Whimsical Pantomimes

The final section in the Spectral Poetry Book is Whimsy. More than straight-up funny, whimsy is surrealism, arbitrariness, and contrariness. At least, it is in my book. Literally. Huh. Okay, anyway, like many British people, my first exposures to Proper Poetry were all humorous, surreal, often dark, sometimes salutary. Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll, Pam Ayres, Liz Lochhead, Roger McGough, John Hegley, and, almost certainly formatively at such a young age, Hilaire Belloc (in my parents’ defence, I rarely slam doors, don’t chew string, and haven’t waved a gun at family members, so: lesson learned?). Some of my favourite performance poets excel at humour, and there’s something wonderful about sharing laughter in a poetry space, especially since we also use it for the catharsis, previously discussed, of the bad and scary and difficult.

And, while the discovery that comic poetry isn’t my main strength and that that doesn’t matter was a real turning point (and I can remember exactly where I was when I had this revelation, and I can tell you that being halfway through performing a poem is an odd place for a pivotal personal realisation), I still indulge in writing odd flights of fancy. And sometimes even sharing them with people! And maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to say that comic performance is something that other folk do, much to my delight and relief... I once won a competition to be the worst poet in the room, though, in fairness, the man who apparently literally injured himself laughing at the line about gluten-free breadcrumbs is better now.

Appropriately enough, this section is the least autobiographical of them, with half of the pieces being closer to microfiction (with rhymes) than anything else Most of them are short and all of them are pretty snacky. And I found myself relishing the opportunity to just throw some real silliness around and not worry about whether they were good enough. (We should probably all consider ourselves lucky that it isn’t 20 pages of clerihews, quite frankly!)

The section is started and represented by these hands here:

My main challenge was finding a static pose for such a dynamic and unpredictable notion. But imagine a head between the two hands, tongue sticking out, and hopefully you get the inspiration. Another challenge was learning enough about the software to allow me to perpetrate this. Yet again, it’s imperfect, but I’ve both completed the task and learned a bunch of interesting things, so it feels like a win.

At the time of writing this, it’s early January. By the time you see this, we’ll have a week to go before the current, official launch date. Good luck, Future Fay – you’ve got this!