August Writing Challenge 9: DVD Extra Poem

9-CC-ian_poley-would-like-a-link-to-where-the-image-is-used-550photo by ian.poley



Challenge 9: DVD Extra poem.

Write a poem which is a commentary on another poem in the voice of the poet.


Jon’s example of a DVD Extra poem:

Matthew Francis on his poem ‘Dragons’

Once I knew the poem was going to be about dragons
it was clear to me I would have to actually see dragons,
that I would have to join an expedition in search of dragons,
that there were no short-cuts. How could I write ‘Dragons’
and end every line, as I intended to, with the word ‘dragons’
without first having witnessed, first hand, real dragons?
So every line in this poem where we’re looking for dragons –
that was how it was. We were there, looking for dragons.
Obviously, I embellished it somewhat. There is no Dragons
Agency. We travelled in a Mitsubishi Shogun, not a Dragons
Unlimited Land Cruiser, and the foothills weren’t the Dragons
Range but somewhere in the Peaks. But all the talk of dragons –
including the character of Dylan, who had witnessed dragons
many times – that was real. Did I believe in dragons?
I think, in a way, I did. Certainly, I believed the stories of dragons
since they were told in such detail. I was shown the ‘dragons’
droppings’ and scorched ground, saw the echoes of dragons
in rock outcrops, their breath in the fog, the signs of dragons
sparring: battered dry-stone walls, hence: “vestigial dragons’
wings in a crest of dry-stone wall”. But we saw no dragons
and although I was disappointed at the dearth of dragons,
I thought: “I could write about that instead. Rather than dragons,
the poem could be about the possibility of dragons
and end with this idea that actually, we did see dragons
but not real ones – a landscape that reminded us of dragons.”
On the way back, I started writing the first lines of ‘Dragons’,
so the poem ends with its beginning, really. Title: ‘Dragons’;
“It was not the ideal day to go looking for dragons …”


Jon poem imagines the voice of Matthew Francis talking about his poem “Dragons.” Jon’s poem has the word “dragons” at the end of every line, to mirror Matthew Francis’s orgnial poem which also does this. Can you incorporate a formal constraint from the original poem in your DVD extra poem?



Submitting your poem



Jon Stone


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