Session 8: Odes and Maledictions

For this final session of the course, I took up one of the suggestions given at the end of last month's meeting - maledictions and odes. They're a little unusual - more a specific style of writing than a poetic form, as such - but the notion of celebrating something seemed right for our last session of Pen to Paper.

First, a quick defintion of these two types of poetry:
Ode: A long, formal, often ceremonious lyric poem that addresses and often celebrates a person, place, thing, or idea. The ode has altered throughout history; here are a few key variations, showing its changing stylistic features:

• The Greek or Pindaric ode was a public poem, usually set to music, that celebrated athletic victories.
• Horatian odes were written in quatrains in a more philosophical, contemplative manner. 
• The Sapphic ode consists of quatrains, three 11-syllable lines, and a final five-syllable line, unrhyming but with a strict meter. 
• The odes of the English Romantic poets vary in stanza form. They often address an intense emotion at the onset of a personal crisis or celebrate an object or image that leads to revelation (the most famous examples being Keats). 

Malediction: The opposite of an ‘ode’ - a curse poem, which expresses hate or disapproval for a person, place, thing, or idea.

Exercise 1: Birmingham Gallery
We began the session by heading up into the museum itself, and exploring the Birmingham Gallery. In pairs, I asked you to find a positive and a negative side to Birmingham - these could be very different (in era, subject, object, persons affected, ect.), but must be linked/mirror one another in some way. For example, your common link could be manufacturing, with the positive being the creation of spearheads which advanced civilisation, and the negative being the creation of machine guns which damaged civilisation. In your pairs, one could conduct a free write on the positive side of Birmingham, while the other tackles the negative side, or you could do both collaboratively.

Returning to the classroom, I then asked you to read back over your free writes/notes made in the gallery, and highlight a few of your favourite words, phrases or images. Using these, I then asked you to construct a six-line poem, with the first line being 6 words long, the second line being 5, then 4, 3, 2 and the final line being only a single word. We then spent a little time sharing our ideas/findings, and sharing our work.

Exercise 2: Ode/Malediction Examples
To get to grips with the notion of an ode and a malediction, we spent some time looking at examples, discussing the poems in pairs and then feeding back to the group to discuss more widely.

The odes I gave you to explore were:

• 'Owl', by George Macbeth - the simple sentence, monosyllabic words of which give the poem an earthy quality, almost chant-like, with sinister undertones 
• 'Paternoster', by Jen Hadfield - an ode which uses the framework of the Lord's Prayer to give praise to a draught horse in a sensory, comforting manner 
• 'Love Song for the Ordnance Survey', by Jane Commane - the careful tracking of place and time through varying measurements in these stanzas, reflecting the labour of love of the OS

The maledictions I gave you to explore were:

• 'To All You Squabbling Poets', by Andy Brown - a poem which uses dark humour to list a number of punishments for quarrelsome writers, teetering on the line between absurdity and cruelty 
• 'Badly-Chosen Lover', by Rosemary Tonks - from the voice of a hurt lover, damning her ex in hindsight for the way he hurt her
• 'Where Am I?', by Lisa luxx - less of a malediction against a specific place/entity than a general outcry against the cruelty inherent in the human world

After discussing these poems, first in pairs and then in groups, time was allocated over lunch to devote to the writing of your own ode or malediction. Using the examples as a basis, and returning to your earlier free writes or the gallery itself as inspiration, write an ode or a malediction about some aspect of history or life in Birmingham.

Exercise 3: Birmingham Is...

We began the final part of the session by looking at another ode: 'Coventry Is...' by Jane Commane, from her debut collection Assembly Lines. The poem uses list-like stanzas to anthropomorphise the city of Coventry, to depict its many characteristics in light of its historical significance, declining industrial landscape, and enduring spirit. 

Individually, I asked you to write a two-line stanza for an ode in the style of Commane's poem, substituting the title with 'Birmingham Is...' We then come together as a group, and together, used these stanzas to construct an ode to our city, which highlighted its best (and worst) parts but ultimately expressed a love for Birmingham. The final poem will be published as a post on the main page of this blog.