In the first of the ‘In the Time it Took‘ poems, I decided to time various events during the day such as the time it takes for a tube to travel between Angel and Oval and to write poems in those periods and see what crops up. You realise after a while in London that on average about nine minutes of your day is taken up with delay. That’s certainly long enough for a short draft however bad and illegible the first attempt. So in that spirit, I thought that the only way to go would be not to cheat. Sometimes I have ideas floating around in my head for a few days, or even years, and the words gradually form around the idea like ice around a dust particle (or in one of my favourite phrases ‘a snow-forming nucleus‘). So I tried to avoid these ideas and go with whatever happened, turning these rushed bits of writing, however surreal, into poems. Here is the first, a poem in the time it takes to boil the kettle.

Preparation

Starting the stopwatch!

Blurry stopwatch

At 2:56 the kettle grew to a crescendo and then clicked.

2:56 and the poem is complete

Here’s a transcript:

In the Time it Took #1

What was it that took them
out of the wilderness, droning
in through the window
to the silent smell
all hope of shade damaged
by the presence of a glass jail cell.

The nightmares flies must
have of newspapers the size
of old intercity trains
descending on them
the Sunday supplements
stalking them in hot parked cars.

=

And after a post-writing tinker, here’s the poem now:

The Secrets of Flies
What is it that catches their eyes,
a fanciful change of scenery
from the blue blur-wilderness
droning through the open window
to signature smells detected
in their feet, the helipad
of a fingerprint, the crinkled
toffee wrapper? Some how they
are master thieves, and with the door closed,
whole squadrons arrive
and like a victorious F1 driver
who never tires of his pride,
they do the same slow lap over and over.

The nightmares flies must have
of newspapers the size of intercity trains
colliding with them, the looming Kate Moss
face of a Sunday supplement
stalking them in hot parked cars
and after every escape between panes
that same deluge of suggestions
that comes after the event.

to find my glasses I had invited Harry Man to be a Guest Booker.

I met Harry outside the Betsey Trotwood, a pub in Farringdon. We were both waiting to be allowed in to a Modern Poetry in Translation launch at the Freeword Centre. Harry has a mercurial mind and is a fascinating poet. He also likes mixed media collaborations and will be sharing an illustrated poetry project here.

Harry wrote me an email in the time it took for the kettle to boil. I loved this idea and given that we met while waiting, I thought  our collaboration could work on this same basis. So over the next few weeks, Harry and I will be writing poems, notes, scribbles in the time it takes to…