Tag: NaPoWriMo

Boris And The Otters

“As I write these words there are semi-naked women playing beach volleyball in the middle of the Horse Guards Parade immortalised by Canaletto. They are glistening like wet otters and the water is plashing off the brims of the spectators’ sou’westers.”

Boris Johnson, commenting on the 2012 Olympic Women’s Volleyball

tumblr_ljwl2fWEqw1qarjnpo1_1280In this quote, Boris demonstrates two things. Firstly, a certain deftness with sentence construction, a breadth of vocabulary and an almost proprietorial familiarity with fine art history that is entirely fitting in one who has received so staggeringly privileged and expensive an education. Secondly, a terrifying ignorance of the tendency of otters, according to Japanese folklore, to shapeshift into beautiful women with the express purpose of seducing, killing and eating unwary men.

As the official NaPoWriMo prompt for today is to write a fan letter, I have chosen to write from some imaginary Japanese shape-shifting man-eating volleyball-playing otter-women to the Mayor of London. (My cavalier use of ungrammatical pronouns is intended to give an eerie, ‘demonically-possessed baby doll’ feeling to the piece, not an uncomfortably racist ‘JaJa Binks’ vibe, just FYI)).

Boris And The Otters

Sexy otter girls, we

Sleek! you watch, Borisu-san,

But do not see we.

 

Silly! we see you

Feast eyes on we lissom limbs,

Silken like tofu.

 

Suave you phrases plash!

Rain from you lyrical tongue!

Favourite muscle!

 

Storehouse of treasure,

You brain sleep in marrow sea,

Soft, sashimi-grade.

 

Speak we of art now?

Great man, stories of great men!

You hair kawaiiiiiiiiiii, ne?

 

Shall we little claws

Scratch you noble back, broad

Like Kobe beef-cow?

 

Secret, we sharp teeth

Wait for you, ichiban man,

Steamy bean dumpling!

 

Shhhhhhhhhh!! you no mind knives

We whet them in you honour,

Delicious Borisu-san….

 

 

Otters V Capitalism

2012-09-20-350HuffPostChe501onRecTrail-thumbMany people say to me, Kirsten, we know that otters love jazz, but what of otter politics? I reply that I am convinced most British otters would vote Corbyn, where the Californian Sea Otter community has come out strongly for Bernie Sanders. (Many have donated a few clams to his campaign fund).

Some say this is grotesque anthropomorphism of the kind disdained by serious conservationists, others accuse me of projection. To them I can only say:

 

Otters Of the World, Unite!

Answer me this – what if otters were potters?

Does living by water make their clay wetter?

Do they throw sloppy pots that all teeter and totter?

Does holding down splatter make pots a lot squatter?

Surely it follows their kilns should burn hotter?

They must buy their wood from a local wood-cutter

(Wood-burning kilns being certainly better

to use than electric, when potting near water).

 

But what if the cutter bamboozles the otters,

never once offering wood on a platter,

but ripping them off with some shitty sales patter?

Lining his pockets, the cutter gets fatter,

while locked into poverty, knocked on their uppers,

the lot of the otters just never gets better!!

Will the otters not notice that something’s the matter?

Will discontent not sound its note in their natter?!

Revolt and rise up, oh you down-trodden otters!

Even fat cutters need pots made by potters!

Tear down the kiln-wood-monopoly rotters!

 

Don’t look at me like I’m some kind of nutter.

 

Todays’ poem is brought to you in lieu of the official NaPoWriMo prompt, which is dull as the bottom of my shoe.

 

NaPoWriMo 2016 – The Year Of The Otter

otter_2A6F820AA1204D8F

This will be my fourth attempt at NaPoWriMo, the international insanity among poets where we try to write one a day for the whole of April. My personal best is 15, and I’m definitely not going to beat that this year, because I’m going to try writing every poem about otters. Or featuring otters in some way. Because I like otters.

Please watch this video clip first.

Day one – Otters Playing Free Jazz On A Casio

How do you approach playing

with otters in

the absence of chord changes?

 
How do you even begin?

asks JazzAcademy.com’s homepage,

neglecting to ask these otters:

 

GET HOT!!!!! Kitten neeeeeeds keys,

ain’t no baloney,

we AB  SO  LUTE  LY

 

hip to the short-clawed jive!

gotsa screaming meemies!!

we collective, daddy-o, we radicaliiiiiiized!!!

 

I’m also trying to meet the official prompt, which yesterday was to write a lune (5-3-5 word formation). Haven’t seen today’s prompt yet, so I’ll check in tomorrow with whatever nonsense I’ve managed.