Three weeks ago I participated in a Ode writing workshop at guess where – Keats House in Hampstead. In his garden to be precise! The workshop was part of the 2014 Keats festival. It also marked the arrival of the new poet-in-residence there, Daljit Nagra, one of the few, and the most prominent, Asian poets here in UK. Daljit won the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem 2004 and has since published three books – ‘Look We Have Coming to Dover!’, ‘Tippoo Sultan’s Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine!!!’ and more recently, ‘Ramayana’.
Keats’ poem ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is one of my favourite poems – infact I know it, almost, by heart, and was really keen to learn about how that style – involving deep observation and profound imagery – can be applied in a contemporary context.
In the workshop we got to work straight away, first learning about Sapphic Odes using Agha Shahid Ali’s ‘Memory’ as an example, and then going on to write one of our own along those lines – 3 verses, 4 lines in each verse, first 3 with 11 syllables and the last one with 5 syllables). Sapphic Odes are about praise, recognition and often note someone’s absence.
When I was thinking about who do I miss – it was a no-brainer – the previous afternoon I had dropped off my daughter at the airport and I would be without her for the next two weeks – the longest I’ve ever been away from her. But frankly, I struggled with the ode writing exercise, not used to counting syllables (and infact only recently having learnt what they exactly are technically), finding my creativity restrained by the form, and having only 20-25 minutes to do so. Here’s the third verse from what I wrote
Your cheeks sink
at the touch of my lips
Your half-shocked hug
You now begin to register
Your open mouth
tears and wet bread crumbs
You cry 'Papa, Papa'
Next we moved on to Pindaric Ode, with John Dryden’s ‘An Ode, On the Death of Mr Henry Purcell’ as an example. Pindaric Odes are intricate and all about a sincere dedication. Our exercise was to write something on ‘the day before’ something happened, describing what life was like before an event, following a chosen form (lines per verse/para rhymes/syllables etc). I chose to write ‘Love Before’ with seven lines per verse. Here again I struggled, with keeping to form, remembering the details and of course writing three verses in 15-20 minutes. Here’s the first verse that I wrote:
Birds welcomed us in the garden
Eucalyptus trees closed their eyes
Allow us our private moments
Nothingness is never seen
Seven cigarette stubbed out in a glass ash tray
One for each year we smoke togetherness
The last exercise, 10-15 minutes after the above was to write another ode using the first line from Samuel Johnson’s ‘Horace’s Ode from Book 4.7’. We had only 10 minutes to do so. Not happy with my work so far, I wasn’t expecting much to come out of this one, but I found words coming out more freely in this exercise, having warmed up by the preceding two. I wrote about my garden, and here’s what I wrote, totally raw and unedited:
The snow, dissolved, no more is seen.
The brown patches, exposed green,
The trees absorb rays, nurture
ripening berries in red, purple.
The blossoms in white, red, pink, yellow
proudly brave the wind,
sportingly take knocks with the fence.
The bees trace their circular paths,
hide in the petalled tunnels.
The maple tree, bare to green,
its gentle, focused foliage points
towards blue and green and glass.
New beings emerge,
make themselves known.
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