Poetry Prose

This week I have been thinking about the injustices we experience as a child and the impact this can have on us throughout our lives.

I was reminded of a poem I wrote as poetry prose and how I enjoyed combining the elements of poetry and prose together. It kind of gave me a bit of freedom to draw things into each other without adhering to more regimented guidelines associated with each of the genres.

What is it?
Poetry prose is essentially poetry, but it’s written in more of a prose (as opposed to verse) style. It is a heightened piece of writing as it tends to have more of the figurative language we associate with poetry that appeals to our deepest emotions.

What can you do?
Write a short piece of poetry prose (about 250 words) about an injustice that you experienced as a child. Draw out your feelings about people’s behaviours and the impact this has had on you.

An example
The following poetry prose example was inspired by Judith Beveridge's 'The Two Brothers', which is about how two brothers tormented her as a child by exposing themselves to her and putting salt on snails and generally being cruel to insects to see how they would react.

So in my poem I have followed a similar style of writing, in particular a similar beat to create the same rhythm. I also wrote about the injustice my brother and I experienced from 2 girls when we were children.

I chose to write poetry prose to bring together moments from different times and weave them together as a story that seems like it happened concurrently. Memory is a bit like that where time meshes into one space.

The Laundry

I only wanted to keep my brother away from those two sisters, the ones who locked him in the laundry in the depths of the backyard, looking vacantly at each other as one pinched under my arm, the other tearing the leg off my doll, then tossed it over the fence. They stood at attention like soldiers when an adult arrived. I read their Golden Books under the withered tree on the concrete path, sailed along the ocean in a tug boat, went fishing with big bear and baked cakes with mother hen. When I turned the page, it smiled back. But these girls, great in their minds, would coax me to play with their dolls, chalkboards, sharp pens. When they scribbled in their books and blamed me, I clenched my nails into my fists, held my breath and counted backwards from ten. I knew this as injustice slicing the spirit and that next they would graffiti more books if I made a sound or objected. Instead the laundry door thumped like a horn blowing. And I was forced to write ‘I will not graffiti’, a hundred times over, starting again when I wrote repetitively individual words instead of sentences. These sisters, who had shut my brother in to keep me out, doubled up in laughter. But when they unlocked the laundry door, releasing their aloneness as my brother cried blue murder, they cried out for their mother, not quite sure what would be done to them, and held each other through the loneliness of their power.