Category: Poetry

Praise the poor boy, praise the king

Dear reader, this Christmas we would like to give you something warm and lovely, like Spiced Chai sipped on the couch in the company of family, carols, feasting, worship and wonder.

If you are like this author, you might be tired of the annual internet fights about the so-called pagan origins of Christmas, or tired of the reminders (just and true though they be) that this holy day is not about Santa or commercialism or greed. Because of that, we have sought not to bring a lecture, for today is a day of cheer and glory, not mere study. Instead, we have sought to bring a song, or a poem. We hope that this will bring more colour to your appreciation of Incarnation Day, and that it will drive you to love and cherish the Lord Jesus, and be oh so grateful for the world that he created, sustained, redeemed, and which he is currently restoring.

So, please receive these lines not as some masterful work of important poetry, but as a simple Christmas gift from this author to you.

A poem of Stephen

To the tune of Greensleeves

Into the for’st and by the river
Whispers are wraiths and leaves
The fallen world with erring song
Is drained to its dregs and lees
Drained of glory, drained of light
Shiver the trees in the blackest night

Now rise, O moon, you heav’nly body
To Bethlehem do guide
He whose wife upon his steed
Bears one whose reign abides
Bear him Mary, bear him on,
Spoken by prophets, God’s own son

Creep o’er the fields, you rays of light
O standard bearer sun
And thaw our weary hearts again:
The morningstar has won!
Thaw the hopeless, thaw the frost
He’s here to seek and save the lost

Wise men bow and give their gifts
This boy destined to die
Herod crimson paints the streets
To Egypt off they fly
Fly O child, fly and live
Show us the grace your father gives

The roots of mountains tremble now
A sovereign king will reign
The birds can’t help but sing his praise
This child they proclaim
Praise the poor boy, praise the King
The Lion and lamb his name we sing

Into the for’st and by the river
Those leaves the nations heal
The gospel conquers every king
His peace on earth is real
Peace he brings, peace we preach
The corners of earth will our gospel reach

‘Of the Seasons’: a closer look

I had great fun last year working on this poem, ‘Of the Seasons‘. It was an idea I’d started before, but it came time to submit work for uni so, naturally, time to dig up (and develop) old work.

The key idea is that each stanza correlates to a season, and each season has a ‘sound profile’. In writing metalanguage, the tool I worked with is called the sonic chain. Seamus Heaney referred to it as the ‘earscape’ of a poem. Each of the four seasons has the same line count and structure, with the final two lines of each five really hammering home the earscape.

Here’s the first stanza, Summer. Here, it is the /ɒ/ in ‘hot’ that creates that link, using the extension of that vowel sound to suggest lethargy and breathlessness.

The dry sun-sapped air forces even
the most brave of creatures back
to our air-conditioned cocoons.
Too hot to think, too hot to bother
Too hot that we’re all hot and bothered.

Here’s the poem, give it a read and then see if you can hear the sound of the season (yes, this may require reading out loud).

In the second stanza, autumn, it is the gentle, gliding vowel sound /iːv/ that brings on the image of gentle breezes and falling leaves that is iconic of autumn. For winter, the third stanza, the biting /ɒst/ sound, akin to gale force winds, is what creates an additional layer of texture and meaning on top of the words themselves. Finally, spring is where nature and the fourth stanza boom back into life with bold colours and sounds, something I achieved audibly with /aʊd/. What I succeeded in achieving in each of these examples is what Hutcheon (2006, p. 61) calls “a derivation that is not derivative—a work that is second but not secondary.” The poem succeeds standing alone, but is enriched when transformed into a performed, audible work.

Hutcheon, L 2006, A theory of adaptation, Routledge, New York

13 ways

For uni last year, I was given the challenge to mirror the poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens. The challenge was to change the subject but keep the same energy and line count.

I created my poem, ‘13 ways of beholding the cross‘, in response. It was a great challenge and took a lot of focus, but most of all the challenge was in how directly I wanted to describe my subject — and the extent to which I managed to avoid doing so.

Here’s an example.

VI (blackbird)
Icicles filled the long window   
With barbaric glass.   
The shadow of the blackbird   
Crossed it, to and fro.   
The mood   
Traced in the shadow   
An indecipherable cause.
VI (cross)
Thunderclouds bellow rolling fury,
Cast saturating needles.
Down the splintering spine
Blood, sweat and water mingle.
Every darkness
Piled upon misery
An asphyxiated sentence.

This stanza is sharp and full of colourful, charged words. I noticed where the line runs on and where the line ends in a full stop. My main focus, however, lay on the last three lines. ‘The mood / traced in the shadow / an indecipherable cause’. It could mean ‘the mood, which was itself traced in the shadow, has a cause which is indecipherable’. On the other hand, it could be read ‘the mood, which had an indecipherable cause, traced something in the shadow’. The point is, the grammatical relationship between lines 1, 2 and 3 were ambigious, which enriched the reading.

I attempted to mirror that with my lines ‘Every darkness / Piled upon misery / An asphyxiated sentence.’ The first line could be the subject or the object of the second line, the verb clause. Either way, the third line stands up.

I encourage you to read Stevens’ poem and mine side-by-side, and see if you notice more similarities throughout.

An Étude

I sit down to dance
with paper and pen
a waltz penned in ink
at quarter to ten

the letters do dance
and step to and fro
I follow their journey
whither it should go

the rules are the rules
only when dancers rhyme
a waltz is a waltz
only in triple time

This is my craft
only my letters dance
every line a surprise
as if luck, as if chance

I picture a ballroom
of canvas A-four,
just as a ballroom
of polished wood floor

a palette of letters
a syllabic easel
where phrases will fly
and wind through the trees will

permit me this étude
permit me your ear
forgive my indulgence
ill end this right here.

Practising poetry with a traditional ABCB rhyme structure, rhythm and stanza consistency, I thought it would be fitting to use a dance/art allegory.

Also, as a meta-piece; work about my work, this might as well be the first thing that comes up on the page.