#305 Backstory of the Poem: Lesley Ingram’s “Tap Dancing In The Lift”

Left: Lesley Ingram in June of 2020. Copyright by Lesley Ingram.
Right: Mary Tyler Moore and Julie Andrews tap dancing in the elevator from the 1967 musical THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE.

Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until final form? The trigger was a Facebook memory, reminding me of my mother’s birthday with a photo she’d taken of me laughing and holding a bottle of champagne in a London hotel room. It was an old photo from when we’d been to London to celebrate her 60th birthday. We’d seen a show, walked miles along the King’s Road, stayed in a hotel in Sloane Square. It was such fun. She’d recently returned from living abroad for years, so we were making up for lost time.

Lesley Ingram celebrating her mother’s 60th birthday at her Sloane Square Hotel Room in 1996. Copyright by Lesley Ingram.

Yet the first thing that sprang to mind from that photo, was the lift. Ever since seeing Thoroughly Modern Millie in 1967 we’d tap-danced in lifts, always. I grew up with it, it was our secret thing, done without question. If there were other people in the lift we’d just move our toes from side to side and waft our hands, and never refer to it except perhaps for a shared smile as we got out.

After years of never being in a lift together, we’d stepped into the one in the hotel, pressed the Floor button, and began to tap our toes and wave our arms without thinking. We cried laughing. And it was to be the last time too, although we didn’t know it then.

I started writing the poem immediately after seeing the Facebook memory. I made a second cup of tea with the idea dancing around, and had a first version in about an hour.

Where were you when you started to actually write the poem?  And please describe the place in great detail. I was in a study of a small house in Hereford. I’d come back from France (where we lived at that time) for the duration of the Ledbury Poetry Festival, and was checking emails and Facebook with the first cup of tea of the day when the photo popped up. The room was small, a new extension off the kitchen, recently fitted with a corner desk and my late father-in-law’s glass fronted bookcases on the wall to my left. To my right there were large windows looking over the garden which was waiting to be cared for. On the floor behind me there was a beautiful poster of the moon calendar for the year, waiting to be fixed to the wall.

Credit and Copyright by Lesley Ingram.

What month and year did you start writing this poem? July 2013, 3 years after my mother had died.

Lesley Ingram (Left) with Judge Helen Ivory. Lesley won the Ludlow Fringe Poetry prize. Copyright by Lesley Ingram.

How many drafts of this poem did you write before going to the final? (And can you share a photograph of your rough drafts with pen markings on it?) There are 5 versions, although each version was also tweaked and edited. I hardly ever write a poem by hand, although I do generally carry a notebook for thoughts and ideas to be developed later in Word.

I write as though creating a mosaic, word by word, line by line, building and editing as I go along, rather than writing a skeleton version of the full poem and then altering it. This can lead to lots of lines/words/thoughts being shuffled down the page if they don’t fit or feel right.

After I have a 1st draft, I leave it for a week or more, then revisit and edit. 

However this poem seemed to build itself as a whole, and the editing a question of reordering and cutting out. There were hardly any discarded scraps of poetry during its first draft creation.

Lesley Ingram in her study at Hereford. Copyright by Lesley Ingram.

Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version?  And can you share them with us? Yes, I don’t mind at all sharing the first version here:

Credit and Copyright by Lesley Ingram.

What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? That you never know when the last time for anything will be, that people have little, shared secrets and traditions, that people can be so close that words are not necessary. Also, traditions can be carried on ‘in memory of’ – I still tap in lifts.

Click on the link below to watch the elevator tap dancing scene from the 1967 musical THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE

https://search.aol.com/aol/video;_ylt=AwrJ6OL5TvxgPjMAIMBnCWVH;_ylu=c2VjA3NlYXJjaAR2dGlkAw–;_ylc=X1MDMTE5NzgwMzg3OQRfcgMyBGFjdG4DY2xrBGNzcmNwdmlkA0dVa1g0akV3TGpGRU8uUEYzOTVPMUFMZ016VXVNUUFBQUFEc0J6OTAEZnIDY29tc2VhcmNoBGZyMgNzYS1ncARncHJpZAMyNVQyaGJRUVRCT3RGY0hJbDl4WXFBBG5fcnNsdAM2MARuX3N1Z2cDNARvcmlnaW4Dc2VhcmNoLmFvbC5jb20EcG9zAzAEcHFzdHIDBHBxc3RybAMEcXN0cmwDNzYEcXVlcnkDanVsaWUlMjBhbmRyZXdzJTIwYW5kJTIwbWFyeSUyMHR5bGVyJTIwbW9vcmUlMjB0YXAlMjBkYW5jaW5nJTIwaW4lMjBlbGV2YXRvcgR0X3N0bXADMTYyNzE0ODE4OA–?fr2=sb-top-&q=julie+andrews+and+mary+tyler+moore+tap+dancing+in+elevator&s_it=sb_top&s_qt=&ei=UTF-8&v_t=comsearch&type=z-it-sb%2Cz-hr-13%2Cz-br-ch%2Cz-os-mac%2Cz-st-us-il%2Cz-pg-1%2Cz-dtl-dd%2Cz-pr-https%2Cz-mvt-guin-us%2Cz-coreus-auth%2Cz-pf-coreus#id=2&vid=c2d2b89765d88719790aabb814ee9871&action=view

Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? It is all very emotional – I have never successfully read this without weeping a little, getting choked up, and even now I am typing with tears rolling down my face. I don’t often write about personal, autobiographical moments because I have a tendency to feel them too much.

I still don’t know whether the first version is the best – sometimes when a poem writes itself like this almost did, the first version is the best. And should the title be ‘Time Step’?

Letting a poem ‘drain’ a while, and revisiting it to edit, can often take the life out of it. I hope I haven’t done that, but am too close to it to see it.

The considerations were how to make it make sense to people, should there be explanations, do people understand the references to Thoroughly Modern Millie and does it matter, should it be based more about the dancing than the trip to London, what about giving it a repetitive form (Villanelle, pantoum ?) to echo the repetition of the habit and dance steps – but all these thoughts were after I’d written the first draft.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoroughly_Modern_Millie

Has this poem been published before?  And if so where? No, this poem has never been published before. I have never submitted it anywhere for publication, and I can’t really say why. Maybe it has been too close to my heart to let it go out there and be read by strangers.

All Backstory of the Poem LIVE LINKS can be found at the very end of the below feature:

http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/02/will-justice-drakes-intercession-is-251.html

The images in this specific piece are granted copyright:  Public Domain, GNU Free Documentation Licenses, Fair Use Under The United States Copyright Law.


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Feel free to contact CRC Blog via email at caccoop@aol.com or personal Facebook messaging at https://www.facebook.com/car.cooper.7

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