Dreamsflit

doze rain-meadow
doze downey and stile
soak raven
measle it sober
fatten lark's soul
teeming
sharply radial
teeter its seam
meddle it larval
splashing
dawn

On White Spaces

Reading about Maggie O'Sullivan's approach to the page as a space for material (of writing) prompted me to experiment with writing on to a blank white sheet of paper instead of the lined paper I usually use. Having that pure white space, with no prompts or lines to hang words on, made me look at the space of a page differently. I saw the whole of the page as available to and part of the poem. Often, writing on lined paper, I arrange words down the left hand side of the page - an arrangement I have never really questioned or thought odd looking before. However on the unlined paper this arrangement seemed to become a huddling of the words - as if they were hugging the edge of the paper - perhaps not quite wanting to be seen in this wide open space? Certainly the words did not seem to use the space available to them - something like a newborn who hasn't discovered they can unfold and kick out their legs yet. It is interesting to realise how little notice I have taken of the medium I write on. I do write on paper until the poem is ready to transfer to the white space of the screen yet I've never thought about, or questioned, my habit of composing on a 'black-lined white space' which I later transfer to a 'blank white space'...