Lunch Box

Featured Poem

I have said many times in a variety of places that a work of art (including a poem) must have a Big Idea behind it; this focuses the work and gives it meaning.  I suspect many of the Big Ideas I use are political, sometimes political in a wide sense, sometimes in a narrow sense.

This month’s poem, Lunch Box is deeply political.  But I wonder how clearly that political meaning comes across; only you, the reader, can really answer that

Harry, the protagonist, is clearly bullied by his peers at school; his teachers do not seem to think much of him either.  So, Harry eats his lunch on his own.  On the face of it he has a variety of food, but there are strange items.  How does he have fish fingers and chips in a lunch box?  He thinks of a wonderful teacher he had in his previous year; Ms Kafka told wonderful stories and used art a great deal.  She also enabled Harry to imagine powerfully.  So powerfully he can imagine food in his lunch box; the lunch box is, in fact, empty . .

The poem stems from a news item I heard that some children grow up in such poverty they take empty lunch boxes to school.  How shocking is that.  And I am not certain my humble poem brings out the horror and shock I feel.  But I hope it does.

Reading

I finished all the Peter James, Roy Grace detective stories.  And went on to read David and Ben Crystal’s book on Shakespeare’s language.  It is fascinating, particularly on the issue of false friends.  These are words in Shakespeare we think we understand but have changed their meanings. An example is presently, which we tend to think means in a minute or so, but when Shakespeare used it it meant immediately which is quite different.  Have now moved on to a different Peter James novel, Possession; it has a supernatural background.

Writing

I have spent much of the month beginning to get my Arts Council Develop Your Creative Practice project on the move.  Contacting people, making some dates, creating an extensive Excel Workbook.  The wheels begin to turn . . .

Tom and I are fine tuning the lyrics and music for Recycling Magpie in order for the preparation of the piano-vocal score, vital to have before we can contact singers.  Tom is quite demanding, and so am I.  But we have not found, so far, any issue we cannot amicably resolve.  Exciting work.