The Bahrain Writers' Circle has a new Poetry Director, Parvinder Kaur, and she's livening things up with an exciting new format. Last week, Wednesday 10th June, we had a really stimulating meeting. With discussions and a great exercise that could just as well apply to prose as to poetry. For me, as some of you may know, the appeal of poetry usually wins over prose.
So the exercise was to pick a number from the list she provided, which had words with interesting meanings, taken from the Dictionary of Obscure Emotions. And then we had to choose a colour from the list below that, which were assigned letters of the alphabet. I chose 7, which stood for Xeno, (the meaning is described below) and which in the regular dictionary is a prefix for stranger, alien, foreigner. And I chose the letter F, which offered a choice of colours: grey, silver, black. And so my poem is titled 7 & F.
1. Kenopsia- n. the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that’s usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet.
2. Sonder- n. the realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.
3. Hanker Sore- adj. finding a person so attractive it actually kinda pisses you off.
4. Nighthawk- n. a recurring thought that only seems to strike you late at night.
5. Silience- n. the kind of unnoticed excellence that carries on around you every day, unremarkably—the hidden talents of friends and coworkers.
6. Anecdoche- n. a conversation in which everyone is talking but nobody is listening.
7. Xeno- n. the smallest measurable unit of human connection, typically exchanged between passing strangers.
a. pink, rose, magenta. b. blue, aqua, indigo. c. orange, red, maroon. d. mint, emerald, seaweed green. e. yellow, gold. f. grey, silver, black. g. lavender, purple, plum.
This is the poem that resulted from the exercise:
7 & F
Rohini Sunderam
Six forty-five in the evening
At a time when the light grows faint
Daylight prepares for its leaving
But not without a fight or a feint
When silver is held at bay by gold
And grey can’t quite yet decide
That’s the time, when they say of old
That ghosts, wraiths, and spectres reside
In the hearts of both faint and bold.
Six fifty-two when I saw you
A hint just a whisper of breath
Our eyes they met and I knew you
From years before our last death
We recalled and then you forgot me
As the moment carried you by
A stranger gone on the ferry
With both of us wondering why
It was then I looked up at the sky
Xeno-oh-one in the night-time
I mean it was seven-oh-one
The silver and black of the night sky
Over the red and the gold had won.
