It’s time to hunker down and swot
with coffee as my only friend

and each dawn closer to the end
which in the distance I can spot:

the happiness which lies ahead
when I’ll have passed with flying colours

and on a day unlike all others
will saunter through the streets instead.

I won’t be bored, I tell myself:
the world will sparkle, and the hours

will sprinkle down in golden showers.
I won’t need anything – my wealth

will be the knowledge I’ll forget
and which I haven’t learnt as yet.

*****

Tom Vaughan writes: “Swot was inspired by coming across this sonnet form in a collection of poems – This Afterlife – by AE Stallings. It was – at first – simple imitation of her layout. But then I came to like – and to feel – the tension between the couplet form and the cross-couplet rhyming, as if the poem wasn’t sure it was a sonnet. I like things which pull against one another, and most of all I like doubt.
It was subsequently heartening to learn, in June, that she had been elected as the new Oxford Professor of Poetry, given her combination of massive formal skills and deep classical culture, plus her sharp contemporary voice and relevance. So there’s still hope . . . “

Editor’s note: Some non-Brits may only connect the word “swot” with SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats), but Vaughan is using it as the perjorative verb to study hard for an exam or, disapprovingly as a noun, a person who studies hard and avoids other activities. Swot was published in this month’s Snakeskin.

Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and two poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks:
Careers and Other Catastrophes
Familes and Other Fiascoes
Strip Down
Houses and Homes Forever
Travels and Travails.
He currently lives in Brittany.
https://tomvaughan.website

Photo: “The Studious One” by Szoki Adams is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.