Hello, everyone.
George Herbert was born in Wales and died in 1633 at the age of 39. He served in the Parliament of England and later in the Church of England.
Damien Wilkins was born in 1963 in Lower Hutt. Since 2014, he has been the director of Victoria University's Institute of Modern Letters.
Both of the texts below are about death, but both of their titles are about life.
Try to focus on the idea of life or being alive in your writing, in the same way that the flowers are alive in the first poem or that the lark is alive in the second.
The structure of the first text is a very early example of using layout in poetry. Try to lay out your poem on the page.
Alternatively, you could write in the structure of the second poem, which has no shape on the page, but makes use of the dash a lot.
You could try to use some dashes - like this - in your writing.
Six words to attempt to incorporate into your writing from Herbert: steal, part, fit, cure, follow, care.
Six words from Wilkins: inside, miss, turn, stop, room, idea.
If you have a copy of The Exercise Book (Manhire, Duncum, Price & Wilkins), turn to page "#201: The Rest is Easy" for additional inspiration.
That's all. I hope you are inspired to write today.
Life
by George Herbert
I made a posy, while the day ran by:
“Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
My life within this band.”
But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they
By noon most cunningly did steal away,
And withered in my hand.
My hand was next to them, and then my heart;
I took, without more thinking, in good part
Time’s gentle admonition;
Who did so sweetly death’s sad taste convey,
Making my mind to smell my fatal day,
Yet, sug’ring the suspicion.
Farewell dear flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,
Fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament,
And after death for cures.
I follow straight without complaints or grief,
Since, if my scent be good, I care not if
It be as short as yours.
Lark
by Damien Wilkins
The lark — we could see it — flew over
The heads of the mourners, zipping about.
Dew on its wings. Remarkable but also
Unpleasant — a bird loose inside a building.
When would it be freed? The undertaker — check if they’re
Still called that — missed the cue
And the CD played on, the lark
Flicked again into life, ascending grew stronger,
More crazed. Some people turned.
Who would stop that bird? Who would say,
We know it was her favourite but enough
Ascending. The lark wasn’t worried. It was alive.
Then finally it was fading out. When music fades out
Rather than ends, what do we feel? That, as if called,
Regretful, thankful, we have walked from one room into another,
With the idea we might at any time return to the first room
And find a window open.