Exercises from the Energheia Writing Course 2024

Poetry writing workshop. Image and sound, by Nuria de Cos

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The whale

The Whale Must Have Known it Was Going to Die because how can a city, stranded in white plains of wheat, cling only to itself and smell so much of salt?

Where the bone-bleached walls keep out the sun – a sinking starfish in the pale shallows of a sky that screams, somehow,

of surface? When a silver sliver that cuts through rock is still a reminder of Deep–––– still flows back towards it?

The whale must have known it was going to dive, one last time, and that it would turn the rooms of the walls inside out – sprinkle sand in the in-between spaces.

The whale must have known yet it settled for bone.

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Perceptions

This morning, the sky was as deep yet impenetrable as a lake covered by a sheet of ice––the ice so thick you can walk over it. Even run. The water underneath completely clear down to the lakebed, overrun by a tangle of weed and yellow gravel. A fish swimming lazily along.

The sky during rain is filled with needles, but not completely. The needles so thin and so far between that you can’t feel them piercing your skin, or slicing you in half – slowly. Like blades of grass that have lost their touch but come alive. (I am as wound up as…. exercise)

I am as wound up as a badly-wound up spinning top, where it skitters across the floor before it slows to a halt.