POETRY > “Sino-Victorian Mum - An Expeditious Sketch”

You may benefit from a brief explanation of the title. A friend said that parents raise in ex-British colonies were raised in a Victorian way. “Sino” means “Chinese”. “Expeditious” means “efficient”. This poem has a particular format which works better as displayed by the image file, but in case that is not visible to you, the text version follows the image. Further notes follow the poem.

Sino-Victorian Mum.png

Sino-Victorian Mum - An Expeditious Sketch [text version]

To find my mum's affection

you could 

write to her

her speech is –but what if

you have to

it must be

you can't

we should

it has to be

(to a description 

of my reality noooooooo!!!!!

or a fact)

(to a suggestion

for a new way of NOPE!!

doing things)

(quite often) Absolutely not!

and sometimes she'll just

completely ignore you 

if she's Busy Thinking.

Now... what if she's emailing?

I found “Dear ______,” 

“Could you”

“I would like”

Wow, there was even a “please”

Her handwriting - that scratchy sound of irritation and 

anxiety – whether in biro or Very Worried marker 

oven 200'c, 20 minutes, David takes 2 sugar, electrician 9:30am

this house is walled with mum's notes 

yet

you might find - in very old letters and postcards

a far care-freer, fun-filled breeze

and when I was a child, she gave me a 

bath and we sang a song about a fish that got 

away

once- Loooooong ago, a little 

time to relax

Yesssss

yeah...

maybe

NOTES:

You may be interested to know that, my mum seemed to like this poem and started writing one about me in the same vein. Actually, maybe that’s not so surprising, as it’s in keeping with the idea that writing as a form of communication is effective. I wrote this poem before the covid-19 lockdown, however I performed it during a Live Facebook Performance during the lockdown. I think it works better visually, so it might be worth making a video of this poem.

I thoroughly recommend writing poetry about someone who drives you up the wall. I don’t necessarily recommend showing it to them. That depends a lot on the amount of trust in your relationship. But writing the poem, I think can be amazingly transformative in how you feel about them.