Tag Archives: walking

Using form: John Gallas, ‘travellin feet: a Camaguey sonnet”

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Im walkin in my feet to Camaguey.
The sun comes up. Im cracklin like a chicken …
Takin time …
. Now somethins comin, kickin
clouds of yeller grit behind me – Hey!
Stop! … It dont. Who cares? It whirls away.
I seen inside the flyin cotton curtain –
Business sat with Care …
. My toes are hurtin …
Whoa, I got to walk another day.
How quick they drive to worry … What I got
the other end improves with evry ache,
an every dusty extra hour I take.
Im good n weary. An Im good n hot.

Whyever hurry? … Happiness will keep …
an sorrow passes – Sleep my baby, sleep.

*****

John Gallas writes: “The Coalville Divan – 100 sonnets – included this one. The 100 are based on Old Persian Proverbs (an ancient 1920 book I found in a junk shop). A heady experience, like being addicted to Rum or something, to enter a period of writing highly formal, all-the-same-form poems. I loved it, and it built on itself as I went along, but I needed something different after the 200 tankas of ‘Billy Nibs’ (Carcanet 2024) and had withdrawal symptoms (wanting to make the tankas rhyme!).
“The proverb for this one was ‘To walk and sit is better than to run and burst’. I set it in Cuba because I’d just been there for a month. I had 2 rhyming dictionaries, 2 thesauruses, atlases, and Wikipedia while I worked on these, each one set in a different country. The challenge, I guess, is to sound accomplished/natural whilst obeying all the rhyme/metrical rules very exactly.”

John Edward Gallas FEA was born in Wellington in New Zealand and is of Austrian descent. He attended the University of Otago in his native New Zealand, and won a Commonwealth Scholarship to Merton College, Oxford to study Medieval English Literature and Old Icelandic and has since lived and worked in York, Liverpool and various other locations in England as a bottlewasher, archaeologist and teacher.

John Gallas’ works are listed at https://www.johngallaspoetry.co.uk/

Photo: “Tired Man Walking” by RobertoCobianchi is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Duncan Lawrence, ‘The Poet is the Luckiest of Artists’

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There is no struggling with a wayward cello on the train 
Or carting a large canvas through dank cornfields in the rain.

No need to worry chapter sixteen has somehow been deleted 
Or that the woodwind section remains a long way from completed.

No welding burns to speak of, hammered thumbs or calloused palms,
No temperamental band mates whose bad habits raise alarms.

No fearing, that the next plié will surely split these tights 
Or some acerbic, carping critic has got you in their sights.

Just, fingers crossed the last few lines like miracles unfold 
Before the walk is over or the bath become too cold.

Yes, I concede the poet’s lucky, yet still I do despair 
For all the artful artistry the money isn’t there.

*****

Duncan Lawrence writes: “I do not remember any specific incident as a catalysis for this poem. I did see an interview with John Cooper Clarke on the BBC, he said something to the effect that one might splash out on Tap Dance lessons only to discover that you were not that good but a pencil and a bit of paper are always available. That was either the source of the piece or resonated because I had just written it.
As to the form, I understand that it might be “Iambic heptameter with some anapestic
substitutions” but I don’t really know what that means.
I cannot sit down with a blank piece of paper and decide to write about something. The
poem just forms in my head over a few days. I then write it down and clean it up a bit. After I put it aside and continue to mull it over on a walk or in the bath before looking it
over again and, with luck, if it sounds all right, finishing it off.”

Duncan Lawrence is a retired English Teacher. Originally from the United Kingdom, he is a long-term resident in rural Japan. Here he spends an inordinate amount of time walking dogs for the local Guide Dog Association.
He has had three poems (including this one) published by Jerome Betts on his magazine Lighten Up Online.

Photo: “Who says I can’t relax?” by Ed Yourdon is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.