Dad’s Plot
An interview I did with Chris Rice Cooper (newspaper/fiction writer, poet, photographer, & painter) about my poem“Dad’s Plot”. It is #261 in the never-ending series called BACKSTORY OF THE POEM where Chris focuses on one specific poem and how the poet wrote that poem.
CRC - Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until final form? The poem I’ve chosen, "Dad’s Plot," has just been published in the New Welsh Review. https://newwelshreview.com/
ER – The first drafts were all written eight years ago (in October of 2012) and they had nothing to do with my father. They were written in the first person and prompted by a particularly beautiful autumn.
The next page of my notebook attempts two drafts of a poem: the first line of one states, ‘The summer air is clear as water’ and the second one starts, ‘Late October, anything but sober as the sun breeds woozy flies.’
The rest of the page concentrates on the vegetables, ‘One last picking of beans’ but also on my discoveries after a bit of research such as, ‘Spiders climb high and produce long threads that act as sails allowing the wind to carry tiny spiders long distances.’
There follow four more drafts and the decision to call the poem, Last Pickings with the underlying emphasis being on Autumn/Ageing/Time.
And that’s how it stayed until a few weeks ago. I needed a poem to enter for #TopTweetTuesday but had a vague feeling I’d entered Last Pickings before. https://deuxiemepeaupoetry.com/2020/02/17/toptweettuesday/
I decided to see what would happen if I changed it to a poem written in the second person and that turned into “Dad’s Plot” ! Looking at it now, I see that the speaker only addresses ‘Dad’ directly a couple of times but it still changes the poem considerably. I think it makes the poem more relevant to more readers than when it was just about growing old.
CRC - Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? Please describe the place in great detail.
ER – I was sitting in the garden with a notebook on my lap and I simply recorded what I could see and hear and feel, in prose.
I live in the countryside near the coast of South Wales and my house looks south across a meadow, a sunken road, a field and a wood, to the sea and beyond that, Somerset and Exmoor. There are four other houses built on what used to be the grounds of a large country house so there are remains of its outbuildings and kitchen gardens; my garage was once the coach house and has the date 1844 on its side door. There are also ancient yew trees that frame the view and at the back of the house, our neighbour owns a riding stables. There is very little traffic on the sunken road and the main noise is that of the surf, the wind, rain, horses and bird song.
It was the light that mesmerised me that day. I still vividly remember sitting there and seeing how spider webs and the fat spiders themselves could be seen so clearly with the sun being low. The sunlight also made the single strands of cobweb floating past shine and this was the first time I discovered that spiders would ride these kite ropes to new places. And then there was the single white feather that cruised past me like a ship in full sail.
CRC - How many drafts of this poem did you write before going to the final?
ER – About nine or ten, the last two being this year when I changed it so that it addressed ‘Dad’ and was not about me.
CRC - Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts that were not in the final version?
ER – Oh yes, many, many. For me writing poetry is a lot to do with cutting things out. Less is always more. Looking at my notebook I think it is mainly the similes that have been cut, for example, I compared a spider to a ‘new Columbus’ and the climbing beans ‘like the hair of an elderly woman wound on rollers’. Cut, cut, cut!
CRC - What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem?
ER – Honestly, I don’t know. It has no particular ‘message’ or hidden meaning. It’s a sensory sort of poem about the beauty of a particular season and so I hope it gives the reader some pleasure.
CRC - Which part of the poem was the most emotional for you to write and why?
ER – Oh, the writing of the new version of the poem, when I changed the title to ‘Dad’s Plot’ and addressed him directly in the poem. It’s when the poem becomes about him and what he has left behind, rather than about me. I realised that I had never really written about him before (we didn’t have an easy relationship) although I have written a whole sonnet sequence about my mother! I had forgotten before I wrote this, that one of my earliest memories was of helping him plant the beans in rows in his allotment. It has enabled me to forgive him for lots of things.
Dad’s Plot
You coaxed these tendrils clock-wise
around each stick, secured them with string;
now the vine’s once-youthful winding
nakedly exposed, is stiffer than twine.
Elsewhere so much leaf, concealing
arthritic hands of beans, their fingers
stung by a first hint of frost.
Woozy flies bask on their papery leaves.
You’ve left behind more than a memory
so what’s left to glean on this shining day?
Slug-split carrots with matted feathers
fingers of squash dead at their tips
vertiginous lettuces, triffid chard
chives fat as pencils, purple topped.
The sun stings my eyes but soon reveals:
gleaming sediment – silver debris
ropes of cobweb spiralling their riders,
stray wisps of hair, an insect’s wing.
Motionless, I watch everything move:
dust motes dance with midges,
golden spiders spasm;
a single feather cruises past
as ponderous as a whale.