LesleyScoble.com

The D’Verse Poets’ MTB: Five Directions to my House poetry prompt motivated me to write my poem FIVE DIRECTIONS TO MY HOUSE.

To read the prompt guidelines and details please click here

Write your poem in five stanzas of five lines per stanza (quintain)
Included a reference to Hererra’s poem somewhere in your post

N.B. Think of the fifth way as the central compass point – here, the start, the existential now.
Guidance: Remember this is poetry – avoid making your poem sound as descriptive as a travel or map guide
Suggestion: you could include these selected words from Hererra’s poem in your 5 stanzas in order:-
1 yellow hills; 2 canvas door; 3 the earth; 4 desert secrets 5 a name

Useful Link: Hererra explains his 6th line and reads his poem in Poet to Poet 2014.
I struggled to fulfil all these instructions—but enjoyed the journey. It was inspiring listening to the poet Juan Felipe Hererra narrating his poem in Poet-to-Poet here

The d’Verse MTB prompt asks that the poem is a quintain of some sort. A verse of any poem that is written in five lines is a quintain, is that not so?

How to write a long poem in just five lines?
I wrote my poem in five stanzas and squeezed what I wanted to say into five lines. With the WordPress text formatting, I couldn’t fit the lines in without breaking them up into unwanted enjambment. My quintain poem turned out having long lines, and couldn’t fit on the width of a page!
To make the text small might solve the problem—but also make the writing too small to read. What’s the point of that? (a tiny point. Lol).

I conclude that the quintain requires short, succinct lines. Unless you…
fix unwanted enjambment by creating the stanzas as text images instead. Simple!

Five Directions to my House

Five Directions to My House
_{A quintain? by Lesley Scoble}

---

The poem’s route

Click here to view the map of the poem’s route

This is a street map of the area mentioned in the poem. You know, the kind that standson a pillar to guide lost people. I mark the route I walked in the poem in shocking pink. Leadenhall is off the chart beyond Moorgate. My favourite pub, The Cockpit, is down a narrow alley close to St Paul’s and not shown on the map.

“I wend my way and in due course; I find I’m in Leadenhall”

How long is a line of poetry?

How long is a piece of string? How long is a line of poetry? How long can it be? Is there a poetic limit? Is it okay to ramble on and on until it reaches the apparent never-ending end?

I want to write the longest quintain ever!

I’ve already written the *shortest poem in the world (not many people know this). Now, I wonder if it is possible to write the longest quintain in the world?

If I got up in the middle of the night with my signwriter paintbrush, I could write a quintain on the pavement and walls all the way from my house to St Paul’s. That would make the quintain about half a mile long.
If nothing else, I’d be sure to get the longest sentence in the world!
In prison for graffiti.

“I stop a while and think, beside the ancient Judas tree in blooms of brightest pink”

NOTES 

The pub 
In the poem, the pub I meet my friends in, is based on The Cockpit. The Cockpit is an historic pub where an atmosphere of the past seeps through the walls from beyond its contemporary renovations. There is a memory within its foundations of the bloody cockfights that were staged here. It was called the Cock Pit in Shakespeare’s day. He may well have sipped a brew here as he lived nearby. 

John Heminge and Henry Condell 
In my poem (4th stanza), I mention the actor colleagues and friends of Shakespeare, who collated his works into the First Folio. Without these two Shakespearean thespians, there may be no record of the genius works of the playwright and poet Will Shakespeare.  Both John and Henry’s graves are here in the former churchyard of St Mary Aldermanbury, Love Lane, London EC2. They erected the red granite memorial in 1896. The sculptor was C. J. Allen. 

The ruin of a church
The old church where in the poem, I lurched up and down the stone steps is the 12th century Tower of St Elsyng Spital. A merchant, William Elsyng, founded it in 1330 as a charitable hospital for the homeless. It was an almshouse for poor people who could not look after themselves. William died from the Black Death in 1349 and buried there. This ruin stands beside a roman section of the Old London Wall. 

The shortest poem in the world 
To read my shortest poem in the world, please read my post that explains my process of how I came to write it. To view The Shortest and Sweetest of Songs: the shortest poem in the world? Click here. 
It will only take a second. Lol.

My thanks to Laura Bloomsbury and D’Verse Poets for the inspirational quintain poetry prompt.

“Up and down stone steps I lurch, in the ruin of a church by Old London Wall’

---

Lesley lives in the City of London Square Mile. An artist, actor and sculptor (her first ceramic sculpture won the V&A inspired by… Award). Scenic artist & book illustrator, playwright, (her musical play, Rapscallion performed in inner city schools and theatre school); TV dancer; Animator and illustrator for TV production. Set up Pinecone Studios Ltd and IIMSI Ltd drama and filmmaking workshops in London – producing award-winning films made by children.