Exposure

Just managed to get back from the school before Bangkok's leaden skies opened. I had stayed late working on the children's poetry collection I am compiling. It is going to be called "Where East Meets West" which is also the school's motto. In one way I want it to be like a parting gift though of course its main aim is to encourage and celebrate good writing. Writing poetry isn't easy at the best of times so I feel heartened that a lot of children - nearly all Thais - have given it a go. Perhaps in some future post I will share a couple of their poems.

At four twenty, after the computer network had automatically and irritatingly shut down as usual and as I was waiting to log straight back on, I found myself writing a poem of my own. Lord knows where the idea came from. I am imagining this poem right in the middle of a hefty collection and it's as if the poem itself is speaking to the onlooker who has arrived at that particular page. (By the way, water is now coming down in gallons as I write and the electricity just went off for a moment. Thunder. Lightning. Buddha's not happy!)

I guess there are many poems in many dusty anthologies that get overlooked simply because they happen to be located somewhere in the middle of the book. Also, I like the idea of playing with poetry so that this poem has its own voice, its own way of looking at things as it tries to jump off the paper to communicate with the detached reader who happens to have flicked to that page. Here it is:-

Page 53

Sandwiched in the middle

Of this collection

I'm shadowed by the weighty poems around me

Idle readers who flick through poetry books

Or peruse the shelves

Hardly ever reach the centre

Where I've been hiding

Safe in the certainty

That no one would ever find me

Or recognise

My unusually stark style

That is

Dear reader

Till you came along

And spoilt it all...

So now

Speaking as a recently unearthed poem

Now that my secret is out

I feel I ought to say

Something of note

Like the middle is half way

So that's what I just wrote.