Sara without an H > this collection: Poems > Warm Hands Cold Heart > The Juggler > Form A Queue > Lamé > The Alibi > Attention Seeker > Consider It Brought > Genie In A Jam Jar >> next collection: Fragments Of Hell

Poems

These are some of the longer poems I wrote in 2014-15 during the Sara without an H period.

They were all written as standalone pieces, and apart from the first one they all feature a ton of cultural references which I’ve listed below the poems as Big Ups.

All of the poems rhyme and have tight metrical structures, most frequently eight syllables per line and iambic (di-DUM) which is the rhythm of the heartbeat.

about the poems

Over the course of about a year I experimented with rhyming forms and with telling stories populated by fictional characters. It’s not like I’m well read as far as allegorical poetry is concerned and I’m not even sure which literary precedents I was responding to, but I had enough exposure to different types of poetry in my 1970s childhood and 1980s teenage years to have absorbed the principles. 

I don’t even know why, on 11 February 2014, it occurred to me to try and write a rhyming poem in a regular metre. I felt like it was almost an accident; I had an idea and started writing and couldn’t stop until it was done. Finding exactly the right word for the final line of Warm Hands Cold Heart was a pivotal moment for me, because really why did it matter? Who was ever going to care? But I cared, a lot. Struggling to find the right word and succeeding is The Biggest Joy Ever. As Noel Cowerd said: “the right Work is more fun than Fun”.

I wanted to make work that parodied different styles and genres and which had a social message of some sort. When I wrote The Juggler in May 2014 I had done a load of research on Pierrot the Clown and the Decadent Movement in art and literature, meanwhile I had heard tell of some unwholesome goings-on among my wide acquaintanceship. I like the poem I came up with, but I wasn’t satisfied with it as a performance poem. I felt like I was trying to be too fancy. I guess it’s better on the page than on the stage. 

I wrote Form A Queue more deliberately for performance, trying to be funny and apparently succeeding as it did consistently get laughs. There’s a lot of swagger to this poem, written about my dating experiences at that time compared to when I was young. As a teenager in London in the late 1980s I had been dating men in their twenties, and then, after a 25 year gap where I was raising kids and being married, I returned to the dating arena in my mid-forties and again found myself dating guys in their twenties. The difference in the culture was staggering.  

Lamé was written to articulate all the bullshit ableism clichés that I had to put up with as a disabled performer. By and large I would say venues and audiences were really supportive but many of the venues were inaccessible basements which means there’s an added complication to any performance. And then there’s all the usual ableist crap which just seems to be ongoing. This poem is the antidote – a declaration of fabulousness and Disability Pride. 

I hadn’t intended to write a sequel to Form A Queue but somehow The Alibi came out that way. I happened across the story of Morgiana in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and couldn’t resist repurposing it given that she manages to dispose of all forty thieves in inventive ways. My poetry by this time had become more confrontational, I had just written Peanu(t)s, a mini-epic poem in eight parts (see the collection Peanu(t)s) which deliberately used gangsta rap tropes, and was oppositional and goading. 

In Attention Seeker this technique crystallised, and in response to the privileged behaviours of some second-gen white yuppie brats a 100-line poem fell out of my head in five hours flat. If that wasn’t miraculous enough I had committed it to memory immediately. It’s definitely my favourite poem to perform and fits a five-minute open mic slot perfectly. 

Over the next couple of months I wrote Consider It Brought and Genie In A Jam Jar which also both follow the provocative and declarative style, and are mashups of children’s fairytale tropes and adult themes. By this time I had also written two sets of sonnets (see the collections Fragments Of Hell and Pennies From Heaven) giving me a wide repertoire of pieces.

I performed all of the longer poems in this collection at various Spoken Word events – much love to everyone who laughed in the right places.  

Sara without an H > this collection: Poems > Warm Hands Cold Heart > The Juggler > Form A Queue > Lamé > The Alibi > Attention Seeker > Consider It Brought > Genie In A Jam Jar >> next collection: Fragments Of Hell