(or TOO MUCH TIME SPENT ON TRAINS):

Hello the Hamleteers, esteemed colleagues.

I’m blogging here a thought I need to share
Though it concerns extra-Factory work.
Last week I workshopped at The Jerwood Space:
Terribly clean and very nice cafe.
A Winter’s Tale no less (what’s more - for cash!)
With several lovely types t’explore the play.
Day Two we start to pool our strategies
On speaking verse and ‘specially the Bard’s.
I find myself with windy words and pompous
Making a fist of trying to explain
Just what I know of why we need the verse
Particularly pentameter: the gift
Of five comforting feet, our prop, our buttress
That stirs beneath the drama, gives it life;
And how and why it works and what it does
To our emotions, thoughts and their expression.
But, newbie that I am to these ideas
And to their application I do prove
Myself to be a twat – and so? What’s new?
I hear myself in answer to the others’
Reasonable queries like: “…but how’d you know?”
Make gauche replies thus: “…just because I do.”
And then: “It makes sense – doesn’t it to you?”
Worse: “Cos I’ve studied one of Shakespeare’s plays
For eight weeks as part of a company
Who’re awfully good, very experienced
You see?” (Silence.) “Erm- so, ain’t that enough?”
And cycling back that evening how I felt
Hot and prickly all over at the thought
Of how I’d managed quietly to confirm
In other’s minds how unavoidable
A prerequisite it is that in order
To love poetry one needs to be a wanker.
I pondered long this problem and resolved
To try on pain of failing to correct
My arrogant and ignorant off’ring
To Day Two. On Day Three I rose resolved
And muttered to myself through making toast
Cooking eggs, sweeping up Gorilla Munch
Peeling apples, and sorting out that hot
Debate about whose was the green Power Ranger
Through all still muttering on in terms distract
A narrative in strict pentameter.
Yes, strict pentameter: mutter-mutter.
And so it was, the kids despatched to school,
I cycled through the park now pedalling
In time to the now inescapable
Relentless pattern drumming in my head
-I here confess I talk to me a lot,
it’s nothing new - and on my way to work
I stopped at the Lab where I’d left a film.
I strolled up to the counter and, shocked, heard
Myself pronounce the foll’wing jaunty phrase:
“I’m early but I was just wond’ring if
this was ready – I know you said eleven.”
The feminine ending suited well the action
I’m always rather awed by the Pro Lab,
So needed the light lean on the word ‘if’
Further the odd em’nence on the small ‘was’
Finally the push from ‘ready’ to ‘I know’
Cov’ring my arse (this place is quite macho.)
The moment was a revelation and
I turned back to the street now feeling armed.
Now I’d just had a jarring realisation
(as jarring the bleeding obvious can be):
I’ve learned fuck all from talk, I’ve learned by doing.
I’ve also learned by playing alongside
Who’ve long ago absorbed how it all works
The secret cogs and nuts, the mechanism
Which now digested yield a vast landscape
Of possibilities, the “secret scenes”
Never considered, never to be again.
So how did I imagine – what a prat -
My “because I do…” of the day before
Stood as a valid explanation or
Defence of Shakespeare’s verse or in what world
Was that a stylish demonstration of
The Factory-will to stand square-shouldered to
Subtle yet celestial arm-balls of the meter.

At work I was allowed to spend an hour
(Thanks to my trusting, long-suff’ring director)
Leading ball-throwing, jumping, versy games.
But ‘fore that we spent some time beating out
A comforting pentameter on knees
And bleating easy phrases describing
Last night’s tea, the tube in, breakfast even.
And you know what? It’s really not too hard
To improvise iambic pentameter.
In doing it is clear it’s feet not beats –
A point which before invoked polite stares.
Those who were previously all doubt and frowns
Were opened to “I see” and “I get it.”
The less you think the faster the words flow
And those five feet are perfect for our needs.
And using our own words tested the thrill
Of triumph when an idea was complete
And thrilled alike those listening – and this:
A shiny new sense of entitlement
To the idea when thus it is expressed
A feeling then em’nently transf’rable
To Our Bloke’s words (which now defy compare.)

Here’s what I learned:
Practice not only makes perfect but more
Practice is all, there’s no point on this job
Claiming undemonstratable abs’lutes.
By doing it. Doing. It’s that simple.
And that hard.