Self-Ashtualisation

I attempted another writing exercise from Stephen Fry's brilliant book on poetry The Ode Less Travelled. As highlighted in the title of this entry, I was required to write two syllabic poems on the subjects of rain and hygiene respectively. The first is a syllabic verse with alternating seven and five-syllable lines; the second, two stanzas of verse running 3, 6, 1, 4, 8, 4, 1, 6, 3. First poem: Rain The sky was no longer blue When rain fell, pouring Staining the torchlight within Especially when The thunder shouted, enraged, Like angry mums who Craved cradles of milk. Painful lullabies that cried Turned my blue eyes grey. Raindrops leaked out from both pipes As the threat to fling My childhood into the well Of stale acid rain Was bellowed out by stunted Adults whose hearts were Crashed by lightning at tender years. Second poem: Hygiene Angels with Dirty faeces were the Names We were given By our older cousins when we Forgot, again, To Brush our

I did it! It's not my best attempt, but my mission's accomplished nonetheless! Feeling really optimistic now. I believe that my poetry will only get better as I've made my commitment to keep writing :) Some of you might wonder, 'This doesn't look like a good poem. Why is Ashley posting this?' I don't know. Maybe you might not. But to be honest I feel that I can write a better poem. Nevertheless, I am actually rather proud of myself as I have completed a writing exercise in Stephen Fry's beautiful book on poetry, The Ode Less Travelled. It's a great book. I'd recommend it to anyone who'd like to brush up on their poetry writing. Here were the things I was expected to do in the writing exercise: * Write a poem in forty-five minutes. * Television is the topic specified by Fry. * The poem needs to be written in mixed metre, containing: - Two quatrains of standard, eight-syllable iambic tetrameter. - Two quatrains of alternating iambic te

This post captures my editing process of condensing my 30-line poem into 20 lines :) Original version of the poem: My Sole Soulmate When my dry lips pushed each other away And my brain as dead as the Dead Sea—no, that’s not it— And my brain as dead as the laptop mouse—yes! That’s it— I knew that I was bored to death So I did a Facebook search To track my soulmate down—there, my confession— And guess who and what I found! The girl who shared my live life story! And I wasn’t even kidding yah! Was it true as the so-called— Well, that lame phrase—you know it OK, OK. Was it true as the so-called— Universal truth? This I asked myself and tried to ask her Via telepathy—no, sorry. Via Messenger—now that’s better. Being truthful— And truth is, yeah, we did Sort of Share a live life story. Then again, A sort of is just a sort off. It’s like listening to the evening news Via the Live BBC Radio app Whilst having my breakfast in bed Because she’s not even clos