Tag Archives: university

Using form: couplets: George Simmers, ‘Trigger Warning’

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Reading this do not expect
An unconditional respect

This poem is an unsafe space
You may be told things to your face

This poem may not feel the need
To be polite about your creed

It may not think your origins
Excuse your weaknesses or sins

It maybe will not lend its voice
To validate your lifestyle choice

It may resist attempts to curb
Its power to worry or disturb

It may not think its task to be
To flatter your identity

Although its author’s male and white
It may perhaps assert the right

To speak of gender and of race.
This poem is an unsafe space

*****

George Simmers continues to be amazed and amused by the warnings that some University lecturers seem to think it essential to give their students.  He writes: “Last week there was a warning that Jane Austen’s novels contain some outdated sexual attitudes. The week before that, students thinking of taking a course on tragedy needed to be told that it might contain references to violence and other disturbing themes. The week before that someone was worried that Peter Pan contained material that some students might find it hard to cope with. Why is this? Are the lecturers afraid of legal action from the helicopter parents who are the plague of some University departments today? Or do they really feel that their students are all delicate blossoms? Or do the warnings reflect their own discomfort with the canonical material they are obliged to teach? In the past people often did not think or behave the way that responsible modern people think they should have. It must be worrying.”

Editor’s comments: Poems written as a string of rhyming couplets can quickly start to feel mechanical and boring, but they are very effective when a straightforward list of ideas is being presented, as in this poem by Simmers. ‘The Latest Decalogue‘ by Arthur Hugh Clough is a classic of good usage (and also a classic of “unsafe space”).

George Simmers used to be a teacher; now he spends much of his time researching literature written during and after the First World War. He has edited Snakeskin since 1995. It is probably the oldest-established poetry zine on the Internet. His work appears in several Potcake Chapbooks. ‘Trigger Warning’ is from his ‘Old and Bookish‘ collection of poems.
https://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/
http://www.snakeskinpoetry.co.uk/

Photo: “trigger warning” by lostcosmonaut is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Poem: ‘Fellow Student’

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I went round to Sarah’s flat one night:
“Hi man,” she said, “Yeah, you can come in, sure,”
apologising as she shut the door –
“but not for too long, you know how it is –
I’ve got two essays still to write
and then exams start – I’m in quite a tizz.”
She yawned and laughed, said “I’ve just changed Sam’s nappy,
and now he’s fast asleep – at last!” she smiled –
“Wow, but he keeps me busy!” “Also happy,”
I put in. “Yes, but not all the while –
he’s got a weak chest, coughs, cries with the pain,
I get so uptight we both end in tears…
his dad got sentenced, over drugs, eight years…
that’s long: I guess we won’t get back again;
I’ve got my Finals coming up, and then,
after, who knows? I’ve hardly time for dreams:
with Sam and studying, sometimes, it seems
my life’s nappies and essays, nothing more.”
She changed the record, sat to roll a joint,
and said “First thing I do, even before
I take Sam to that Nursery up the road –
he’s bigger every day! He’s quite a load!
But anyway, that’s not the point –
first of all, I get stoned, and stay that way,
or else I’d never make it through the day.”

A new cloud added to her soft rich room
a further depth of blue, a silent pause.

She spoke again, her thoughts already gone
back to her work: “And then, they seem such fools,
dividing all Philosophy in schools.
You know my option is the Indian course;
I know so much of what the old books mean:
things of which lecturers can’t conceive, think guff,
I understand, they’re places where I’ve been…
I’m always trying to turn the lecturers on:
if they’d drop acid, or just smoke some stuff,
they’d see so much… but they’re not brave enough.
So Transcendental just remains
a trendy course which their students can take
if other courses can’t keep them awake.
But still they try their worst,” she said, nonplussed,
and read “The Bhaghavad Gita retains
relevance for our century. Discuss.
Christ, aren’t they boring!” she said, biro poised.
I let myself out, while she found her page,
and Briggs, her hamster, woken by the noise,
went streaming up the rat-race in his cage.

*****

This poem dates to the time after I had dropped out of the University of Dundee, but still came back to it in the years that saw most of my 25,000 miles of hitchhiking. I feel I learned more by wandering in and out of jobs, countries, languages and religions than I would have if I’d stayed on Sarah’s path. But then, I have no idea how life worked out for her, so who knows.

The poem is semi-formal – rhymed but without a rhyme scheme, in iambic pentameter with some occasional liberties taken with metre… but those liberties are comparatively acceptable, even beneficial, in a longish poem as they break up the metrical monotony. That’s my excuse anyway, and I’m sticking with it. The poem was published decades later in Snakeskin – thanks, George Simmers!

“Hamster Race” by Naked Faris is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.