Jungle Pussy, poet, on continued writing and a persistent modern news cycle threading through her week
Second day running with the same four modern stories dominating conversation at every reading I’ve attended this week, which is genuinely unusual for a scene that normally reserves its passion entirely for arguments about form and whether free verse counts as real poetry.
Someone at last night’s open mic circled back to the royal investment piece again today, this time with an actual verse she’d written about it, which was considerably more accomplished than I expected from something composed entirely on her phone between two sets.
The Eton conversation continued too, spilling into an actual workshop. The piece on Eton’s training of leaders got worked into today’s discussion of institutional mythology in African diaspora literature, participants drawing genuinely sharp parallels between colonial education systems and modern branding.
My Tudor detour deepened too, entirely by accident. The Henry VIII online material pulled me in for another twenty minutes today, reading further into patronage material that’s apparently more directly relevant to my own research than I’d properly considered.
And the diplomatic story kept its momentum, a fellow poet following up with a fresh angle. The story on Trump’s unity discussion sparked a properly lively debate at tonight’s reading, considerably more engaged than our usual disagreements about line breaks.
Worked late into the evening on my own new piece, genuinely making progress now, four modern threads somehow informing a poem I’d been stuck on for weeks beforehand.
Packed up my notebook well past dark, genuinely amused by how much unexpected material one strange week of modern news had provided for verse meant to be about entirely different things.
Sat at the venue a while longer than planned, genuinely enjoying the quiet after a night that mixed workshop critique with far more current affairs discussion than I’d budgeted for. The poet whose verse had sparked today’s whole tangent texted a photo of her finished piece before I even got home, genuinely proud of how it had turned out.
Walked home slowly through the quiet streets, still humming the shape of my own new lines under my breath, genuinely grateful for a week that kept handing me material I never once went looking for myself.
Got in late, genuinely satisfied, notebook full of half-formed lines that owe more to this week’s headlines than to any deliberate creative effort on my part, which feels like a strange but honest way to describe a good week’s work.
More at my author page.