Midnight Visit
(A pantoum)
© 2023 Terrie Ferman
The usual visit felt quite odd.
The air was just a little chilly.
Neither was a ‘ghosty’ person.
She held her tongue; he loosened his.
The air was just a little chilly.
She couldn’t put her finger on it.
She held her tongue, he loosened his.
‘I sense evil’; she concurred.
She couldn’t put her finger on it.
They both agreed that he should leave.
‘I sense evil’; she concurred.
His leaving vaporised the doom.
They both agreed that he should leave.
Neither was a ‘ghosty’ person.
His leaving vaporised the doom.
The usual visit felt quite odd.
Behind the words
This poem is a pantoum whose structure is abcd/bedf/egfh/gcha. I feel that the repetitive structure helps to build the eerie atmosphere. This poem recalls an event that happened to me in my early twenties when my boyfriend dropped by late at night on his way home from work. The experience was eerie, to say the least – a one-off, never to occur again.
Twenty-five years later, I wrote about this incident in a poem that I titled Aura. At 36 lines, I won’t feature it here. Nearly a quarter of a century after Aura, I wrote this pantoum. I was intrigued at how long this weird incident had stayed in my memory waiting to pop out into verse on two distanced occasions.
The Corridor
(c) 2000 Terrie Ferman
I’d never seen a student there
on my scurried shortcuts through it.
The space is always empty
a corridor of total void.
It’s squeaky clean and litter-free.
The vinyl shines perpetually.
All doors are always firmly shut.
Or locked? I’ve had no need to try.
Labels tell of labs and archives.
Large signs warn of chemicals.
Yet no stale or suspect odours
waft vaguely through the eerie air.
This space is owned in ghostliness
by a heavy hovering silence.
I’d avoid a nighttime visit.
Behind the words
I was working at a large university with beautiful grounds and sandstone buildings. A walk around the campus was always a joy but, on a few occasions to save time, I took a short cut through an adjoining building. It was entirely utilitarian in its signage and uninviting in its atmosphere. It did not encourage loitering.
Featured poet: Ann Liebert
Ann Liebert is a Brisbane-based poet.
Hanging Rock
(A pantoum)
© 2023 Ann Liebert
A breeze blows their soft white dresses.
Picnic baskets are carried with zest.
Eucalypt air tosses their tresses
And a grassy knoll chosen for rest.
Picnic baskets are carried with zest.
The bounty is laid amongst flowers
And a grassy knoll chosen for rest.
Minutes soon become hours.
The bounty is laid amongst flowers
But restlessly some wander on.
Minutes soon become hours.
Oh, where oh where, have they gone?
But restlessly some wander on.
Eucalypt air tosses their tresses.
Oh, where oh where, have they gone?
A breeze blows their soft white dresses.
POST NOTE
This poem references the mystery of the lost girls in the novel Picnic at Hanging Rock by Australian writer Joan Lindsay (1967).
OTHER
A true story: Writing pantoums
Over the years, my friend Ann and I had sporadically sent each other poems. For my 50th birthday, she gave me the perfect present – the complete works of my favourite poet, Emily Dickinson. I treasure that book.
When COVID lockdown hit, I suggested that we could have an email poetry exchange. My idea was that we’d take it in turns to re-form a poem by a famous poet from its original form (for instance, a sonnet) to a different form (e.g. a ballad). Ann, very wisely, offered a twist on this. Instead of fiddling with form, she suggested using the famous poem as a prompt to writing our own new poems.
Off we went on what turned out to be a lot of fun, not entirely uninterrupted by periods of frustration when the muse refused to visit on demand. The process could be mysterious at times, uplifting at others. It was fascinating to see where our ‘prompting poem’ would take us. A poem by George Baker, ‘To My Mother’, predictably led to poems about our own mothers. Similarly, Emily Dickinson’s Hope is the thing with features resulted in us both writing about chooks. At other times, the leaps from original prompting poem to new poem were less obvious. It didn’t matter.
Ann and I gave each other cheering feedback. It was so helpful to hear comments such as: ‘the best lines in this poem are 5 and 7.’ I re-read the poem – she was right and this observation enriched my future efforts. One time, Ann said that ‘this poem seems to have written itself.’ How did she know? How did that little poem present on the page as having had an easy birth?
After lockdown, Ann and I continued to exchange our poems – it was too much fun not to. Ann suggested an excellent variation. Put aside prompting poems and write to form. Our starting point was Stephen Fry’s excellent book The ode less travelled (2005) in which he re-visits and celebrates older forms of poetry: the villanelle, ballads, ottava rimas, triolets, pantoums and so on. Trying our hand at those forms offered a different challenge from just freely responding to a poetic stimulus. Discipline and rule following were involved. And, of course, the thing still had to make sense. The process of angling words into set structures wasn’t always easy but the satisfaction when it worked – or even when it nearly worked! We each wrote two pantoums but that modest quantity belies the enjoyment behind the writing.
I hold no envy – only gratitude – to recognise that Ann is the better poet. I’m pretty confident that regular readers of ‘Poems&Other’ (where Ann is the Featured Poet) would share my view. This collaboration improved my poetry as well as occupying my mind at a time when I needed to be thinking about things other than COVID and when lockdown had ended, I was left with a continued and delightful exchange with a like-minded friend.
(cont) is beautifully evoked by the repetition of lines about natural elements with an underlying urgency.
Midnight Visit- the pantoum structure works so well with your choice of words to create the eerie atmosphere. Interesting that the visit has remained in your memory all this time.
I think Ann’s reflection on the eeriness at Hanging Rock