ROSE AUBURN
- WRITING & REVIEWS -
Poetry
Poetry really was where my writing began and I try to always have a few ideas for poems in progress.
I love experimenting with layers of metaphor and symbolism some of which can be quite paradoxical. I like to think that the contradictions of these concepts lend more power and resonance to the imagery within the poem. A number of my echoing poetic images I have incorporated and expanded upon in my prose.
I do favour traditional line poetry with a fairly obvious rhyming scheme and I enjoy working in defined poetic forms, such as the villanelle and sonnet, examples of which can be found below.
Dawn - A Villanelle*
In the milky morning light,
wrapped around me like shadow,
entwined, delicate and tight.
Memory of the last night,
makes my face begin to glow,
in the milky morning light.
I touch your skin, pale and white,
you are still and complete. So
entwined. Delicate and tight.
It’s too late for wrong or right,
I chose yes instead of no,
in the milky morning light.
I should abscond from your sight,
run softly before you know,
entwined delicate and tight.
What you have, I cannot fight,
I stay, breathing soft and low
in the milky morning light,
entwined, delicate and tight.
*A villanelle is a structured poetic form with a total of nineteen lines. These must consist of five tercets (stanza with three lines) and a quatrain (stanza with four lines) and also follows a specific rhyme scheme using only two different sounds. The first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem's two concluding lines.
Mourning After – A Sonnet*
She wore the dress of smoky burgundy,
it was expensive, but he didn’t care
and pointed at his shabby, old armchair.
She sat and watched him fuss and flap with tea,
the crystalline grey eyes cruel like the sea.
Anger and shame bubbled up like a flare,
making him give her a hot, anguished glare,
to which her lips twisted in pink reply.
He stayed sitting as she finally went,
revisiting their passion with disgust.
Tasting ashes of disillusionment,
spat out to powder by the heat of lust.
Silent and still he sat, tawny head bent,
his throat choking with black, bitter, cold dust.
*A sonnet is fourteen lines long and has a regular rhyme scheme usually iambic pentameter. There are three types of sonnet (Petrarchan, Shakespearian and Spenserian). The above is a Petrarchan sonnet in which form a sonnet is divided into an octave and a sestet. The thought or theme is stated and developed in the octave, and expanded upon or contradicted in the sestet.