Words. Words. Words.
Most people don't even notice the effects of the words that constantly surround us and our day to day lives. The imperative, definitive edge of the "No Smoking" signs that signal the stubbing of a cigarette. The sometimes incomprehensible advertising that litters our papers, magazines and websites. The giggles that a favourite journalists words can provoke with a choice morsel even if you're on the bus surrounded by strangers. The comfort of the familiar first lines of a favourite book, it's pages covered in sand and hot chocolate and other such traces of love. The penultimate lines of a song played on loop signaling the end and the need to hear "that" line just one more time.
When words are well written they are a never ending source of pleasure and even when they're bad they can be a never ending source of amusement. There is a relish to be gained from using a rarely spoken word in a conversation about pure frippery to best friends that can't be gained by just bluntly and dully stating the obvious. There is pleasure to had in wrestling with an idea in your head for days and finally finding the words that express it all on a page. There is delight to be had when rolling a favourite word around your mouth and slowly pronouncing it hearing every syllable like a crisp clap of the hands.
It can be safely said that I am a fan of words and their many shapes and forms. Recently this has been manifesting itself in a love of poetry. I have always found poetry fascinating, the challenge of manipulating our own words so they fit to or fight a lyrical rhythm or rhyme is such an enjoyable tug and tangle with vocabulary that I don't know what I'd do with out it. I can remember being obsessed with Michael Rosen's poems as a little girl particularly one called "Chocolate Cake" which is too long to post on here but still fantastic. And all Roald Dahls weird and wonderful songs. I love that poetry can be such a concise form of expression without losing, and some could even argue gaining, any of it's emotional punch or meaning and then equally be nonesical and purely for the pleasure of hearing certain words together. It can express any emotion in any form, from the rigid iambic pentameter and strict rules of haiku to the freeness of Benjamin Zephaniah's poems that sound like they were written to a reggae beat.
Poet's are like any other artists, as my gran says "One man's meat is another man's poison" so though I will include a few favourites of mine please don't by any means take this as gospel.
It's just that for me all these have a hypnotic quality as they weave their words around me while I read them over and over again that leaves me feeling all goldenly hazy like I've spent too long in the sun or have had amaretto in the early afternoon and to be honest I couldn't ask for anything more.
Carol Ann Duffy - If I Was Dead
If I was dead,
and my bones adrift
like dropped oars
in the deep, turning earth;
or drowned,
and my skull
a listening shell
on the dark ocean bed;
if I was dead,
and my heart
soft mulch
for a red, red rose;
or burned,
and my body
a fistful of grit, thrown
in the face of the wind;
if I was dead,
and my eyes,
blind at the roots of flowers,
wept into nothing,
I swear you love,
would raise me
out of my grave,
in my flesh and blood,
like Lazarus;
hungry for this,
and this, and this,
your living kiss.
My favourite extract being:
Searching for my double, looking for
Complete evaporation to the core
though I tried and failed at finding any door
I must have thought there was nothing more
Absurd than that love is just a four-letter word.
And an Emily Dickinson poem sent to me by Poppy
I felt a clearing in my mind
As if my brain had split
I tried to watch -seam by seam-
But could not make it fit.
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