Monday, June 3, 2013

The final poems #51 & #52 in the wild, plus DIY bonus round

Poem 51 (7 of hearts) was released in Mr Tulk, where I was having a sneaky pre-conference breakfast. Nice work on the eggs, guys.



He eats a pale track around
his apple, inchworming
furrows out of green.
Disposable cutlery of baby teeth
shuffle along shiny skin, pausing
at each new bite to secure his hold,
drive a new peg into the rockface.
He has come full circle, meets
with surprise soft familiar flesh.
Brandishes a bright striped globe
of his achievement, smiling rows
of pearls as though he's lapped the world.



Poem #52 (Joker #2) is made out of phrases in the spam comments I've received on this blog - some of them could be little poems in their own right, apart from the "visit my website buy hot bags and shoes" at the end. It was released during the Reading Matters YA literature conference, in Fiona Wood's excellent book Six Impossible Things (recommended). 



Little things we may take for granted:
Alone: the vary of t-shirts that
somebody, yourself, have laid out.
With others, hand gestures in order
from offensive to polite.
At home: orientation of the bedroom
Without your pet.
The real meat of one’s own company
is obscured, does exist. 

There are 52 cards in a pack, it's true (though I didn't exactly finish releasing all 52 poems in exactly a year, because life), but the one I bought also had two jokers. So I was still left with a king of spades and an ace of diamonds after having released 52 poems.

So, welcome to the DIY bonus round! These cards were released blank, for someone to find, with instructions for them write their own poem on the card and release where they see fit. If anyone does this, I'm hoping they'll tweet me a photo of their release @poemsinthewild, or contact me through the blog. They were both released together at the Little Library in Melbourne Central.


 And we're done! It took a bit over a year, in the end, and only a handful of poems were reported as found, though I know a lot of them were picked up by somebody, as I'd see them disappear. Maybe some of them are being carried around as anonymous bookmarks.

The hardest part of  writing of these regular, mostly unedited poems turned out to be keeping them short enough to fit on a playing card, which isn't much space to say something. Consequently, a lot of them don't really say much, or they're brief images. So few lines doesn't leave much space for story, which my poems often tend towards. Another difficulty was that after I went back to full time work last year (no more writing day, because it was turning out to be a waste of both time and money), I didn't really go to many different places over the course of the weeks: mainly I would go to Carlton, Northland, Northcote Plaza, the park, and home. Life on a tight budget with small children and full time work doesn't lend itself to much variety of travel!

But now they're all out in the world. Thanks to the people who checked in when they found one, the people who helped release them for me, and Lygon St Newsagency for selling me the overpriced deck in the first place.