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? My poem “Figs” took me in new writing directions and involved varying struggles which I would like to share. It is based on my efforts to harvest the abundant figs from our tree and preserve them as jam.
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. The figs turn so many beautiful colors and smell so sweet in the process that I wanted to preserve not just the figs but the moment. I jotted down the idea in July, 2020 while I was making fig preserves in my kitchen, with a mess of sticky pink jam in the pot and half-pint jars all over the cabinet surface.
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? I did not plan this poem as an organized process but simply kept digging into my subject and its meaning not only for me but for human history, following the trail to the past and back again. I added and removed historical stories.
Click on the below link to visit Hilda Downer’s Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/hilda.downer/friends
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? I hope I have conveyed to readers the cyclic nature of existence, the interconnectedness of past and present, the ties we have not just with the present but with the past, and the necessity of rejoicing in its glory.
Click on the below link to visit the website of Ron Rash.
https://www.ronrashwriter.com/home
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? I struggled to make the historical and mythical references flow within the poem rather than seemingly inserted as facts. The excitement of conjoining varied stories into a flow was the emotion itself.
Wrapped
within the ancient scroll of time,
we cradled them in our laps
like Cato, who caught fat figs
within his gown so that
the Senate might take notice.
Has this poem been published? And if so where? The poem is included in my new book, Hard-Packed Clay, published by RedHawk Press, July, 2022.
Click on the below link to purchase Hard-Packed Candy from Amazon
Click on the below link to purchase Hard-Packed Candy from RedHawk Press
https://redhawkpublications.com/Hard-Packed-Clay-p463298513
Click on the below link to visit Joyce Brown’s Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/crabbybrownjoyce5
Most of the BACKSTORY OF THE POEM 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