Poetry Night

It was more of a talk by Professor Kirpal Singh, my literature teacher's (Dr. Maha), Professor. He is quite a well known guy or rather, mellow fellow, in literary circles and universities. It was a class about poetry and the more obvious traits of a good poem and the connoted meanings. Talking about mellow, today's dictionary.com word of the day is mellifluous - flowing sweetly or smoothly.

We were asked to write two poems in this 3 hour crash course (ten to fifteen minutes each, the rest of the course was spent talking about poems, exceedingly engaging and left me wondering if he, like other poets, wanted to trap us with his ideas) smack in the middle of the exam weeks. (thankfully its the last day of April, meaning tomorrow is Labour day and it'll be a nice, long, revision-filled weekend) One was based on the art installation the Professor had to notice while entering the school building. The art students' City of the Future Project. Miss Teo, if you are reading this, good job!

Of course, as seen by the previous posts, I was involved and I think my poem conveys what I feel about the whole project and my own interpretation, which was better left unmentioned in my preparatory sketches. It touches slightly on what I feel about some folks in the art class who, perhaps, don't understand me too well or just have a... to use the term, prejudiced view.

Untitled

I see a silver of the place,
Just the waves, you see, lapping and yapping at the shoreline.
the pristine, clear cut structure and mass
just plonked in the middle of a levitating island over a
crumpled. black, hole
over which mobiles with sharp edges cut the babe's hands
as she reaches out to touch it
stay way, the beckoning beacon says,
but she is only a child,
untried by life's trials.
she touches it, then prods it, a metallic glob forms,
and trickles and mingles through her netted wires
the whole city is being enveloped into tar
while i sit here with pen and parchment
when in the present my hands are marred and scarred
the hollering infidels just want to touch sharp razors.

And the second poem, an interpretation or a poem about a postcard which we picked at random.
I got the postcard of the typewriter, with the caption "We do the Write thing for you!", promoting paper and English related checking services. and I immediately thought of Roald Dahl's short story. It was meant to be a six liner but I didn't hear that part. But here's what I cropped of my original poem:

It's amazing, they do it all for you
send a mash of literary mush,
all american blabberish or ingrammatical kableesh
and you become a bestseller
not just any meyer who wins over the sellers
you get sick when they pull out their trick

This, I shared with Gina, who was a year older and me and chose me to discuss her poem with. She's a nice senior, also thought by Dr. Maha. The class was about 25 girls from two classes, only parts of our class showed up.

And the rest of what I wrote:

It's amazing, they do it all for you
send a mash of literary mush,
all american blabberish or ingrammatical kableesh
and you become a bestseller
not just any meyer who wins over the sellers
you get sick when they pull out their trick
just your name and face and novel idea
which no one ever liked
but, ah, yes, potential, we'll keep this and
publish it after a few tweaks, yes?
a few more similar calls with all your other entries
and you realise its a recorded voice
but, busy people have tight schedules, no?
it comes out a week later, fresh as a spring,
and every bit as jumpy
or perhaps a tot lumpy, like fermented milk in the fridge
they've got my catchphrase there...
yes... and the character does this... oh yes! the oscillations!
why though does it seem different? subtly different.
But who cares about changes, what's important
is the changing dough, if you get my drift.

My excuse for typing all that out? The Doctor wants it. Chinese exam was a flop. But I've still got humanities, Science and Math. So chin up dear girl!