Pillow Book Talk: a Zuihitsu for Sei Shónagon - Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana.
February 26 Poem of the Month winning and shortlisted poems.
This article features the winning and shortlisted poems from February’s Poem of the Month, a short (and borrowed) description of what a Zuihitsu is, and includes details of ways you can write more poetry, and support us supporting poets like you.
Speak Now or forever regret it was the theme for this Poem of the Month. Conversations, arguments, opinions, shared secrets, saying what needs saying, oppressed voices, and critique, were posted to us from across the country celebrating one of our greatest human tools, speech.
Interestingly, not many submissions subverted the litany of noise we’re reading, perhaps because enough is being said already, and we need to talk about other things. Which is why this months winning poem Pillow Book Talk: a Zuihitsu for Sei Shónagon — Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana was so refreshing to read, and you need context to understand our thinking….
If you look it up you will learn that Zuihitsu is a Japanese literary form dating from around 1000 A.D. when Sei Shōnagon wrote The Pillow Book, a collection of personal essays woven from fragments of texts, ideas, thoughts, notes and observations.
Zuihitsu is neither prose poem or essay although it can sometimes resemble both. To ‘follow the brush’ suggests a certain not-knowing of what will happen, that whatever might result from the process will be down to discovery rather than plan. There is a strong sense in zuihitsu writing that the creation of order depends on disorder. Zuihitsu demands as its starting point, juxtapositions, fragments, contradictions, random materials and pieces of varying lengths. I like this. This, it seems to me, is also how most things in life are, how people are, how thinking is, how poetry should be.
Written by Cheryl Moskowitz for The Poetry School (Verve Festival Partners)Read the full piece here;
poetryschool.com/theblog/follow-brush-making-zuihitsu-poetry/
With this in mind, Alex has formed a poem that questions, praises, learns from, and speaks to Sei Shònagon, and from here, lets herself ‘follow the brush’ in response to the original The Pillow Book. The poem is full of observations; sleep deprivation, aggressive intimacies, lists of ‘things’, and, ingeniously, contains even a poem on Tornados within the poem. The more we read this, the more immersed in it we are. It’s like a film.
THE WINNING POEM
Pillow Book Talk: a Zuihitsu for Sei Shónagon — Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana
THE SHORTLIST
Res Politica - Chiwenite Onyekwelu
Clearly the journey would mean growing older* - Ruth Rosengarten
Cherry Blossom Aubade - Geraldine Clarkson
Three Girls in a Moving Car - Gillian Gilmore
Silence After the Noise - Timothy Kiely
Winning Poem
Shortlisted Poems
Chiwenite Onyekwelu
Ruth Rosengarten
Geraldine Clarkson
Gillian Gilmore
Three Girls in a Moving Car
My sister drives us home
through that soft-blue dusk,
one hand on the wheel,
one mind on the road.
My red-haired niece in the back,
a small sun in a car seat,
kicks light into shadows,
lost in a world
she’s busy making.
I say, I’m dating someone.
My sister glances over—quick spark,
like she already knows the flame
but waits for me to name it.
That almost-rhyme of breath and question:
Who?
The car seems to lean in too.
My heart stumbles forward—
I haven’t said because
it’s a woman.
And that’s the break.
Not a shatter—
more like a seam giving way
after holding too much.
My sister’s breath catches,
joy and surprise colliding,
Her eyes gloss, not with sorrow
but with some fierce, sudden tenderness
that unthreads me.
In the backseat, my niece hears nothing
until she hears everything—
the slips in our voices,
adults unravelling.
Then she starts crying too,
confused little echo—
three girls pouring over,
three mismatched rhythms,
syncing in a moving box of metal
with the road unspooling
beneath our tyres.
My sister keeps driving,
misses the turn,
misses the house entirely—
keeps circling the village,
as if motion is mercy,
as if the world can hold
this widening truth
only while we’re moving.
So we remain in orbit.
And in that circling—
in that not-yet-arriving—
I feel the road stretch open,
I feel the shape of my life
shift:
lighter by a secret,
heavier by a truth,
balanced strangely,
finally,
in the turning.
Timothy Kiely
Thank you for reading.
Take it easy. Take care of yourselves.
With love, light and joy,
Hayley
x
Right Here, Right Now.
WE WRITE HERE Poetry Community Workshop Series for Spring.
Occurring on Tuesdays from 7-9pm through to April, these workshops will suit both new and experienced poets and will be tremendous fun, with brilliant poet hosts including Sarah Howe, Karen McCarthy Woolf, our patron Daljit Nagra and all the faces you see above! Write from memory, on the tyranny of time, modernise the lyric or question the curious line that defines the form of your poems.
(As in previous years there will be a second zoom series running later in the year too, starting in August. We will announce the line-up in April.)
Being monthly, our March competition is due to open on March 1st and will be open until March 20th for your entries. The optional prompt for March is ‘Rewind / Remind / Reshape’.
We LOVE the excitement this monthly competition has engendered and look forward to seeing your entries for March arriving soon!
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Books on How to Write Poetry, Exciting forthcoming books, Imported titles and of course our VERVE Poetry Press books!
Any profits from book sales from this site goes straight to support our many community projects and of course will help us bring back our festival in 2027. Have a browse - we know you’ll enjoy it!
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Congratulations Alexandra, it's a beautiful poem. I love the way you have used the form, like a whisper between sisters, or friends at a sleepover. Such a gorgeously direct and honest communication with Sei Shōnagan across oceans and centuries that contains such present truths.
Thank you so much to the competition organisers, Stuart & Hayley. Ridiculously chuffed to have won a poetry competition for the first time. Congratulations to all the shortlisted poets.