I spent National Poetry Day (yesterday)\u00a0at St. Augustine’s Priory School in Ealing, West London. I was at the school\u00a0for a reading and Q&A\u00a0with\u00a0sixth form students, followed by a\u00a0workshop\u00a0with Year 9s. The students asked some interesting questions about constraint and\u00a0the creative process.<\/p>\n
In July I was asked to write a poem for an anthology celebrating\u00a0forty years of creative writing at the University of East Anglia. I’d bumped into the Creative Writing Professor in Norwich and he’d asked if I\u2019d have a go at writing in response to a Derek Mahon poem called \u2018Head\u2019. Mahon\u2019s \u2018Head\u2019 would appear last in the anthology and my poem, should I choose to take up the challenge,\u00a0should be titled \u2018Toe\u2019 and would appear first; a kind of top and tail, or tail and top. So, \u2018Toe\u2019\u2026 and it needed to be about inspiration\/creation, either stubbing a toe or building a golem beginning with the toe. So, \u2018Toe\u2019\u2026 and I had little over two weeks to write it. Two weeks in which I was working\u00a0in schools and\u00a0away at Latitude. Not long. So, \u2018Toe\u2019\u2026<\/p>\n
A few days from the deadline I considered requesting an extension, but, as I said yesterday, deadlines\u00a0are good, as are constraints on subject; they squeeze and\u00a0steer the writing.\u00a0I still don’t know how I feel about my ‘Toe’. It’s kind of mine and not mine, but it is\u00a0there<\/em>.<\/p>\n Thank you to the students and teachers at St. Augustine’s for an excellent National Poetry Day. Here’s ‘Toe’.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Toe<\/strong><\/p>\n It makes sense to start with the toe and work up. When he\u2019s complete, I\u2019ll prop a ladder against his chest I spent National Poetry Day (yesterday) at St. Augustine’s Priory School in Ealing, West London. I was at the school for a reading and Q&A with sixth form students, followed by a workshop with Year 9s. The students asked some interesting questions about constraint and the creative process.<\/p>\n In July I was asked to write […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomwarner.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomwarner.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomwarner.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomwarner.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomwarner.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=596"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/tomwarner.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":598,"href":"https:\/\/tomwarner.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596\/revisions\/598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomwarner.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomwarner.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomwarner.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI pull off my sock to check my own dumb digit,
\nget a sense of proportion, follow tendons and joints
\nto the nub that\u2019s furthest from my head and mouth.
\nIt\u2019s best not to think too much, just get something down:
\na big toe from which to build the foot, the shin, the head.
\nI warm a pound or so of clay between my clammy hands
\nand roll out the capital letter of his body\u2019s first line.<\/p>\n
\nto scratch a title into the bluish slab of forehead,
\nthen wait for him to move a toe or suck up breath.
\nTonight I\u2019ll lead him, broad-backed, into your city,
\nleave him to sleep in oily lock-ups and walk the streets
\nwith nothing but this poem rolled beneath his tongue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"