It’s 2017, and Wonder Woman is about to make her big screen debut. Fearless, mighty girl-heroes such as Rey, Jyn Erso, and Katniss Everdeen take centre-stage in the film-going public’s imagination.
It is time to reclaim the hero story with an empowered feminine lens. Girls’ Adventure Stories of Long Ago is both a tribute, and a wake-up call. A poetic re-imaging of Joseph Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces, my second collection explores ancient and modern landscapes, love lost and rediscovered; adventures undertaken and obstacles overcome.
I wanted to revisit stories that have inspired me throughout my life: to explore favorite characters from television, myth, legend and literature, using the hero’s quest as a narrative structure that ties the poems together. The three poems that follow present a journey in miniature: adventures in time and in story that begin in Cornwall, England, in the early 1980s, with “Night Driving”, which touches on the tenderness of the family and the great cost to the adventuring hero as she sets out leaving them behind.
“Here Be Dragons” transports the reader into an Asian landscape, and was inspired by a map-making exhibit in a Macanese museum. It takes the reader into the maelstrom of early ocean bound exploration, as the world itself was mapped to mankind, revealing, and reveling in, its storms and monsters.
Finally, “A Motley” takes the shape of a traditional Malay repeating form, the pantoum. Inspired by the artifacts that a heroine draws upon to achieve her quest, in this case, the clairvoyance of Tarot and its mysterious characters; A Motley was nominated for The Best of the Net Awards 2011 by Tilt-A-Whirl.
***
Night driving
At day’s end we pour into the maroon Allegro;
fed by starlight, crammed in
to fetch Dad from the day’s work,
watch wide-eyed for the road’s beginning.
When we leave, the china clay heaps behind us
like spoonfuls of space.
We swallow the moon down
without a backward glance;
love driven down the dark, sinewy roads
gleaming like licorice.
Mum was always loquacious,
truthful to a fault. The days roll over her tongue,
fizzing slightly in the sweetshop night:
we’ll be home soon.
***
Here be dragons
Where the winds hit, sailors with seaweed
in their beards sit beneath the squall.
We etch the puffed cheeks of an angry god,
shipwrecks in each hand, bare-chested.
In the East, waves roil into dragons.
Scales curve, en-compassing a tiny globe.
We are world-makers, though the nib resists.
Reason submits to the pressure of our fingers’ tips.
Mutatis mutandis. We make gods
and monsters of our storms, safely, in our ink.
Rash explorers battle leviathans in our stead,
It is the myths have made us.
Come closer. Look the tempest in the eye.
Follow the coin as it glints in the depths.
Take comfort. This world is known.
Where there be dragons treasures find a home.
***
A motley
Blithe fool, to step out so, at this cliff’s edge
this raging sea – did you think
about what lay before you, were you
certain, as the sun gilded your dreaming face?
This raging, see, did you think
it came from nowhere? Did you bring it forth, un-
certain, as the sun gilded your dreaming face
and hold it, glowing like a chalice to your lips?
It came from nowhere, did you bring it forth
and exult in it? How you laugh and take your joy
and hold it, glowing, like a chalice to your lips!
How are we to hold this reverie like a single moment
and exult in it? How to laugh and take our joy
and hold it in an upturned palm; not knowing why, or asking
how! Are we to hold this reverie like a single moment:
a single ruby glittering in a patchwork sea
and hold it in? An upturned palm, not knowing why, or asking
how, can yet receive a dreamer’s prize:
a single ruby glittering in a patchwork sea
a fool’s motley, echoes of paradise
and something lost, or found. I have forgot
about what lay before you, were you
always here, what does this prescience allege?
Blithe fool, to step out so, at this cliff’s edge!