcome memory of Eavan Boland. A sad news to hear of her passing. She has left us an important legacy. We all must, must keep writing.
Cari Ferraro https://cariferraro.com
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So beautiful! The spaces in which we’re true to ourselves are always golden in memory. How well you captured a child’ world.😍💜
I, too, am heartbroken to hear of Eavan Boland’s passing. I was lucky to see her read at the Folger’s in DC–it must have been 2012 or 2013. She signed my copy of “Domestic Violence” with these words, “For Romana, in the spirit of poetry.” I know that somewhere, her spirit continues her divine work.💜
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