A great deal of writing is an act of commemoration. It's a grabbing on to feelings, thoughts, experiences before they slip away, and poetry is no exception.
For example, I haven't dialled my childhood telephone number for over a decade. I might be struggling to remember it by now if I hadn't written the following poem from Inventing Truth, my 2011 HappenStance pamphlet:
01252 722698
You worked your way round my milk teeth,
sung umpteen times before you stuck.
Soon a chameleonic code,
you were my safeguard from a snatch,
then my duty when staying out,
and recently a thankful leap
from trade fairs and dogged insects.
My fingers refuse to leave you.
Of course, my aim in this poem is to involve the reader, implicitly asking whether they too still recall their first telephone number. Well, do you?
The fifteenth poem in our Palestine Advent series is Seeds in Flight, by
Khaled Abdallah, translated by Sara Veghefian with … More
Yes, and it was before regional codes, I think. You had to ask the operator for the region if it was out of the one you lived in. Just three numbers 318. That grew later to 3318. And that grew again to two numbers longer, though I can't remember the extra two. And my grandmother's co-op membership number was 78540. (Not that you need to know any of this!). But these are among the reasons I like your poem.
ReplyDeleteAll those numbers we learnt! Yet now I just use the memory on my mobile...
DeleteMy parents didn't have a phone until I left home. However, I vividly remember my grandmother (who took business calls for my uncle's tree felling business) enunciating, "Lincoln 31121, Talbot speaking" in a voice far removed from the one she used to read the 'Owt 'n' Nowt' column in the Lincolnshire Echo.
ReplyDeleteThe tradition of reciting one's number when answering the phone is certainly a throwback for me to my own Nan too! Thanks, Jayne!
DeleteUnless there's been a change-around, that's the area code for a lot of my old friends in North Surrey/Hants.! (But not mine, which was 01276.) I'm sure that, if I can't consciously remember the house numbers, I'd just have to dial the area code and my fingers would complete the second half of their own accord...
ReplyDeleteExactly! I'm a Farnham boy from the Surrey/Hants border. So many area codes pick up personal connotations, don't they?
DeleteNo, I don't recall any phone numbers from the past and have to check my present one if anyone asks for it! Words I can recall - I think I can probably still recite most of the first act of Edward II, which was an A-level text in 1968, but numbers don't stick....
ReplyDeleteHi Sheenagh,
DeleteThanks for commenting. You sound like my son: he learns scripts with ease but is also able to forget the grinding details of everyday life!