POETRY WORKSHOP
Wrong-footed
Alison Chisholm explores a poem that uses homely footwear in contrasting ways as a motif
Alison Chisholm
OLD SLIPPERS
You wrap yourself around my life like old slippers to my feet... warm, comforting and blessedly familiar. Yet as my body stretches, curls and yields hungrily to the touch of your love, suddenly - and with unexpected caution -I remember how old slippers fall apart eventually and offer, in the main, no protection against the damp and biting cold of winter.
For centuries writers have used the ordinary, the familiar, to forge links with their readers. A crucial twist in the plot of Othello relies on a handkerchief. John Donne’s seduction techniques are demonstrated via a louse. The play Dangerous Corner depends on J. B. Priestley’s use of the device of the cigarette box. Carol Ann Duffy approaches the vast and mysterious subject of love through an onion.
This technique gives the writing an air of collaboration between its creator and recipient. When used in poetry, it fixes the piece firmly at the centre of everyday life, and so dissipates the perceived mystique of the craft, which makes some readers feel alienated and out of their depth. Lancashire poet Marian Cleworth picked that most mundane object, the old carpet slipper, in which to root her poem about a broken relationship. She tells how: ‘The poem started life long ago as fragments of verse scribbled in a notebook. It became a simple poem about the age old story of a romance which ended in heartbreak – and might have resulted in more sadness had the cautionary feelings not persisted. I like to think it was a touching poem which at that point in life was cathartic to write. I filed it in my “Love collection” of poems, thinking it had served its purpose.’