Verse Novel in Miniature*

1.

Walking in Clifton Hill

River dank,

Blossoms sweet with promises

I meet...myself

2

My young self walks past

Meets my eyes and looks away

She does not know me.

3.

I have become

In these familiar streets

A stranger to myself

4.

Though there's things to do,

This day I tread in her steps,

Watch her daily life

5.

She visits the shops

Buys bread and cheese

Takes an hour

To choose a video

And then goes home

Through yellow light

6.

Three cats drape themselves

In the garden, at the door,

Their eyes blink open.

7.

My husband to be

Young like the child of my husband

On the front porch lights up

8.

They smoke cigarettes

And weave dreams from smoke and air

In the park across the road

I am in darkness

9.

The park around me

Grows greener, richer, deeper

Until I am all but lost

to myself.

She looks out at the dark.

____________

*This semester I am teaching a Young Adult fiction group as part of the creative encounters subject at Melbourne Uni. Last week we did a class on verse novels. We talked about voice in YA fiction and how the verse novel as a genre foregrounds voice.

'I sing the song of myself,' wrote Walt Whitman.

I think this is why the verse novel has been so readily adapted for the YA market. We experimented with the form through writing exercises (or provocations as one student called them) and because I was encouraging the students to be very honest and personal (the verse novel strips back descriptive writing and tends to convey in a simple pared back way raw emotional experience), I participated. I set them the task of writing a verse novel in haiku. As you can see I have departed from rigid syllable structures in terms of haiku. I haven't really edited what I wrote in class, so this is, indeed, very raw.