Last week in Poetry 2, we dipped our toes into the puddle of deep image poetry. An interesting exercise for those of us who have to work long and hard at conjuring effective imagery in our poems. Deep image poems use simple but strong words – colour, nature, body parts – to create a picture for the reader. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Except for the bit where you’re supposed to write from the ‘unconscious’ and let it all flow. What you end up with is something that doesn’t make sense unless you’ve been in a windowless white room for a couple of days. An example of mine below.
i washed my blue knees with a shower of eyes
barren of fire, steel bolts in my veins
i pushed out my nose, covered in tree
and stood by the road while the rocks marched by
i remembered to breathe, to follow the line
and remembered the vows of an eskimo pair
i watched it all on a flickering screen
inside the bare walls
of a pink and grey ball
Trudy Campbell
