My favorite reason for writing poetry is to see that look of admiration in my child’s eyes. I am a homemaker. While poetry is something everybody indulges in at various points in their lives, the art of assembling words into inspired verse is really a gift. To tame letters into unique forms, to cobble together rows of words into a shining platform of meaning is an art. And to see your ability being applauded by your son or daughter is way better than being published or awarded the Pulitzer. More so, in this age when blogs and tweets are high fashion, old-fashioned poetry can mark you as a true-blue great – Robert Frost or Sylvia Plath reborn.
There is a rhythm in the rolling pin as it rolls out chapattis for the evening meal; the washing machine switching tones as it enters the spin cycle is musical when regarded in a certain fashion. Housework can ‘sing’ - it can be the foil for creativity. As I go about my daily chores – cleaning, ironing clothes, baking and setting cupboards in order – I create poetry.
Most tasks around the house do not require my mind – an efficient pair of hands and a critical eye are enough. The mind is free to wander in faraway forests where words acquire meanings they are not meant to within city limits. So, as I iron a pile of laundry, my mind arranges a poem entitled, ‘4 pm City’. By the time I get through half the pile, the rough framework is ready and I have decided its tone – satirical. A few more clothes and I am ready with the first two lines. I repeat them in my head so as not to forget them and as soon as I’m done, I switch on my computer and head straight for my poetry folder.
Good poetry is a layered cake – different flavours in successive layers. Changing the tone and mood, altering pace and style, adding a dash of irreverence to soul-stirring lines is the trick to produce interesting poetry with a long shelf-life. Housework with its varying hues provides the near-perfect background score. So, baking biscuits churns out a poem quite different from one that is produced while dusting the living room.
A good homemaker always makes time for herself - a time when she can stretch out and read a book or watch her favorite show on the TV. This is also the time when she absorbs the radiance of nature: large yellow sunflowers in their vain glory, the evening sun gathering up its lost sunrays as it hurries out of the sky, dry autumn leaves sulking in the driveway. Some wonderful nature poetry springs to the mind spontaneously just by letting unhinged thoughts free to roam the street and the universe beyond.
A homemaker is perfectly well-matched with a poet for another reason also. Rarely does a poet get recognized for his talent and even less frequently, paid for his sparkling word-wit. Mostly, he is doomed to a life of anonymity. A homemaker is especially well-trained in the art of being invisible. How many awards are there for best-kept homes and families? But that is not to discourage the budding poet – after all, think of posterity and what a loss it would be to the Dead Poets’ Society if you were to let this little detail dull your desire for giving birth to blank verse and the odd ballad.
Some serious contenders for the position of homemaker-poet might well ask: how do I get ideas for my poems?
To this I say: a homemaker is intrinsically creative. Watch her stretch her finances to last one full month, or the various kinds of pumpkin found on the lunch menu during the long Indian summer, and not to be scoffed at, the variegated reasons she has for going shopping and to the hair-dressers’. Creativity is how she survives the monotony of looking after her home and brood, and writing poetry must come quite naturally to her. She only has to press the right buttons. Subjects are all around: the odd-looking morning walker, the encounter she witnessed yesterday between the mother and child in the park, her husband’s boss – why, there’s poetry all around – even in the erratic water-supply in the months of May and June. Of course, to begin with, simple rhythmic two- or three-liners can be penned down:
A horrible bumble-bee comes buzzing through the air/
My fragrant kitchen space he hopes to share
But really, what puts me off is the deep dark black he wears.
There, the poet is on her way – gradually, she gets bolder and does not need her lines to rhyme any more. She develops an inherent sense of rhyme and meter and her poetry acquires a certain unique quality that makes it stand apart.
Writing poetry also serves as a way to examine one’s deepest feelings – a documentation of one person’s journey through life’s labyrinth. Personal or confessional poetry makes for the best kind of reflective writing - and reading - and ordinary people have employed this form to get through their most difficult days. Mirza Ghalib, Tagore, Pablo Neruda are a few names that come to mind immediately.
In the crowded canvas of daily life, the wife and mother is usually a turning back, a hidden face or the sound of retreating feet. The business of keeping a family on its toes, and the house on its feet, is not only a fulltime job – it is a soul-sapping, mind-pinching job of gargantuan proportions. And one cannot resign – children are the worst managers. They will not accept any resignations from mothers.
So where does that leave you and me – wives, mothers, homemakers? Choking in the background of a lifeless painting? Oh, but there is another plane of existence we can reach up to – a place where the noise recedes and other rhythms dominate – where the home with its myriad demands turns into a benign creature that permits a dream sequence among the stars before the evening rush hour.
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Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in May, 2010. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.
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—About our writer:
Meenakshi Jauhari Chawla is a computer engineer by training and has over ten years of I.T. experience. She switched professions, however, and is now in the publishing industry, working for an independent publisher that publishes books in the social sciences. She also published a magazine on ageing for five years. She writes experimental short fiction, poetry, general interest articles - pretty much anything that interests her.
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