Edwin Honig and Bob Orr - Workshop 23/05/22

Hello, everyone.

Edwin Honig died in 2011 at the age of 91. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he was a poet, playwright and translator.

Bob Orr was born in 1949 and lives in Auckland. He has been writing and performing poetry since the 1970s, both here and in Australia.

A theme that we can identify in the first poetic text is the journey. Write about a journey.

A theme from the second text is a sense of the worldly and ancient clashing with the local and modern. Think about and write on any or all of these concepts.

The structure of the first poetic text is very surreal, very vague and cryptic. The meaning is not clear. You could try to write in such a way that your meaning is not clear.

The structure of both texts is in the first-person voice: 'I'. Use the pronoun 'I' in your writing today.

Six words to attempt to incorporate into your writing from Hong: sand, clay, dreaming, stand, curse, crawl.

Six words from Orr: navigate, lost, worth, chalk, catch, faded.

If you have a copy of The Exercise Book (Manhire, Duncum, Price & Wilkins), turn to "#27: Traces of Self" for an additional challenge.

That's all. I hope you are inspired to write today.

---

Odyssey

by Edwin Honig

Over the trading world I sang
songs of chalk and sand
songs of the diamond hand.
Down the thigh of day
up the arm of night
rubbing my chest of clay
pulling the moon-belt tight.
Over the fading world I sprang.

Under the dog-licked stones I ran
my eyes were dancing worms
my hair the dreaming ferns.
The chlorophyl of love afire
I stuffed my heart with coal.
When green blood pressed up higher
grown heads began to roll.
Under the bone-picked hill I stand.

Close to the sea's red bowels I lie
hard as a land-locked crab
watching the sun thief rob
a wave of fault-lit eyes.
My infant world is burst!--
the sun jumps up and cries--
a blind man spits his curse.
Close as the howling age runs by.

Into the rock's gray lung I crawl
moved by glacial feet

---

Odysseus in Woolloomooloo

by Bob Orr

for nigel roberts

I no longer navigate by the stars
or the moon.
A piece of kelp that floats in the ocean
let others call it by some other
lost name.
I have no odyssey worth mentioning.
The stories I once told of monsters nobody these days
takes seriously.
To navigate the streets of a sandstone city
some place in a dream between chalk and crystal
I consult the epic poem of an innercity bus timetable.
When the sun comes up above Woolloomooloo
I sit every morning by the sea
and catch sprats
whose colours before they have faded ... to me
represent
     the heart’s
         freedom.