58 NOVEMBER 2019 http://www.writers-online.co.ukPOETRY WORKSHOP
IN THE GARDENI dig, and strike a small stone with my spade,
Slate grey, striated with a lighter shade.
Informed by education I’m aware
Of random reasons for its presence there.
In ancient seas slow sediments of lime
Were crushed to solid rock by passing time,
Violent eruptions overturned the earth,
Piled up the plates and gave the mountains birth,
In a long age of ice the glaciers’ glide
Scattered the shattered shingle far and wide,
Then it was ripple rounded in the flow
Of some forgotten stream, lost long ago.
Not useful flint, no good for axe or knife
It’s played, so far, no part in human life.
That time has come; I lift it from the floor
And fling it at that yapping dog next door.S
ometimes an apparently insignificant event can
give rise to a delicious poem. It all depends on the
mindset of the observer. Fortunately, when the
spade hit a stone in the garden, there was a poet
on the other end of it, and a new poem was born.
Mike Rathbone, of Southport, Merseyside,
demonstrates how a simple incident gave rise to a flight of
fancy that involves both information and imagination.
A number of this poet’s works are inspired by a single
moment or small event, but he says that they don’t always
produce a poem immediately. It can be a long process- not in the geological timeframe of In the Garden,
fortunately, but it can be weeks, months or even years
before the trigger event results in the completed poem.
For Mike Rathbone, the process begins in the head,
thinking about and around the subject. The next stage
involves making notes, often just brief phrases and
observations, which can be put away and then retrieved
later, added to, expanded upon, and developed further
until the poem emerges.
When it comes to the actual production of the poem,
he likes to work alone, in a study-cum-spare-bedroom.
For so many poets, the act of writing can be physically
exhausting, and Mike describes a mingling of satisfaction
at the end of the process with tiredness and the sensation
of being brain-dead. The emotional toll can make you
just as tired as heavy physical effort. As the results could
be around for generations, it’s worth the work.
Alison Chisholm explores a layered poem triggered by a mundane happening
The pebble ’s progress
There is ordinariness at the beginning and end of this
poem, although the poet hastens to point out that ‘No
animals were harmed during the production of this verse!’
The small, simple description of catching the stone with
the spade, and the fictitious flinging of it, are mundane.
Between them we have a historical/geological account
of the formation of the planet’s surface, followed by the
assertion that the stone in question has played, so far, no
part in human life.
The central section, amounting to half the length of
the poem, is told in a single sentence. This, broken up
only by commas to help with the phrasing, gives the
impression of a flood of information tumbling with
scarcely a moment’s pause. It’s as if the words are racing
downhill and almost tripping themselves up in their haste.
The tempo calms as we reach the damning comment
to the effect that the stone has been neither use nor
ornament – until now.
The poem uses rhyming couplets throughout, a
difficult form to work effectively. The form is ideally
suited to a flippant, jokey piece, but although there’s a
light punchline here, much of the content involves more
serious information. It’s easy to make rhymed couplets
sound trite, but careful selection of vocabulary has
ensured that the rhymes here are exact and unforced.
The familiar iambic pentameter supports the rhyme
scheme, but again this reads naturally and sounds
unforced. The poet has made good use of initial trochaic