Roger Robinson is a Trinidadian poet and playwright who has lived in London for 20 years. He has performed worldwide, is an experienced workshop leader and lecturer on poetry, and was chosen by Decibel as one of 50 writers who have influenced the Black-British canon over the past 50 years. His workshops have been nominated for a Gulbenkian Prize and he was part of the Webby award-winning team of online workshops for the Barbican's Can I Have a Word. He has published a book of short fiction, Adventures in 3D (2001) and two poetry collections. The first, Suitcase, came out in 2004; his new book, Suckle, was published in July 2009 by Waterways Press and won the People's book prize.
Take a look at his workshop on fathers and fatherhood
Fathers play an important role in our lives' development. Many lessons we learn about ourselves come directly from what our fathers have done or said, while even the absence of a father teaches us about ourselves. Becoming a father is a time of revelation, memory and insight. This is why fathers and fatherhood are so ripe for investigation through poetry. The memories of fathers or father-figures are full of epiphany and peak experience. Let's look at some of my favourite poems about fatherhood and then move on to some stimulus questions to help get you writing.
The Gift by Li-Young Lee
To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice.
I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
Before the story ended, he'd removed
the iron sliver I thought I'd die from.
I can't remember the tale,
but hear his voice still, a well
of dark water, a prayer.
And I recall his hands,
two measures of tenderness
he laid against my face,
the flames of discipline
he raised above my head.
Had you entered that afternoon
you would have thought you saw a man
planting something in a boy's palm,
a silver tear, a tiny flame.
Had you followed that boy
you would have arrived here,
where I bend over my wife's right hand.
Look how I shave her thumbnail down
so carefully she feels no pain.
Watch as I lift the splinter out.
I was seven when my father
took my hand like this,
and I did not hold that shard
between my fingers and think,
Metal that will bury me,
christen it Little Assassin,
Ore Going Deep for My Heart.
And I did not lift up my wound and cry,
Death visited here!
I did what a child does
when he's given something to keep.
I kissed my father.
One of the interesting things about this poem is how the speaker aligns the tenderness of his father with the tenderness he is now showing to his wife. When poems talk about the present in terms of the past it imbues a strong emotional resonance. It's like walking backward into your future while always looking at your past.
My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
Every time I read this poem I'm always amazed by it's emotional intensity. The way it creates it is by being very specific in its reference to senses: "the whiskey on your breath", "romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf" "battered on one knuckle" and "palm caked hard by dirt". Appealing to the senses is the only equation we have in writing to get the reader to feel what we feel with a moment to moment response. Try to get some senses in your poem. Think about smell taste ,sight, touch, and sound. Also think about where they would fit to heighten the emotional quotient of the poem.
Those Winter Sundays by Robert E Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?
I chose this poem because it's a great example of an elegiac poem that comes from just concentrating on an action and the significance of it. Sometimes in poetry it's good to focus on a specific relevant moment and then explore what lesson you learnt from that moment that you carry with you all your life. Finding greater significance in small seemingly insignificant moments is always a good route to a poem.
So now we've looked at the poems here are a few stimulus questions to help you create your own poems about fatherhood.
Choose a simple task that the father in your poem does and examine its wider significance to you now
Try to think about how what you have learned from your father in the past helps you now
Use the senses so that we can feel a sense of being there. Think about sight, taste. touch smell and sound
How would you describe the father in your poem? Use obvious words/phrases
What habits does the father in you poem have? It's all about the little details.
What do they ALWAYS say?
What do you always picture them wearing?
Do they have any hobbies/interests/things they always do?
Is there a place you associate with this person, or visited with him?
Do you have any other special memories of this person?
Be aware of the structure, story, music and imagination of the poem.
Please submit your entry (pasted into the email, rather than as an attachment) to books.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk before midnight on Wednesday December 2.