Once I had the title/line I let the poem steep in the back of my head for a couple of days. Then I spent about two weeks refining/revising the language.
The
Poem's Disdain for the Poet
Above
the layers of dream that hang thick over the city,
above
the strata of hope that curves convex into the troposphere,
lies
the locker room of lost poems.
The
one's that die between thought and pen,
those
no poet could shepherd on to the page.
It's
a bleak affair. Metal lockers,
those
thin wooden benches, bolted to the vinyl tiles.
And
what an atmosphere - lost anticipation spiked through with regret,
where
they mumble, where they grumble.
Oh,
the poems disdain for the poet
when
she fails to make them fly,
when
he gets their words down wrong.
For
the promiscuous poet can always follow another set of clues,
while
they are written off forever.
I excised a line near the end of the process that I really liked, although it was not a fair description: like a roomful of Pete Best's.Never having met the man I thought it was too nasty to use. For those younger readers Pete Best was sacked from The Beatles on the eve of them signing to Parlaphone.
Anna Ternheim has just released a new LP All The Way To Rio [in Sweden at least, it comes out in the UK on the 1st December]. I can't find any videos from it on You Tube so here's a live version of her first hit [in Sweden] Shoreline.