Rediscovering the Joy, by Georgie Tennant

Writing can be a serious business.  If you are dogged by deadlines and your inbox contains an influx of demanding emails from editors, publishers, marketing managers, it can be hard to keep the pure joy of writing alive.  I am not yet in a position to have experienced any of the above – but, as last summer approached, I was struck by a realisation: everything I had written recently was serious and hard-hitting. This was understandable – I have walked paths of pain and loss and writing can be cathartic.  Seeing others connect with it, too, is somehow redemptive.  But sometimes, you need to put all that aside and rediscover the joy.

For the first time, last year, I booked myself onto the ACW annual writing weekend at the beautiful Scargill House in North Yorkshire.  As I left work for the weekend, a colleague spoke some wise words: “I know your writing helps you work things through,” she said, “but try to enjoy yourself – write something just for fun, just for you.”  Her words stayed with me and I did just that.

After a morning of inspiring talks and a bit of private writing time, we had a choice of how we might spend the afternoon.  The workshops on offer, if I recall, were ‘Art,’ ‘African Drumming,’ and some kind of ‘Expressive Dance.’  I was stumped. My stick people don’t even look like stick people, I have about as much rhythm as a toddler at Rhyme Time and – well I’m not even going to try to describe my dancing abilities.  I felt like hopping on the back of the nearest sheep and directing it to the local train station to get me out of there. 

Fortunately, my rescue was imminent.  Martin Horton, inspired by an activity he had done himself, added a last minute workshop to the list.  This one had my name on it.  It is one of my best memories of the whole weekend.  He had come across a poet called Brian Bilston, on Twitter, who had written a poem called ‘Index of First Lines,’ (you can read it here) and had challenged the general public to borrow his first lines as inspiration for their own poems.  Reading his poem was amusement enough, but what followed was just inspired. 

Each of us in attendance, scribbled away, unable to stifle snorts and giggles, as we wrote for the pure and sheer joy of it.  I don’t think anything we produced would gain us first place in any poetry contests, but the level of silliness and enjoyment in that room for that hour were a delight to experience.  Someone wrote about making strudel with her grandmother.  Someone else wrote about the impossible search for missing household items.  My offerings are below.  I don’t promise that they are great literary creations – but I hope they’ll make you chuckle and maybe even inspire you, too, to go off and write something for no other reason than pure, sheer enjoyment.

I am a bowl, chipped at the rim

I am a bowl, chipped at the rim,

I am a lightbulb, low wattage and dim.

I am a spade that’s missing the handle,

I am a flip-flop, not an elegant sandal.

I am a tyre, deflated and flat,

A racquet with snapped strings, no longer a bat.

I am an air bed with a definite leak

A librarian’s door with a very loud squeak.

I am a bowl, chipped at the rim -

Not whole or complete, but still chosen by Him.

Please don’t do that, it’s disgusting 

(based on real - life with my boys!)

Please don’t do that, it’s disgusting.

Why did you think

it was a good idea

to lift the toilet seat

With your tongue?

No, not that either -

Don’t you understand

how many people

have peed in

the jacuzzi water

you’ve just drunk?

Please refrain from that too – 

no – head out

from under his bottom -

You don’t know where it’s been!

I know you didn’t mean to,

but please try

not to fall 

in the dentist’s rubbish bin next time -

it really is quite

awful to think what

might have been in there,

when your head

ended up in there too.

Georgina Tennant is a secondary school English teacher in a Norfolk Comprehensive.  She is married, with two sons, aged 10 and 7 who keep her exceptionally busy. She writes for the ACW ‘Christian Writer’ magazine occasionally, and is a contributor to the ACW-Published ‘New Life: Reflections for Lent,’ and ‘Merry Christmas, Everyone: A festive feast of stories, poems and reflections.’ She writes the ‘Thought for the Week’ for the local newspaper from time to time and also muses about life and loss on her blog: www.somepoemsbygeorgie.blogspot.co.uk