Turning nothing into something
Celebrating an occasional magic trick
Around 2016/2017 I was writing what was supposed to be a novel. I managed to get 34,000 words into it when I hit a wall. I find that’s the most dangerous period in novel-writing (between 30k and 40k) when you can lose impetus. Or, even worse, lose belief.
I decided to stop. I had ‘previous’, so abandonment was hardly new…
After a while, however, I realised I actually liked the story, the characters, but it was the mode of delivery I was having trouble with. So, not wishing to lose what I had created (in my head, at least!) I decided on radical action: I took the 34k words I’d already produced and distilled them into a number of poems, narrative poems which carried the story along. Having done so — and not being too unhappy with the result — I decided to complete the narrative in the same fashion.
The end result, After the Rehearsals, is a collection of 40 poems, some of them multiple pages long. If one starts at the beginning and reads them sequentially (the only ‘true’ way of reading them) then you get the story I’d originally set out to write. I hope most of the pieces stand up on their own as valid poems (indeed, I’ve read some at public readings) yet there is a deal of cross-reference — to people and events — which requires either foreknowledge or forgiveness!
Following on from my reviews of The Myths of Native Trees and First-time Visions of Earth from Space, I have been re-reading Rehearsals with a view to making the odd word change and, equally importantly, to share some of it here. There are many brief ‘poetic’ passages I really like, for example”
He looked up at the October clouds scudding as they always must like businessmen rushing late as usual for their next important meeting, dragging dead leaves and rain behind them, the dour Ambassadors for winter.
or
And flooding back came echoes of comfort, warmth, of solidity, security, of toast, the drawing back of curtains to admit light onto an old past, one that was good where nostalgia was permitted.
or
There was no dignity in her decline, the white flag waving. The harder they tried the more she resisted subsumed by an unwavering focus on a horizon they could not see.
— but choosing a whole poem to share has been a little tricky, partly because of their length and partly because of the aforementioned cross-referencing. However, I’m convinced After the Rehearsals deserves a second chance; it still makes me cry in places, and may do so to you too. Anyway, here’s ‘What next?’ taken from the second section of the book. It concerns the return to the empty family home of Mac and Jess (siblings and the two main characters) after the funeral of their mother (their father had died a year or so before). Mags is Mac’s ex-girlfriend.
“What next?” Dark, sombre, devoid of eulogy, the day washed over them, a harsh tide on a pebble-strewn beach sucking them all towards the void even as they stood, and trembled, and sang. It was the negative from a colour print; in black and white and grey the alternative perspective. They tried to celebrate her but there were no tales of heroism, no great waves of humour; they tried to rejoice but found emptiness. Jess wanted to believe in her mother, that there was more to her life than a semi-empty casket; she wanted to believe that one day they would uncover a treasure trove of memories buried in the dust-enamelled attic abandoned since her father’s passing. When they had taken sides it had always been Boys versus Girls. She liked to recall the Girls’ supremacy, but standing on the damp and flattened grass her eyes stone-bound she wondered if that were true at all, if Mac’s loyalties hadn’t been more shrewdly placed. She could see in him an image of their father. Solid, upright, slightly detached, he addressed the day professionally, ensuring process and timing, starving emotion. He became a pillar for her to lean on - which she did more than once, though never really understanding why. “Do you remember”, he said, “that holiday in the Lakes when Dad and I threw stones into Buttermere for nearly an hour and you and Mum refused to join in?” Even then it was a memory of him; even at his wife’s funeral, their father came to the fore. So unlike life! * Silent, side-by-side yet miles apart they rode in the gloss-black car back to the house. It was theirs now, even the empty spaces the favourite chairs the outmoded crockery. When they entered, the house asked “what next?” so they walked into the garden, Jess returning to her bench watching Mac losing himself among the raised beds he had been trying to tend, the daffodils long gone over. Behind her, the house again “what next?” As if hearing the question, Mac stopped and looked back towards her. He tried to smile - not for him but for her - but the smile got lost beyond the herbs. “What next?” said the house the shed, the brazier, all the old tools, the tubers and bulbs, the wilting leaves. Everything asked him the same question - for Mags had been at the funeral.
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