This is a square eyed apartheid,
where grounds are rich with
the copyright seeds and snake skin
crusts we feed on just to stay alive.
A plant in prime is harvested
when roots detach from this old
tribe master’s ravage of junk
that turns hearts cold, dim
and dutifully plastered.
Yet we swallow
as if it were the best meal
we cooked up.
This graze is on our home pasture.
Even if that side glows green,
it don’t feel the right texture.
Sinkhole ruts
embed a drudge
in future generations.
Progress hacked with axes
shining tired propagation.
Comfort blanket hatred
screams obscene
ways and means
of halting peace and unity.
The flags the lambs
will kill for will
always grant impunity.
Yet love grows
in pockets of the earth
and those roots are infectious.
The leaves spawned by –
music, love, food, community, peace, nature, respect
Suddenly taste the right flavour.
Hope screams out from community schemes,
the people who meet to fulfill their dreams.
We plant understanding, growing ever faster.
We’ve come far for what we are,
our obsessions realign
when words of mirth ring true
to chests of treasure
we can find.
We’re moving
faster than we’ve ever been,
trying to replace the rain
we see failing to launch a scheme
of life in solidarity.
Will we direct it in alternate streams
to worlds that are at one with freedom?
This still needs a lot of work, particularly the second half – any feedback appreciated. Cheers!
The MOUTHY Poets blog 
I really like this, I think it’s engaging and a good interpretation of modern life and society.
– Rosie
Hi Bridie,
Love:
The rhymes and half rhymes in the middle section:
“ruts, drudge” “hacked, axes” – the music of this bit flows really nicely
I think this is really going to make people think about society and the fast moving pace of the poem works with that theme.
Suggestions:
Have a look at line breaks and stanzas – try pin pointing the concise points you are making and split these into the stanzas.
For example:
This is a square eyed apartheid,
where grounds are rich with
the copyright seeds and snake skin
crusts we feed on just to stay alive.
A plant in prime is harvested
when roots detach from this old
tribe master’s ravage of junk
that turns hearts cold, dim
and dutifully plastered.
Yet we swallow
as if it were the best meal
we cooked up.
This will give readers/listeners that break to process what you’ve just been speaking about with a bit more clarity.
Here:
“The leaves spawned by –
music, love, food, community, peace, nature, respect
Suddenly taste the right flavour.”
I would avoid the use of suddenly, also, I feel like all of these words are a little vague and would like you to show me more. It feels a little rushed, like you’re trying to get all of these things in in one go. Maybe choose one and give a little more description?
When using rhyme, I think the first time you did it was musically great but then in the second half it feels a little sing song rhyme which can take away from the meaning:
“Hope screams out from community schemes,
the people who meet to fulfill their dreams.”
-Have a look at a thesaurus, are you using the right words here or choosing them for the rhyme?
Overall I think this is a great poem and can’t wait to see it come together. Have youu thought about how you might want to perform it for film?
Hayley x
Hi Bridie,
Great to finally see a piece of your writing! So the way I do my feedback is structured as below, I try and ask as many questions and give as many examples as possible so you are not just learning for this poem but hopefully future poems too… I also want to learn how best to support your writing and give you feedback so always feel free to challenge me.
Overall I think you are getting there, the structure is there, now let’s get nitty gritty…
LOVE
-I love how you use sound, it is really rich and luxurious yet still using very concrete imagery and ideas.
-I like how you are pairing ideas – copywrite and snake skin… lovely.
-You innovate the cliche which I love e.g. square eyed apartheid – amazing.
-“comfort blanket hatred” I love this use of the unexpected in your writing, it is really great and it hits you straight in the stomach! Can totally see how you won that creative writing award doing what you are doing!
-It feels like there is a really clear sense of movement and dynamic, there are clear ups, downs and turning points and I personally find that the hardest thing to work out… so you have you’re skeleton, now we need to put some meat on it – I want to be able to taste, touch and smell what you are talking about!
QUESTIONS
-Who are ‘we’ in the poem?
-Where is the ‘home’ in the poem?
SUGGESTIONS
1. What is happening? You are so great at working words, but I am not 100% sure of where I am or what is going on and I need a little bit of that. Could you annotate this poem with simple sentences of what is actually going on. E.g. We are in Syria, and rich people have everything // People start dying … I am not saying this is what is going on, I just want to show you how simple I want these sentences to be.
Once you have done this (you should have like 4-6 sentences) imagine you have never seen this poem before and read it out loud. Think of the words/images going in one by one… do you need to give them a little more of that sentence? I think we need hints of it here and there. Does this make sense?
2. (Only do this after trying out suggestion 1) Redundancies & Stanza’s… So firstly, can you try out this exercise:
then I want to challenge you to go through this poem and edit it into 3 line stanza’s, roughly even line lengths and I want you to ask if each word needs to be there & if you could say anything with less. I had a go with the first few lines to give you an example:
Square eyed apartheid:
rich with copyright and snake skin.
Whilst we feed on crusts to stay alive.
3. SPECIFICITY… From the word love onwards, you run away from detail, from snake skin and roots and you kind of outline a story to me, which is good but I need detail to know what that story is. These questions should help you pin that down (I suggest you brainstorm writing down the answers)…
-What kind of love grows? … is a baby given birth to in the mud? Do a 14 year old couple hold hands whilst they dig into a swamp for fresh water? Does someone find time to make tea for their grandfather through gunfire? There are so many different types of love that could be found… i want a concrete example of what you mean, fact or fiction I don’t mind I just need to be able to taste and feel it…. Likewise, what music? JLS? Backstreet Boys… I don’t want generic music, tell me what kind of music, food and nature?
-Fulfil what dreams? Dreams of being a pilot? Dreams of being able to wake up without having a flooded living room?
-What worlds and what freedom? Some people see being able to kiss their gay partner as freedom, other people see being able to have their afro out in a job interview without being embarassed as freedom? What freedom are you talking about?
PERFORMANCE
-So I know you are filming in Barcelona… do you have any ideas of where and how you are going to film and edit it?
I hope this has been some kind of helpful,
Debris