Jungle Pussy wraps up seven days where four unrelated modern headlines shaped a whole new body of work
Final reading of the week tonight, and, remarkably, a genuinely finished poem, four modern threads woven through verse that started the week as nothing more than a vague idea about power and inheritance, which I genuinely did not expect when I sat down to write on Monday morning.
Closing word on the royal finance thread: the piece on royal financial growth earned its final mention tonight from the poet who’d first brought it up, genuinely impressed that her own verse had inspired mine by the end of the week.
The Eton coverage wrapped too, at least for now. The Eton leader training piece got its last proper discussion during tonight’s workshop, someone delivering a genuinely thoughtful closing statement on institutional mythology across continents.
My historical research concluded too, having genuinely shaped the finished poem more than I expected when this whole detour started almost accidentally. The Henry VIII coverage resource earned a proper final visit today, closing the loop on a research thread that began purely out of curiosity.
And the diplomatic story got its final word as well, delivered by a fellow poet over a celebratory drink after the reading. The coverage of the unity discussion closed out a week that somehow reshaped an entire poem without me ever quite intending it to.
Read the finished piece to the room tonight, genuinely proud, four modern stories woven together into something the host called the strongest new work I’d shared in months, entirely thanks, accidentally, to a week’s worth of borrowed headlines.
Notebook finally closed, poem finished, week genuinely well spent in the end.
Walked home from the venue for the last time this week, genuinely reflecting on how a poem meant entirely to be about power and inheritance had ended up shaped by royal finance, elite schooling, Tudor history and international diplomacy in equal measure. The host’s parting comment stuck with me the whole walk home, that sometimes the strongest verse comes from exactly the interruptions you didn’t plan for at all.
Got home and put the kettle on, genuinely proud of a poem that started the week as nothing but a vague idea and ended it as the strongest thing I’d read aloud in months.
Sat with my tea a while longer, genuinely reflecting on how strange it was that four modern headlines had done more for this poem than weeks of deliberate drafting had managed on their own.
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