Poetry

Debaleena Mukherjee and her work

/ Caron Allan / Leave a comment

Debaleena and I have been friends for many years now, having bonded on Facebook over a shared love of mystery books especially those of Agatha Christie and Patricia Wentworth. Debaleena has also been very supportive of my writing. For a long while now she has been writing and performing and publishing her own work in the genre of poetry although she also writes short stories.

I first had the pleasure of interviewing Debaleena on this blog back in 2021. You can read that interview here.

A number of years have passed and it seemed only fitting to have a catch-up with Debaleena; I was keen to find out a bit more about her creative process and to share some snippets with you.

Caron: Hi Debaleena, it’s so good to have a catch up – it’s been a while. You’ve shared manyof your peoms and information aobut your books on social media, but how do you go about creating your work?

Debaleena: My creative process is a very cobbled together process. A line or a word capture my attention or captivates my imagination and I pursue it till I have given it a shape or a form however shaky or wobbly it maybe. But it’s a structure. That settles that urge to create the entire poem/ story/ commentary that I had built around it. It is very often a small simple kernel like a fleeting scenery through the window, or a glance at the sky as I am cooking, or a flower that’s bloomed and is now going to wilt. I am very very curious hence I observe people specially strangers. And I weave a life story about them in my head. Sometimes I write rather type something then and there on my phone. I don’t wait for any right time . The time is always right to write.

Caron: I’m very fond of a notebook, and have dozens of them. Do you write in a notebook?

Debaleena: Very rarely. I use a notebook only if I want a very personal journal entry. I make it a point to use a notebook— notes for Shakespeare that I prepare for my students. I do online coaching classes. When I write every detail from every Act and scene, teaching his plays become easy.

Caron: So does that mean you put the words directly into a computer document?

Debaleena: Yes. I open a fresh “page” and label it and directly type the words. But I can’t do the “without looking typing” that many do. However I have become very comfortable with the writing options on documents directly. Maybe it’s because I don’t rely on autocorrect or predictive text. I write as I please without looking at those tools. So my spellings are not an endangered species.

Caron: Do you write a rough draft then work on it and revise it until you’re happy?

Debaleena: Yes. I am firm about the technicality of the writing process. I write without skipping words, correct spellings and grammar as I write. Then I do a thorough heck of spellings, syntax, punctuations. Especially with vocabulary. I do not settle for a word that’s suitable, I hunt for a word that is closest to the description and expression of the emotion, experience and even the object. For example I try not to use the word high for both. mountains and buildings. It’s the character of the subject that the adjective has to describe. Here synonyms with their nuances are needed. I constantly refer to the dictionary, thesaurus when I am dissatisfied with the word I have chosen. And I never take spellings and meanings for granted. Check check and check.

Caron: As a lot of your work is in the form of poetry, do you worry about line length or the number of syllables?

Debaleena: Not if it has not been stipulated or fixed. What I worry about is repetition of the idea using an extensively misleading vocabulary. English has an immense scope of embellishment of the same idea in different ways in the same writing. Ornamentation can become a burden to the theme and the characters.

Caron: How do you feel when you look back at your early work. Do you feel satisfied and grateful, or do you find yourself revising it or tweaking odd bits, or do you find it difficult to read work from an earlier time?

Debaleena: I respond with emotion— I’ll use the word emotion–that of gratitude. Gratitude that I could write this and then discovered the tools with which I could build upon these works. They may read too immature, or pompous, pedantic or too much like a school homework essay, but I feel good that I had overcome the mind block and written it. Then instinctively I work at alterations and tweaking it.

Caron: I completely see what you mean there, that’s been my experience too. And what were your earliest influences?

Debaleena: Reading whatever I could lay my hands on. Enid Blyton to Nancy Drew. Then Little Women; Shirley, Jane Austen’s books. Adventure stories, although I veered towards mystery and detective fiction more: Agatha Christie. Romance of course— I don’t like the phrase diehard romantic. I prefer unapologetically romantic. So Mills & Boon. I discovered Mary Stewart at 14 and it’s my personal enchantment. Much later in life Ellis Peters, Elizabeth Peters, Georgette Heyer. Mystery, and delightful Regency repartee. And of course both our shared interest Patricia Wentworth. I think we could do an exclusive session about her. Thankfully I am never short of books. One series gets over, something new is there. Reading is that domino effect in reverse. Nothing collapses, the tower gets higher

Caron: Yes that’s very true. Reading is addictive! My actual shelves and my eBook shelves are groaning under the weight of them! Then finally, Debaleena,  what’s next for you and your amazing poems and short stories?

Debaleena: Thanks for the kind compliment. Right now I am very involved in anthologies that are published both here in India and abroad. I send my poems to whatever publication appeals to me. If accepted I am surprised each time and equally thrilled too. Never ceases to thrill me when my poem/poems or short stories are accepted. That mail from an editor is like a certificate of fulfilment to me. Maybe I will publish another slim volume (slim being the highlight) of poems, postcard fiction, Nano fiction and Drabbles.

Thanks so much, Caron, for sharing your platform with me. Like we had done when my first book had been published. You are my first “writer friend” and always so supportive. Hope we carry on our shared writing stories and our earnest discussions about Patricia Wentworth.

Caron: I’m so very grateful to have you here to find out more about you and your work. Thank you so much.

 

About Debaleena Mukherjee:

Debaleena is a homemaker, who has also been a teacher and college lecturer over the course of years. She grew up in Jamshedpur and did her schooling at Sacred Heart Convent School, Jamshedpur, and Rajendra Vidyalaya, Jamshedpur. She has a Masters degree and M.Phil in English Literature from Jadavpur University, Kolkata.She lives with her husband in Bangalore, and she  has a grown-up daughter. Reading is Debaleena’s way of life. That’s what she is always doing. She enjoys the moonlight-and-roses kind of music. She loves travelling to places from the pages of history books. Haunting bookstores is her pastime. She loves going on shopping expeditions for shoes, bags, and bling.  Observing people as they go about their lives, fascinates her. At the end of the day she needs her recliner, her books, and coffee. With some cake.

Debaleena’s social media:

Instagram: @mdebaleena

Facebook: debaleena.mukherjee

The books:

Ink Smudged Dreams – by the Reading Light

Qwerty and Quiet – by Candlelight

She Achieves (short story collection)

She Seeks (short story collection)

 

 

An interview with Poet Attie Lime

/ Caron Allan / 2 Comments

This week I’d like to welcome Attie Lime to my blog. Attie is a poet and author who specialises in writing and teaching the joy of poetry and how to create poems to children.

Attie, welcome. I know we haven’t known each other very long, but I’d like to say I really admire your energy and how you inspire children to express themselves through poetry.

But I’d love to know, what is it about that that feeds your inspiration?

Hi Caron and thanks so much for inviting me! When I started writing in earnest again after a long break, I wrote for adults, and was published in online and print litmags, which really boosted my confidence; I’d never really submitted work before. Children’s poetry came along by accident, really! I had submitted the first part of a novel for children to a competition and didn’t want to continue writing it while I waited, in case I won mentoring, so I had a try at children’s poetry, and fell in love with it. Then came the pen name! That was in the second half of 2021.

I am inspired by my own children, things I notice in everyday life, memories, and particularly by words, phrases, and rhythms which catch my attention and spark a poem. Anything at all can inspire a poem – usually when I’m not thinking about writing one.

I’ve had one children’s short fiction piece published and I started a middle grade novel… I also write poetry and flash fiction for adults, but I mainly write poetry for children.

And what were your earliest influences? What did you read as a child?

I enjoyed Enid Blyton books, Roald Dahl, Funny Poems by Spike Milligan, Milly Molly Mandy, that sort of thing. What I mainly remember about poetry is my mum sharing (not reading) poems with me at bedtime – poems she had memorised. I loved it. It felt special.

Oh my mum did something similar, though she mainly read from books to me, no doubt setting my own love of reading and stories in motion. But to this day I can still quote sections of poems from When We Were Very Young or Spike Milligan and others!

And what are you working on at the moment?

Writing-wise, I am currently expanding and polishing a poetry collection aimed at Key Stage Two children (my debut next year is aimed at Key Stage One), a plan for a craft-and-poetry book, a collection of action poems for young children, plus various poems for submission opportunities, and of course just writing poems for the love of it (including poetry for grown-ups). I am also co-editing a poetry anthology for children – and probably doing some other things I’ve forgotten about!!

It’s amazing how many writers have more than one work in progress! What can we look forward to in the future from you?

My debut children’s poetry collection will be published in early Spring 2025! I can’t share its name yet, but there is fruit in the title (not lime!). I feel very lucky to have signed a contract with Otter-Barry Books.

There are a few exciting poetic things happening throughout 2024 – you can be sure I’ll shout about them on socials when the time comes!

I would like to have a chapbook of my poetry for adults published at some point.

Who are your favourite authors or poets?

I always struggle with this because a) I am terrible at ‘favourite’ ANYTHING (never ask me to arrange anything in order of preference from 10 – 1!) and b) lots of them are actual friends, so I couldn’t possibly choose – different poets bring different things to the poetry table!

What I will say though, is just how important it is to read, read, read! I absolutely would not have had a book accepted for publication if I hadn’t read the good, the bad, and the great, and learnt from it all.

Reading is a wonderful way to learn as well as being good for our mental health! I find my ‘favourites’ tend to change almost as often as the weather – I definitely couldn’t number them in order of preference, either! 

What do you do when you’re not reading?

I enjoy sniffing out poetry books and interesting bits and bobs in charity shops (often with the excuse of “I’ll use it in one of my writing groups”! I like to walk in the trees close to where I live, and enjoy time with the family (my UNO game is strong, but my table football skills need a lot of work!).

What is your creation process?

Not always the same each time! I wrote a blog piece about a poem I wrote, which is here: https://www.attielime.co.uk/post/how-i-wrote-a-poem

I loved reading that – it really does show the process, even though it’s clear the process can change. It’s just the same when writing a novel – I often think that each one of my novels is written in a completely different way. (Plus mercats, what’s not to love?)

What single piece of advice do you wish someone had given you 15 years ago?

15 years ago I had an almost one-year-old, and I had put writing on the back burner to say the least, so maybe “Pick up a pen more often – remember that you love it!”.

An easy thing to forget, especially when life gets busy!

What books or poems do you regularly reread? Where do you turn for inspiration?

I reread children’s poetry far more than anything else. Reading poetry by brilliant children’s poets is the most inspiring thing for me. If I am stuck in a rut and can’t get started on a poem (e.g. if I’m writing to a theme for a submission), then the best thing for me to do is read (or walk in the trees!). For that reason, my children’s poetry book collection is growing by the week – I need them all to hand, so although I do use the library, I buy new and second hand, too, so they’re mine to dip into at any time. I also reread adult poetry books, writing how-to books, and writing prompt books, to help me to plan the creative writing groups that I run locally. Two books on writing that I know I will reread in full at some point, are On Writing by Stephen King, and Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert.

And lastly, Attie, thank you so much for allowing yourself to be bullied taking part in this interview, it’s been great to find out more about you. Good luck with all your upcoming endeavours, and especially the new book!

And lastly, where can readers find you?

My website for children’s writing is www.attielime.co.uk and for adult writing www.marielittlewords.co.uk (embarrassingly in need of updating!). I am also on Twitter (X), Facebook, Instagram and YouTube @attielime and Twitter (X) @jamsaucer (with my grown-up hat on). Thank you 😊

You can watch, and listen of course, as Attie reads some short works on YouTube here.

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These fragments I have shored against my ruin

/ Caron Allan

I first shared this blog post in 2016. To date, it’s still my best-performing blog post. Not sure if that is because it’s one of my shortest – I am quite a waffler these days.

But I love that line. It’s line 431 from T S Eliot’s The Waste Land. The first time I read the poem, when I got to this line I burst into tears, because it seemed such a beautiful summation, of the poem, of my life, everything. Words do that to me–I’m a very emotional person, I’m glad to say.

I believe that our lives are made up of fragments. We are, in essence, a walking, talking collection of every experience we’ve ever had. This includes what we’ve read. Words.

So often I am out and about–yes, I escape now and again–and I hear something, see something, smell something which provokes a memory of something I’ve read. Most often it is snatches of conversation I overhear, being nosey and a crime writer, which as we all know gives me special dispensation to eavesdrop on others. (‘I ain’t been dropping no eaves, sir, honest.’) Words seem to lead to more words.

I hear someone say, ‘The wonderful thing…’ and mentally I’ve added ‘…about Tiggers is Tiggers are wonderful things.’ (I didn’t promise it was anything erudite!) Or someone may say ‘Wherever I go…’ and I think to myself ‘there’s always Pooh, there’s always Pooh and me.’ (By the way, Winnie the Pooh is not just for kids. Just read the chapter called The Piper At the Gates of Dawn…)

It’s not just A A Milne, though. So often snatches of Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, songs, poems, plays, hymns, prayers, all sorts of words come into my head. I can’t look at spring flowers without thinking ‘A host of golden daffodils’ or ‘April is the cruellest month’. (The Waste Land again!) A tall person becomes ‘thou painted Maypole’. A mouse is a ‘wee sleekit cowrin tim’rous beastie’. (Burns of course, who else?)

If something annoying happens, I hear Miss Marple whisper, ‘Oh dear, how extremely vexing,’ or I hear someone say something stupid, and Mr Bennett’s frustrated, outraged, ‘Until you come back…I shall not hear two words of sense spoken together’ comes to mind. I share his pain. In extremis, ‘I shall be in my library; I’m not to be disturbed.’ (Not unless there’s cake or Midsomer Murders.) Or I might hear Miss Silver’s indulgent, ‘In their own way, men can be quite useful.’

Or if sorrows come in, it’s Matthew Arnold’s painful comment filled with longing, ‘Ah love, let us be true to one another,’ because he believed that one another was all we have. (Dover Beach).

Or…

There’s always another wonderful sketch of words from someone who lived many years before my time. Or a contemporary. Or the next generation. We all use and need words.

And because of this, none of us can ever come to a text, for the first time, or the tenth, ‘cold’ or ‘new’. There is really no neutral approach in the human soul. We bring with us the sum of all our experiences and emotions, our world-view and our beliefs, and those inform what we read, and mercifully sometimes, what we read can inform all those things too.

When I was studying literature ‘back in the day’, I remember The Waste Land was one of our set texts. Critics deplored it, dismissing it as a pastiche, a patchwork quilt of other peoples’ work, revealing only a good memory for quotations. Students shuddered and declared it was one of the worst experiences of their life. But for some of us, there was a sense of ‘wow, I never knew poetry could be like this!’

When I read his words, ‘These fragments I have shored against my ruins’ (line 431), I said to my tutor, I think he is saying that literature, that words, will save us in times of crisis, bolster us when we are at a low ebb. I was told I was wrong, but in spite of that, I still choose to believe this could be one meaning of these, for me, immortal words. These fragments of remembered stories, poems, previous experiences, feelings, of words, I have stored up, internalised, to use as a defence, shored against my ruin, my unhappiness, times of want, misery, sorrow and confusion. Ruin.

For me it is a reminder that many things in life are transient, passing, temporary, but I will always carry within me the sum of what I have read. Just read Shakespeare’s sonnet 18 and tell me I’m wrong. It’s short, it’s sweet, it’s got a cheeky grin at the end. It’s perfect, and all human life is there.

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Alliteration and her sisters 

/ Caron Allan / 2 Comments

Round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran. (rock not included)

Round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran.

We all know that one, don’t we? Though I usually get rugged and ragged back to front. I have to remind myself that whilst a rascal can be rugged or ragged, a rock can pretty much only be rugged.

As we learned in junior school, alliteration is putting together words with the same initial letter. In the case of the above phrase, R, the pirate’s favourite letter.  This repetition is the foundation of our childhood tongue-twisters. English is not the only language to have these:

French ones:

Les chaussettes de l’archiduchesse, sont-elles sèches? Archi-sèches. (translation: The archduchesses socks: are they dry? Very dry.)

Ces cerises sont si sûres qu’on ne sait pas si c’en sont. (translation: These cherries are so sour, we’re not sure if they are (cherries).)

German ones: 

Schnecken erschrecken, wenn sie an Schnecken schlecken, weil zum Schrecken vieler Schnecken Schnecken nicht schmecken. (translation: Snails are shocked when they lick snails because to the surprise of many snails, snails don’t taste good).

Der Grabengräber gräbt die Gräben. Der Grubengräber gräbt die Gruben. Graben Grabengräber Gruben? Graben Grubengräber Gräben? Nein! Grabengräber graben Gräben. Grubengräber graben Gruben.  (translation:  The gravedigger digs graves. The ditchdigger digs ditches. Do ditchdiggers dig graves? Do gravediggers dig ditches? No!
Gravediggers dig graves. Ditchdiggers dig ditches.)

So now you know! Feel free to use these at virtual-parties, to amaze and impress your friends.

Amuse your cat with a large repertoire of tongue-twisters in various languages…

Alliteration can be a useful literary device when writing, and like most literary devices, it is used to make the reader feel, view or interpret your writing in a particular way by creating a mood or appearance. But use it sparingly. The problem with any literary device, is that all too easily it can draw attention away from what you’re writing and turn the focus to how you’re writing. This will distract your reader from your story in the same way you can sometimes fail to see the puppet-show because you’re focusing on the strings.  Having spent all that time gently leading the reader to suspend disbelief, you don’t want to ruin things by breaking the spell now.

Here are a few more literary devices:

Sibilance is the repeated use of an S sound, or a hissing sound. You put together words with lots of S, SH and soft C sounds: Sid’s silly scented snake slithered smoothly across the shiny façade. Unlike with Alliteration, the repeated sounds don’t have to be confined to the beginning of the word.

Assonance is the repeated use of vowel sounds: cut jug, heed beat,   or the same or similar consonants with different vowels: jiggle juggle, dilly-dally.

Consonance is the repetition of matching consonant sounds: ruthless cutthroats, repeated reports. It can quickly descend into Alliteration if only the initial letter(s) are repeated!

”A soldier’s life is terrible hard,’ said Alice.’

These are used to create a certain mood, or an attitude, or making the reader see a character or setting in a particular way. These can also imbue your writing with a poetic or lyrical quality. You might want your readers mesmerised by a particular scene if you are going to follow it with something spectacular: the calm before the storm effect.  Think of movies where there is a soft love scene before the hero goes into battle.

In fact most poetry contains one or more of these devices. Think of Wordworth’s poem I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud, with all the repeated Ls, the Hs, the Ds, the long vowels of wandered, lonely and cloud.  Or  Buckingham Palace by A A Milne, with its repeated lines and rhyming words. 

Or in this, one of my favourite short poems, there is a clever mixture of all these devices – see if you can spot them!

Song by Christina Rosetti 

When I am dead, my dearest

Sing no sad songs for me;

Plant thou no roses at my head,

Nor shady cypress tree:

Be the green grass above me

With showers and dewdrops wet;

And if thou wilt, remember,

And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,

I shall not feel the rain;

I shall not hear the nightingale

Sing on, as if in pain:

And dreaming through the twilight

That doth not rise nor set,

Haply I may remember,

And haply may forget.

These literary devices can have a unifying effect, making all parts fit together with a repetition of shared letters and sounds, or by ensuring the reader remembers certain sounds or words. But like all good things, in prose it needs to be used in moderation.  Don’t make your writing just a collection of tongue-twisters!

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