Womp Womp!
As someone’s born
As someone dies
People are torn
People tell lies
Winter truly is a dark mime
Although love is shared
Friends drop by all the time
to show they cared
We go by drinking
and singing
And trying not to cling
So we bring
People who’ve cried
For those that died
By Robert Deacon
Just giving you some feedback on your poem Womp Womp, which is just you know my favourite title of this whole process, wuh waah!! I loved the sense of humour, which felt a little bit of a left hook or lure. The poem sets up ‘oh yeah this is going to be interesting it’s going to be fun, but it’s a heavy poem. ‘As someone’s born, as someone dies, people are torn, people tell lies.’ Like you’ve gone through so much there in four lines, that’s what I really loved about this poem. And then ‘winter truly is a dark mime’, I wasn’t sure if it was a typo, but like to render or reduce winter to being a mime, like a performance of silent actions, if that’s what you were intending there that’s great. There’s the poet, there’s the poem, then there’s the reader and the interpretation and I really savoured that line that winter truly is a dark mime. That’s a great line, ‘although love is shared and friends drop by all the time to show they cared’ it’s still, this poem is full of mortality and the spectre of death and I think there is something really bittersweet in there that we…one of the best things about being human is that we know we are only here for a short time so we bring people who’ve cried for those that died,’ it’s just a really lovely way to end it and you are bringing us back to the beginning again. And I think, I have a feeling that you have done something different to a lot of the other poets that I saw today. You are an island and I feel like you have got something because a poem functions like a descent in to the basement of something so if you imagine like the top floor is your open mind then you go down and down in to the basement in to the heart of the matter. Those short lines brings a different intensity than if you had longer lines, so yeah really nice job Robert, well done. And I would say you have a knack with that title or maybe that’s something to think about, the way you can use a humorous or charming or cute or flippant title and then left hook people then with the content in the poem. Nice job.