Not a poet and I know it

I recently attended a couple of events at this year's Penzance Literary Festival. The first was a writing and mythology workshop, facilitated by poet and prose writer Angela Stoner. I mucked in as a steward for one event the following day and that turned out to be Angela's as well. I hope to interview her soon either on this blog or the sister blog www.strictlywriting.blogspot.co.uk

Like many writers I found expression through poetry in my teens, although no one dug my doggerel at the time. Maybe I was channelling my inner William McGonagall. 

The session Angela gave on myth took me in an unusual direction when I got home. I started to think about those elements of my storywriting that come from other people, often without their knowledge. Those precious slivers of overheard conversations that I skewered on my notebook pages, the borrowed memories, and the brutal cannibalisation of other people's experiences.

Graham Greene is said to have said: "There is a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer." Some say it's jagged glass, but I prefer the idea of ice as it suggests the possibiity of a thaw.

Anyway, taking all of the above as inspiration, here's a poem.

I Confess - More or Less

I stole your pet's name

And I took your cousin's too.

I ripped your life into ribboned strips

And sewed them up anew.

I altered crucial details

To hide my heinous crimes.

I changed the date you met your fate

I lied about those times.

I painted myself in the picture

When I wasn't even there.

I made a heroine out of you

And pretended that she cared.

I moved you to a country

Where I know you've never been.

I gave our lines to others

And reordered all the scenes.

I wrote you out of context

With a wild and wicked pen.

I plunged an ice shard in my heart

To serve the story's ends.

I'll never share the secrets

Of a thousand personal worlds.

But I'll scatter fragments liberally

To turn them into pearls.