Hello Mouthy Poets! This is what I have been working on so far for Say Sum Thin 4. I have reached a point where I’m not sure how I want to develop it. Whether I want to stick to the structure I have created or simply take a few of the images from the poem and develop them into a new piece.
Comments, thoughts and ideas would as always be very much appreciated.
Thank you!
Untitled (Faye)
Coins rebound off the reinforced plastic shields flying back at the feet of the
Children in the playground who decide who can go on the swings first tails or
Heads in the crowd, millions watched a future queen resplendent in her dress of intricate
Lace handkerchief placed over a first born so that his mother cannot see the fatal hole under his left
Eye saw that on the news, they’ve have put up the prices up again for
Stamps across sacred ground, his desert boot prints take us around in a
Circle around the rebel with a cause, baton in hand against her
Ideas saw his house result into embers
The MOUTHY Poets blog 
Hi Faye,
Sorry it has taken me so long to get to this. Every time I turn to the blog to feedback, each poem takes longer than I expect. But hopefully that is because I am focusing on it being detailed and helpful. And hopefully this will be helpful for you!
As it seems like you are quiet unsure of where to go with this I have tried to really focus on the QUESTIONS/SUGGESTIONS sections to try and support you in that development.
LOVE
-The whole concept and the use of children situations and playground rules and luck to say something profound about adult life. There is a dark undertone to this which I think is executed really well.
-“baton in hand against her”
-“ Ideas saw his house result into embers” great line particularly within the themes of the show. I feel like this could be a quote from some famous revolutionist! (Wait, are you a famous revolutionist?) A great place to end, in mid-air.
QUESTIONS
-It feels like you are doing something intentional with the form here, but I am not sure what it is and I am not sure I understood it?
-I am not sure I understand this section?
Heads in the crowd, millions watched a future queen resplendent in her dress of intricate
Lace handkerchief placed over a first born so that his mother cannot see the fatal hole under his left
Eye saw that on the news
SUGGESTIONS
-Try putting this poem into stanzas. I think three line stanza’s of a similar line length would work well. At the moment the line breaks jar the imagery and as a result I found the narrative difficult to follow. I was thinking maybe something like this…
Coins bounce off the plastic shields
and shoot back at playground childen’s
shell-toes. This is how they decide.
-A couple other things I noticed and played around with when editing this stanza were the amount of words and syllables you used. Using this form might push you to be more concise and use less redundancy. If you haven’t done the redundancy editing exercise with me before, you can learn about it here (https://mouthypoets.wordpress.com/2012/04/). You also use a few ing words, change these when possible, they are often weak.
-I have also added specificity; shell-toes – this dates the playground and creates resonance with the audience/reader. Could you add details like this throughout? Because at the moment I am not sure where and when this is set and it makes it even harder to decipher the events.
-I have also looked at verbs, instead of fly back, its shoot back – this makes it quicker and slightly more violent as the reflect the savageness of the playground. it is your choice what the verbs do but I would like to feel they have more of a relationship to each other. Try using a thesaurus to help you out with this, it will prompt you to be more playful with the verbs than you might otherwise be?
-Lastly I have utilised the line breaks to open up the story to a wider universal and adult meaning. I think you are already doing this with the language so it would be nice if you could push that further with the page layout.
I hope this helps Faye? See you Friday.
Debris