Food | awritersfountain

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As of today we are two-thirds of the way through Na/GloPoWriMo 2022.

Today’s featured participants… in response to Day 19’s “command” prompt, Jessica McWhirt brings us a tough but tender elegy, while Elizabeth Burnham provides us with a meditation on the role of the poet.

Our featured online journal for today is Diode. In their newest issue, I’ll point you to Heidi Seaborn’s poem “upon seeing an elephant seal in front of my house in West Seattle” and Michael Robins’ “If One Has a Mind That Way.”

Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that anthropomorphizes a kind of food. It could be a favorite food of yours, or maybe one you feel conflicted about.

After reading Day 20 all I can think about is cake! It took a while to reset my brain to poetry! Although…

Cake + Poetry = the perfect combination!

Yesterday, I actually had some time to spare and read lots of poems other people had written for Day 19, so when I discovered today’s poem was the incredible Grandma by Jessica McWhirt, I was thrilled. Jessica’s poems was one I read yesterday which is still sitting inside me. Stunning, succinct work. And that ending! WOW!

Then I read The Poet is a Mirror by Elizabeth Burnham, which felt like a kaleidoscope experience as you read it, as the imagery twists and turns over multiple versions of the same truth.

locking herself in a round white room 
where her black-ink words and her blue-ink words and her red-ink words 
all ripple and roll from floor to ceiling 
til the once-blank walls are smothered in kaleidoscopic thought.

I then read the poems from Diode. Heidi Seaborn’s poem “upon seeing an elephant seal in front of my house in West Seattle” – it reminded me of whales in the Thames, a surreal incident, a cracking poem.

Your torso turned, long as a drift boat, … Your bark breaking my perfect line.

I read Data too, which I very much enjoyed. Clever. Then I read Michael Robins’ “If One Has a Mind That Way.” I have enjoyed these short prose poems, Michael had me at his opening line (because of the use of little);

The sun each morning burns its little weight.

Some flower paints the tongue or returns the name of the one you loved.

The opposite of a promise fills the air,

I read Letters from Portland too.

Diode is on the list of journals to go back and read when I get a chance to. These past few days have been busy offline and today I am squeezing in a workshop, a meeting and an event online too.

I felt today like I’d rather keep reading poetry than write it and then I scrolled up and saw/remembered the cake – so grabbed a coffee and dived in!

Starting with a list of favourite foods… now which one was I going to anthropomorphize? I couldn’t release my brain from shackles of cake, so I found this website and set about choosing which cake! And there in the very first picture was my answer!

When we were born my parents planted a tree for each of us in the garden, mine was a plum tree and most years it yielded a hefty crop for us (and our neighbours). We’d have a freezer full of plums throughout the year and make all sorts of scrumptious delights but never a Plum Cake. So there’s the basis for today’s poem.

Today, I am gifting the whole poem again. I have to credit the title to this wonderful site I found.

The Value of Patience

We were one of the first fruits you humans
domesticated. I don’t know of the wild days,
there were no relatives old enough to pass
those stories forward. You feasted on my ancestors,

sucked them to the stone. You baked – they watched
you through the kitchen window with your mum.
My family tree is a long line of crumble,
did you never think of cake?

Perhaps your parents thought plum too rich
for your young palette. Not one Christmas
did we adorn that table, not even the year
you were joined by fourteen relatives.

And all those who fell in action, left to rot
on patio stones the colour of Battenburg.
See? Your life was cake. We can never deny
our roots, the strands of us. The core remains

forever. I know you still feel the stone in yours.
Do you wonder how different it could have been,
if only you’d baked a cake with us? Until today,
you’ve probably not given it a thought.

You’d pick us every summer, marvel at our wax bloom,
eat several fruits before you made it back inside,
you’d carry a bowl of firm, juicy ovals carefully
to the tap, wash us and pat us dry. You were smiling,

happy. Innocent, ready. You still feel like a child today,
but not a joyful one. If you must dwell in the past,
find the pleasant lines, protect your future self with them.
And eat prunes, your future-future self will thank you.

It is around about now (days off the end of the month) that I realise this challenge is not going to end in April for me. After 4 weeks off from my writing life, I am returning to writing for performance, performing and editing current projects. The summer is fast approaching and lots needs addressing in my life outside of poetry. My poetry life is busy preparing for festivals, events and submissions. Tag on the day job, I don’t even want to think about all the boxes I am trying to unpack my way through or the need for a DEEP Spring clean at home… the result is chaos.

I have decided not to rush the NaPoWriMo project, I want to enjoy this process and benefit from time to write – after all that’s the main point, that and to have fun.

I may dream of writing business but the nuts and bolts are art. Art needs nurturing, time, commitment, space… I am approaching it softly.

From now on I do a day a day, as it should be. Welcome to day 6.

napofeature3

Our featured participant today is Kevin O’Conner, who struggled at first with our Day 5 prompt, but came up with a great poem, well-seeded with seed names.

Today’s featured poet in translation is Burma’s Ma Ei. Very little of her work is available in English, but you’ll find two poems at the link above, and two more here.

You may be interested in checking out this short film, showcasing the work of contemporary Burmese poets, including Ma Ei, as well as this interview with James Byrne, editor of a recent anthology of Burmese poetry, which includes Ma Ei’s work.

Today’s prompt was to write about food.

teatime

This is my friend’s microwave (7 years ago), maybe they have these models in the UK in a higher budget than the mark Mr G and I look at, I just loved the message. Usually they just ping, beep or flash. Perhaps I should have written about this microwave instead of taking half a day (and night) deliberating my food poem.

I think the writing process for Day 6 is juicier than the poem so I am sharing it first. I love food, this write should have been easy. But I remember Jo Bell’s advice; abandon your first thoughts, dig deeper. Immediately, like a naughty child, I want to write all my initial foodie thoughts.

Butter Fingers

I haven’t written a poem about cake.

Or biscuits.

Or fish fingers, crabsticks and spaghetti hoops.

There is no advice about what foods to avoid

on (first) dates,

or heavily veiled descriptions of tier towered

wedding cakes.

No Saturday night take-away

chicken madras, sweet and sour pork, fish

and chips,

but there is a poem about food.

If in doubt write what you are not going to write about. Just a bit of free write fun there, in the shape of a poem. Although it does pass as a food poem. At this point I placed a title above it and moved on. It is a poem.

I started with pictures of food, trying to disguise identity in an almost riddle.

Bright circus colours

a Big Top in stream form

The mustard and ketchup on a hotdog.

Then came a mind-map. Some ideas from which I may explore in the summer when I have maximum writing time.

Films about food and drink was taken from the mind-map and became an enjoyable hour of research and created some ideas for my next writing group, in May. I have a list of 27 alternative film titles substituting food words. ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crumpet’ a particular favourite of mine. Harrison Ford, dishy – doesn’t take a writer to get to crumpet there.

I then looked at Tarantino film clips involving food (another idea to chase later). I ended up on a recipe page and then spent a futile Google search looking for US Market canned Pumpkin, previously available in Tesco & Waitrose and now seemingly not reaching our island at all. I thought of filling suitcases and then baggage allowance and security.

Then I wrote a poem about Mr G and I cooking in the kitchen together.

Tango on terracotta tiles…

cabinet perimetered dancefloor…

hands gathering busy.

From here I ended up falling asleep and I woke up (2 hrs after my alarm) with a poem spilling from my head.

Eggs is Eggs (A pillow head poem)

Mum poached them

Dad fried them

Paul boiled them

I scrambled

and David,

was too young to cook.