The resurrection of Godawful Poetry Fortnight

It’s that time.

Here is your poetic license. Download (or DM and I will send it to you) and add your name to it. 

#GodawfulPoetryFortnight starts today. (The origin story.)

Want a prompt to start you off?

Write a poem with the most clichéd (or laboured) rhymes you can think of.

Will add more prompts if you all ask.

P.s.

• The True Believers Challenge •

Post thirteen godawful poems, one on each day of the Fortnight.

Squeeze your muse like a boil. [Deleted additional metaphor about constipation.] Get it all out.

P.p.s.

Why Wordsworth? The link explains. But since few are going to read that in this era of 17-second attention spans, poor old Will is patron saint not because of his body of work, but for something he wrote in a preface.

Too many poets have clung to the bit where he says that “poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” without reading the part about “emotion recollected in tranquillity.” Which, to my mind, implies one must work hard on those first lines before they become a poem.

Godawful Poetry Fortnight was a result of encountering way too many poets who fervently believed their first drafts were sacred. To me, learning how to write in advertising and journalism, this was profanity.

Happy Teachers’ Day

I’ve always had a special place in my heart for teachers. My mother taught little ones, but gave up teaching when my brother was born. Her mother, widowed young, fell back on the big advantage Anglo Indian women had in those days, English as a first language, and not only taught in a school but took an insane amount of private tuitions to take care of her family. I wanted to be a teacher too, but life took other turns.

But I do know a disproportionate number of people who are career teachers and even fell for one. (Um. More than one. But closest on that front was that I did date two women whose mothers were teachers.)

Anyway, for years I would put out a teacher’s day post on the 5th September, a shout out to all my teacher friends to say I am grateful for their careers. One of those times, a teacher friend messaged, “Thank you. (Wish me again on 3 January.)” I took note of that, and did some reading

Now my school history lessons had covered Maharashtra history quite copiously, and India’s freedom and reform movements, but I had no memory of more than a mention of Savitribai Phule, while covering the life of her husband, Jyotiba. Over my internet years, free from the burden of rote learning of dates and names, I had read a lot more about caste, and reform, but still wound up knowing very little about her. Thanks to my friend, I have learnt about the enormous debt we owe to Savitribai Phule, her husband Jyotiba, and her colleague Fatima Sheikh. I have much more to learn, of course. But, for now…

On her birthday, happy Teacher’s Day, teacher friends, and I’m lighting a candle for Savitribai Phule.